If your house is anything like mine (with four kids 8 and under) we have tons of broken, destroyed, half-eaten bits of crayon all over the place. Well I was tired of just throwing them all away and every time I gave the baby new crayon she just broke them anyway, so I thought that I could reuse what we already had and make some sturdier crayons for my littlest ones.
I started by taking all the wrappers off. Funny thing is my kids seem to be able to do this with ease when I don't want them to, but when we want the wrappers off it's quite a pain...so stick with it...it will be worth it!
Sort the crayons by color or in whatever color combinations suit your fancy that day and put them in an oven safe container sprayed lightly with cooking spray. I choose to use a cute heart pan that I could never seem to get any food I baked in it to come out in one piece, so if I could only use it for crayons that was ok. (I wouldn't recommend putting it in something you use to cook food with unless you want to spend time getting all the waxy residue off, I've heard that using wax lined cupcake cups works well, but I haven't tried it.)
I set my oven to 225* and let it do it's thing...to get the crayons totally melted took about 25 minutes and I did stir each color with a tooth pick about half way through to help the melting along.
Carefully remove the pan from the oven and let it cool completely before trying to remove it. As the wax cools it will shrink slightly and should slip out easily.
I let mine "air dry" over night before I let the kids have them, but once they are cool to the touch they should be fine to use.
Hope your family has as much fun with your crayon creations as mine has!!
Blessings
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