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.

Kids all seem to go through a phase of loving trivia, and if you’ve got kids who want to know about the tallest, biggest and weirdest things in nature, they’ll enjoy the book Once in a Blue Moon by Emily Hawkins.

The book explores wonders of astronomy, meteorology, big trees, weird animals, volcanoes and more to show off the rarest events and phenomena in the natural world.

Kids ages 7-10 will learn about the lake (Lake Hillier, on an island off Australia) that has water that’s bubblegum pink, the world’s deepst came (Veryovkina Cave in the country of Georgia) and the world’s biggest tree, a banyan in southeast India with a canopy that covers more than five acres!

Readers will learn what a blue moon is, how supernovas happen and about Haley’s comet and solar eclipses, among other space-related phenomena. Closer to home they’ll learn about stinky flowers, bleeding trees, glowing fungi and pizzly bears.

There’s content about times when it’s rained frogs (and when frogs have exploded en masse), when snow made giant snowballs all by itself and how clouds stack on themselves like pancakes. The book also explores ball lightning, sun dogs, St. Elmo’s fire and more.

I love books like this and I know kids do, too. There’s so much weird and wonderful about our world and even as adults we don’t know about all of these things. I found it fun to learn, for example, that there’s a volcano on the island of Java that not only sends out blue flames from vents near its crater, it’s also home to an acidic lake.

Illustrations by Vlad Stankovic illuminate these weird natural wonders and are sure to get kids interested in learning more about some of these remarkable animals, plants, rock formations and more.

About the book: 80 pages, hardcover. Published 2026 by Wide Eyed Editions. Suggested retail price $30.

Have you read?

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