How To Make Recycled Crayons

Just to be honest up front – these pictures are from about 8 months ago. We’ve done this recycled crayon activity now several times since then but I haven’t taken pictures of those times. I’m just a little behind on life and that’s okay. But making new crayons from our broken ones has become one of our kids favorite activities, especially when they realize we are getting low on crayons. It’s also something I always get questions about when I show us doing it on my Instagram stories. Because of that I’ve meant to write up a post on how we do it for a long time, but life with 3 kids has prevented that until now! Anyways this is a super fun, easy, and really helpful activity that I think every mom should do several times a year to not waste those little crayon pieces (that always drive me insane). So here is how we do it.

1. Order a crayon mold. I like the basic one that I found on Amazon here. It’s $14.00 but will pay off, I swear. Amazon also has some other fun molds you could do this with like these letter shapes, animal tipped crayons, and even dinosaurs. I just do the regular crayon ones because they are easy for my kids to hold making them practical for the kids to use regularly.
2. Round up your broken crayons. We had a whole bucket full of them the first time we did this. Then we peeled all the crayons which seemed tedious except Maddie Grace enjoyed it and took over for me.
3. Break them more. We broke down our crayon pieces even smaller so that none were more than about 1.5-2 inches.
4. Preheat your oven to 200 degrees.
5. Lay out your crayons. On a cookie sheet lay down your crayon molds.
6. Bake for 15-20 minutes. Make sure it seems that all the crayon pieces have totally melted. Remove from oven and allow to cool completely.
7. Remove from molds. With the molds I used the crayons popped out really easily but I still went slowly and carefully!
8. Use and enjoy! 

What’s great about this activity is that the new recycled crayons hold up really well. They write well, my kids enjoy that they are a mix of colors, they are easy to hold and do activity books with, and if (or when) they do break you just put them in a broken pieces bag so that after a while you can do the activity again!