Upcycle Crayons Using the Sun

It feels like we had a very fast spring here in Arkansas and like it is almost warm enough to call it summer more than a month early. It’s probably not really warm enough to do this experiment, but it might be fun to try it every couple of weeks and see when it is finally hot enough to melt crayons with the sun.

Muddy Boots and Diamonds used the power of the sun to recycle crayons into different melted shapes. If you have silicone molds of different shapes you can use them for this project, too (I have a set of alphabet letters I have used to make upcycled crayons, but I used the oven.

It might be fun to turn this into a science experiment where you ask kids if they think the sun can melt crayons and to test out different places where the crayons might melt more or less quickly: in full sun versus shade, inside a car or under a glass versus on a windowsill, for example.

Have you ever melted crayons in the sun? I’d love to hear about it!

[Photo: Muddy Boots and Diamonds.]

Check out our Online store for special buys on Educational gifts We find bulk items and end-of-stock supplies to bring you heavily discounted items. (make sure you check our store often so you don’t miss out on new stock). We also have some free printable files, including a Science PDF for learning about Microscopes.

If it’s hot where you live, you might be looking for some fun activities you can do with kids inside the house. And while bubbles are generally a strictly outside the house kid of activity, these special bubbles are ones you can play with inside. It’s both a lot of fun and a science lesson.

These bubbles aren’t blown into the air, you blow them onto a tabletop gently through a straw.

What’s really cool about them is that they will stay on the table top without popping. You can even blow another bubble inside the first bubble, or stack bubbles on top of each other.

Why does this work? It’s thanks to a special ingredient in the bubble solution: sugar.

This particular recipe is from Play Party Game, but I’m sure you can find it other places with similar ingredients as well. But this post has a good explanation for what is normally happening with regular bubble solution made mostly with just soap and water, as well as why the sugar helps to make bubbles stronger and helps them last longer.

You could make this into a full on science experiment for your kids, comparing regular bubbles (this time you’ll want to do it outside or somewhere easy to clean) to the “unbreakable” bubbles, letting them hypothesize about what ingredients might help make bubbles stronger or what the sugar does to the solution.

You can talk about the molecular structure of the bubble being altered by the sugar, which makes it stronger and longer lasting.

They even have an activity kit you can buy to help guide your explorations and that offers extension activities for you to try.

Or you could just play with them. No judgement here; it’s summertime.

Grab the recipe and more of the science behind the bubbles from Play Party Game. And while you’re playing with bubbles you can also check out my giant bubble solution recipe over at Our Daily Craft.

[Photo: Play Party Game]

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