Have your kids had enough of pandemic-imposed restrictions that keep them from having hands-on fun? The following two activities could be just the thing to help them shed those boredom blues.
These activities can entertain a wide age-range, and both need parental supervision for younger children. However, the end product in both cases will intrigue and fascinate children and parents alike.
Let’s get started!
Recycled Rainbow Crayons
I was lucky enough to be gifted some super cool #IronMan and #Spiderman silicone molds by @toynktoys, and I instantly thought of this crayon project.
The first course of action is to gather your materials—in this case, old crayons. Knowing almost all of my friends with kids have crayons—and knowing most of those crayons had probably seen their better days—I put the word out to gather up some for this project. They took the time to gather up their crayons, and we collected them.
We were trying to be mindful of the environment in a holistic way, so it is essential to add that most of the crayons were collected in our neighborhood, where we could walk to get them. If we did have to use the car to pick them up, but it was when we were already out in that area.
The following is a list of steps to follow after you have gathered all of your crayons.
1. Remove the wrappers.
Pro Tip: This is a slow process, especially if you have a considerable number of crayons. Depending on the ages of your children, you might want to do this step before involving them, so they don’t get bored and disinterested before the good stuff starts to happen.
2. Break the crayons into small chunks and place them in the molds.
For this step, you need to try and get the pieces as small as possible. Place the chunks into the Toynk Toys silicone molds—or whatever molds you have. You will need to pile them up a bit because when they melt, the liquid takes the shape of the container and fills in gaps. For this reason, you will need to add more crayons as they begin to melt. (More on this part a bit later.)
You can do cool things with your kids when filling the molds. For instance, you could challenge them to create a new crayon using only warm colors or maybe have a mini lesson on the colors of the rainbow and have them fill a mold with only those colors. The possibilities are numerous!
3. Preheat the oven to 230-degrees Fahrenheit.
From trial and error, we learned to initially bake the crayons for about 10 minutes. This process starts their transformation to the point where we could see the gaps as the crayons melted.
4. Pull them out of the oven and add more chunks of crayon.
At this point, I pulled the molds out of the oven, and we carefully added more chunks of crayon to the spots that had significantly lower levels from the melting process. Then, we baked the crayons for 10 more minutes.
5. Repeat step four.
You will need to repeat Step Four as many times as necessary to fill all gaps and make sure the molds are completely full. Also, the end product should not have any visible "chunks" of crayon, and all of the pieces should be completely melted. In our case, we repeated Step Four two more times.
6. Let them cool for an hour or so.
Waiting will be the most challenging part for younger children. Depending on their ages, the learning aspect can be either complicated or straightforward. Basically, all ages can understand that the crayons go from a solid to a liquid with heat. Then, after the heat is removed, the crayons are solid again.
When they are completely hardened and cooled, pop them out of the molds and color with them! These recycled crayons are great for rubbing plates to create striking patterns. Visit @lakeshorelearning for some fantastic leaf and animal plates your kids will love.
Solar Oven S’mores
Who doesn't love s'mores? The problem is we don't always have a campfire to make them. And, let's face it, although they are fun, campfires are not healthy for the environment. From the smoke and toxins released into the air to the possibility of embers landing somewhere and causing a fire—campfires are not always a good choice.
So, what’s the alternative? We devised a way to have all the glorious goodness of s’mores without harming the environment. And we used solar energy to do it!
Here’s what we did:
We reused a pizza box from a dinner earlier in the week as our “oven” and cut a rectangular flap in the top.
Then, we wrapped the flap in aluminum foil and covered the hole the flap created with a piece of new laminating plastic. You can also use a page protector or a portion of plexiglass.
Then, we used a stick to prop the flap toward the sun to reflect down into the pizza box.
Now for the good part!
We put a single graham cracker square in the box and added some squares of chocolate on top of it. We discovered we needed to cut the marshmallow in half to fit in the pizza box with the lid closed. After doing so, we placed it on top of the chocolate.
Then, we closed the pizza box and set it outside for a while.
Here's where the magic happens: the sun reflects off the aluminum foil and down into the box, and the plastic traps the heat, turning a plain old pizza box into a S'more Oven.
Our experience with this project was an actual experiment because it was only 60-degrees outside with some nasty wind. I thought there was no way this project was going to work.
The end result was a s’more with all of the chocolate melted, but the marshmallow needed a little coaxing from the microwave. If it were warmer, this experiment would have been a complete success, I’m sure.
There you have it!
There you have it—two sustainable science projects you can do with your kids to bust the boredom blues. While some patience is necessary for both projects, your kids will agree that the outcome in both cases is worth the wait!
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