Alphabet Crayons

Do you have a bunch of tiny, broken crayon pieces that are hard to grip and color with laying around your house? We did. Did. Now, we have alphabet crayons instead of those tiny broken pieces.

My Baby Bear has a mild interest in learning the letters of the alphabet. Occasionally, he asks me what the names of various letters are, and I want to encourage this course of curiosity. So, when I saw these silicone alphabet molds on Amazon, I couldn't resist! My first project with these molds, jello, didn't turn out so well because all the letters broke when I tried to get them out. So, for my second project, I combined all those little broken crayon pieces and used the molds to create new ones! These turned out much better as all the letters popped out of the mold without breaking except for the 'G.'

To make the alphabet crayons, I began by collecting all the crayons in the house that were half-size or less. Then, I lined them up in the letters molds, breaking or cutting them as necessary to fit better. I decided to get a little creative by mixing and matching the colors to see how they turned out. I popped them in the oven at 250 degrees for about 2 1/2 hours, and I checked on them about every half hour. I learned that the black crayons sort of muddied-up the other colors they mixed with, yellow added nice bright streaks, and similar colors (like blue and green or red and orange) tended to meld together. When used for coloring, these crayons give a cool, multicolored look to a picture. As for Baby Bear, he isn't as keen on coloring with these letters as he is just playing with and asking about them, which is just fine with me.