And find all your broken crayons.
Put your little ones to work peeling off the wrappers and breaking them smaller if needed. You can sort them into similar colours or other schemes if you want to get fancy
Divide the pieces up between small silicone muffin cups or ice cube trays (you can get them cheap at IKEA!)
Put the muffin cups on a cookie sheet to stabilize it.
Put it in the overn at it's lowest temp (around 250) for around 20 minutes or until all the crayons have melted.
Remove carefully and let cool out of reach of children.
Pop you pretty new crayons out of the cups and wrap them up as favours for your summer party, gifts to take to playdates, or just start colouring!

p.s. I did this recently with my 2 year old and this is the finished product:


He has tons of fun and always asks to use his 'special crayons'!

OMG WOW!

I've always wanted to make them!!!

I keep meaning to clean out the crayon scrap box and do this. You may have just inspired me to actually do it this week since DH is working a lot of extra hours.

that is sooo neat!

Oh, I LOVE this! This is a project I may actually be able to attempt!

We're always throwing away broken or dull crayons since the kids get so many as restaurant giveaways.
Neat, neat, neat!

You can also get lollipop molds and make them in different shapes! I used to do this when I taught elementary!

I was thinking of that too - can they go in the oven? It would be great to make them in the shape of your kids' favourite characters!

the ikea ice cube trays would make really cute ones since they have stars and hearts and all those fun ones!!

Cute and good for the environment! My sister used to do this but she made homemade candles. She just added a wick in the centre and I think she add a bit of parafin wax because they burned longer. My ds would love that they look like hockey pucks and that he could drive them around like a wheel.

I LOVE this!! Wouldn't these make great Valentines for preschool or kindergarten?!

No, but they can be microwaved! Or melt the wax and pour!

I used to do this with my kindergarten students---only since we're in AZ, we just put them outside in the sun
You could probably do that if you wanted to make character shaped crayons--it might take longer, but you wouldn't have to worry about the mold being oven safe.

The silicone ice cube trays are oven safe to 500 degrees. Ikea has lots of them and every once in a while they pop up at Ross and the Target $1 bin .

That's SUCH a great idea Kathryn!!! I'm totally going to do this with Taylor!!!