Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Crayons…old to new

We have had a growing collection of broken and worn crayons in our cupboards for quite some time.  While I am a big believer in the idea “Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without”, this philosophy really wasn’t cutting it in the crayon department.  After all…no matter how creative the little artist no one wants to search through huge bin of crayons for the off chance of finding the perfect color.  Order needed to return to the crayons.  But first we had to find a great way to reuse the rest by turning them into scribble cookies….which was so much fun.

There are lots of great tutorials on the web about remaking crayons bits into new crayons.  We used this one.  My first introduction to recycling crayons was when I was quite little and left my crayons in the car on a hot day.  Yikes!  When controlled and intentional recycling crayons is much more fun!Its really a very simple process, and we had so much fun watching our new crayons take form. We sifted and sorted, and unwrapped.  We talked about colors, color wheels, recycling, and all sorts of delicious and meaningful things.  It was learning.  It was art.  It was consuming and recycling in a responsible way.  It was us, living, and learning, and doing our best.

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