Quin's Heart Shaped Crayon Valentines

A few of you asked either how Quin's Valentine crayons ended up turning out, or wondered how I made them. (Thanks for asking!)

I started them way back mid January. I always buy enough crayons before school starts so that I can replace them half way through the school year. (Crayons are MUCH less expensive before school than now!) I always feel guilty throwing away the crayons, but my students really have no interest in using them once they are broken or dull, and I hate the crayon sharpeners (I usually give the end of the year crayons away to summer type camps...).

Quin asked me a couple months ago how crayons were made, so I thought this would be a great project for the two of us to do together with all of the old, gross crayons from my room!
We started with these!
And then sorted them by color.

After sorting them by color, we peeled them. Okay, I peeled them! Quin tried, got frustrated and gave up very easily. The peeling was by far the most time consuming part!

Quin and I broke the crayons into little pieces and placed them into like colored heart spaces. I bought the heart shaped silicone ice cube trays on clearance last year for $1.

We baked them in batches, for about 8 minutes at 300 degrees.

The process of baking and cooling takes a long time! It isn't hard, just time consuming (like laundry!). We would have to remember to take one 'load' out, let it cool, dump them and then start another 'load'.

We put various colors of the crayons into plastic bags and tied a heart onto each one. I wanted to write 'Will you be my valentine, for crayon out loud', but Jason didn't think it was very threeschool-ish. We settled on 'Crayon you be my valentine?'.

Quin loved passing them out to her friends, and she was able to keep a set for herself!

We made a large rainbow heart crayon for her teacher, and the classroom aide. It was so much fun to watch the colors run together!

Overall, I don't think I spent more than $8 (I bought the trays, ribbon and paper). Not bad... I would probaly have spent more than that on cards and candy.