Recycle your Crayons

My friend Sarah made these for her son's valentine's this year. What a creative mom! She said she used a silicon heart baking pan from Micheal's craft store. We are heading there today to get one....not sure if we will get hearts but so fun! What a great way to use up your old crayons. This is not her recipe below but one I found online. I will try it this week and put a different recipe if it doesn't turn out.

1. Gather up all of your broken crayons, and cut them into small pieces. (An adult will need to complete this step.)

2. Preheat the oven to 150 degrees.

3. Fill the muffin tin with an inch-thick layer of crayon pieces.

4. Bake 15-20 minutes, or until the wax is melted.

5. Allow the tin to cool; then pop out the crayons, and they're ready for use.

Tips:

1. If you don't have a muffin tin to devote to crayon making, you can line your regular muffin tin with foil cups.
2. Candy and soap making molds can also be used to create fun, shaped crayons.
3. Recycled crayons make a great no-cost gift or party favor.

What You Need:

* Broken crayons
* An old muffin tin
* A knife

I Love book

Have your child practice writing and reading. Talk about the two words I and LOVE. Then give them a magazine and have them cut out things they love. Then have them write the words I and LOVE on each page. They can READ this book!

They will practice: writing, reading, cutting, gluing....and so much more!

Valentine Graph

Give your child a small cup of candy hearts. Have him/ her count the different colors. Have him sort them, count them, read them (if they can), and graph them. Why not. Then talk about more and less. Could you even do a lessen on adding and subtracting. SURE THING!

Colored Garages

My friend Kimberly gave me this idea. Give your child this task....lay out different colored pieces of construction paper. Have him park his cars in the right garages. He can practice sorting by color. Then you can play car shop and shop for cars.

Pumpkin Pound

Take a pumpkin and a handful of golf tees and a play hammer. And let your child go at it pounding those tees into that pumpkin! More real than some of the toy hammers and nails but not unsafe like a real hammer and nails. Multi colored tees are even more fun ...trace a letter on the pumpkin and have your child poke the tees in making the letter to add an educational spin to the activity.

Pumpkins

Cut out some orange pumpkins...use construction paper.
Cut out a bunch of face pieces. then let your child glue them onto the pumpkins making scary, happy, sad, etc. faces. Then post them up in a patch and there you go. Halloween decorations that also filled some time.

Older kids can cut their own face pieces.

Count Down

If you have something you are counting down until...looking forward...here is a easy activity. My son's birthday is in 16 days. Cut the strips and make a paper chain. Hang it up and let them tear one off each morning. Great counting activity too.

I used elmer's glue and a q-tip to apply the glue.