Adventures in Being a Nanny: The Crayon Edition

Hey Everybody,

For those who didn't know, I am nannying three adorable little girls, Leila (8), Kiana (4), and Alana (1)! (And mom said sure you can brag about them on the blog!) I get to watch them for the entire summer! I'm loving it thus far! The kids are a lot of fun to be around and they make my life more active and interesting!

One day, the girls and I decided to make some crayons! I got the idea from one of my Facebook friends as well as looking on Pinterest.  In all honesty, I'm not sure what us nannys did before Pinterest... it really is a life savor!

First of all, we bought a bunch of crayons and peeled off the paper.  The girls put the paper into a dish for easy clean up:) 

 Then we put them into a muffin tin.  (We greased the muffin tin before we put the crayons in.) The girls put in a variety of different colors.  We each had a row.  Kiana's is the far left, then mine, then Leila's and then Ella's.  (Ella is Leila's friend.) 

  Leila put in all blue, while I put in random colors.  Kiana put in lots of pink and bright colors and Ella added lots of complementary colors.   This process took us a little while...because tiny fingers take sometime to work. 

Then I threw the crayons in the oven for 8 minutes on 250 degrees.  Afterwards, we took them out and noticed that the crayons were all melted. 

To make things interesting, I mixed some of the colors so they swirled around!

I let them dry for about 15 minutes.  Once they were done, I tipped over the muffin tray and the crayons fell out naturally! This is what they looked like!

This set was mine! 

Here they all are in a row!

And we had awesome crayons!

The kids loved this project! It was very easy to do.  It doesn't cost much (for us it did because we bought the big crayon pack for 6.00)  We talked about the states of matter and how when something becomes warm it melts and when something cools off it becomes hard.  A great lesson for a kindergartener! For Leila (who's in 4th grade), we talked about monotone and complementary colors and how different colors combine make different arrangements.  Since she's interested in art, I thought it was a great way to introduce her to art vocabulary! 

The only downside about the crayons is they tend to shed and are they are a little difficult to write with.  However, get past those two things, and they are awesome crayons!

<3

Em