The Imagination Tree

Creative play and learning for kids

Rainbow Alphabet Crayons

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Create your own alphabet of crayons for a fun gift for preschoolers and a sneaky way to practise some early literacy skills at the same time!

 These beautiful, rainbow alphabet crayons are straightforward to make and there’s some fun science to learn during the process too! Children helping out can watch the transformation from solid pieces, to melted liquid, which then solidifies again to form new shapes, and it all happens very quickly so it’s satisfying for inquisitive young minds!

To make these alphabet crayons you will need:
  • colourful, old, broken up crayons (or a couple of boxes of cheap crayons)
  • ABC ice trays
  • an oven set to about 150 degrees C (300 F)
Simply chop the crayons into tiny pieces and use them to fill up the ice cube trays. Make sure each space is packed full and has a good mix of bright colours for the best effect. Put them in the oven on a tray and heat them up for just as long as it takes to melt them (probably no longer than 10 minutes.)

 When the crayons have melted completely, bring them out and leave them to cool down. You could get your child to predict what will have happened to the little pieces and what may have happened to the colours. Have they mixed together? Will the letters be solid or liquid?

 When they are completely cool, carefully push them out of the tray taking care not to break any parts off. Some of the letters are more tricky than others and we did have a couple of casualties!

Then go ahead and give them to your little ones to draw and mark-make with!

 You could play all sorts of playful literacy games such as:

  • can you find the letters from your name?
  • which crayon shows the sound at the beginning of the word “cat”?
  • can you match the crayons to this little word? (spell a simple, 3 letter word on card)
  • if you make 2 sets you can ask them to match the letters together in an I-spy snap game
  • can you find the P crayon and draw as many things that start with the P sound as you can?
These would make a perfect gift for a child starting at preschool, kindergarten or school for the first time! Or as a cute party favour take-home gift with a little notebook attached for some rainbow scribbles and daydreams!
Find the alphabet trays here:

Amazon.co.uk Widgets

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Comments

  2. Oooh Anna, love these. Love the multiple colours you can draw in (Red Ted would like that!!) Great way to practice some words too.

    Thanks for sharing on Kids Get Crafty!

    Maggy