Melting crayons onto hot rocks is really fun to do and completely addictive! It does require hot rocks though so perhaps not an activity for the very young. The two little girls at 6 and 4 (nearly 5) had a ball with this. The original idea is from from Jean Van’t Hul who writes the inspirational blog – The Artful Parent. What you will need…
- Rocks/Pebbles
- Old crayons with all the paper removed (nb. no stubby ones to protect fingers)
- foil
- A heat proof mat or towel
The first job is to wash and dry your rocks. Then pop them into the oven at 180C for around 10 minutes. While the rocks are heating up take a towel, fold it a few times to protect your work surface and lay a piece of foil on top to catch the wax drips. The three key safety tips are…
…use long, unbroken crayons
…hold the crayons at the ends using finger tips
…ask the children to put their none drawing hand behind their back (so they are not tempted to touch/move the rock as they draw)
Take one or two rocks out at a time and you are ready to start. (I was quite strict at this point and asked the children to put both hands behind their backs while I got both sets out). Then you just start to draw with the crayon and it will melt slowly (or quite fast if you press hard) over the rock. You can then swirl the colours around as you draw. When the rocks cool the wax will harden and create a beautiful and very colourful shine.
Kitty liked the purity of using one colour whereas Grace, who is currently interested in aboriginal art, created beautiful patterns with different colours.
Although later on Kitty got a little more confident and started to mix colours. They look very serious but actually they were concentrating very hard and they both would have gone on to do hundreds of pebbles but we ran out!
Enid Blyton rating: 10 (A really brilliant and fun process. Since making them the rocks and have been used as birds eggs in a nest we found on the floor and as the ‘finds’ on a treasure hunt. We want to do this again really soon!)
The Jam Jar Journals 