tamara b

Guess what this momma and her little chicks were up to this morning.

We collected all the broken crayons we could find.

And a few that weren't broken just for good measure.

Then we began the paper removing process.

I was amazed this part kept their attention the WHOLE time.

Here's what we used for our little project:

The oldest impressed everyone when he "broke a world record" by

breaking 4 crayons at once. He's such a strong boy!

The pieces of crayons went into a silicone baking tray. Each child filled two cups.

Well, truth be told, Scott began reading by this point and chose the colors and

mommy had fun filling the cups for him.

After baking at 250 for 15 minutes, some crayons were totally melted and some weren't. I'm guessing the 3 different brands of crayons impacted that. I read various directions about melting. If you try this, just watch it. I checked the crayons after 7 minutes and then kept adding 4 minutes until I thought they were done. After I pulled them out of the oven and they cooled for a few minutes, I rushed the process a bit and stuck them in the freezer. The end result was heart shaped crayons:

They are bigger than I'd prefer for size. But I'm not sure that the size is all bad. I think

they ended up being about 2" in size. They'd be a great size for pre-K hands to use.

And that was my Saturday morning. The kids folded their laundry, I peeked around pinterest and had coffee. Nap time began time for this momma to get some stuff done. After all, we've been gone every night since Christmas. Our Christmas tree is still up. I wish I could say it was because we're celebrating the Ethiopian Christmas and might use that as an excuse but plain and simple, it just needs to get put away.