Crayon Melt Candy Corn - Preschool Craft

The little ones wanted to do another crayon melt craft today, so we made some glowing candy corn to hang in the window.

Just as with our fall tree crayon melt, they used a pencil sharpener to gather crayon shavings. But this time, they let the shavings fall onto separate pieces of white paper, so the colors would not mix together.

Then, they arranged them in candy corn patterned stripes, on a piece of wax paper (I would imagine freezer paper would work too, as long as the waxy side faced in, but I've never tried it), that I had set out for them, on top of an old towel.

I helped them cover the crayon with another sheet of wax paper, and another old towel, before ironing it with a hot iron. The old towels are important, because the crayon will bleed through - I ruined a perfectly good ironing board pad, with the first crayon melt we did, when my older children were preschoolers.

I folded two pieces of black construction paper in half together, and drew half a candy corn shape on the folded edge, for the girls to cut. They cut through both pieces of paper at the same time.

I trimmed the wax paper, and melted crayon to fit, and the girls glued it between the two sheets of construction paper.

We hung one, as it was, and trimmed the other, so that it just had an outline of black around the candy corn. I'm really not sure which I like better, they both look quite festive, and fallish on the windows.

A couple of tips:

• It's easier for little ones to "sharpen" the wide, flat end of a crayon, than the pointed end. As the crayons become pointed, they can be broken in half, and sharped from the new flat ends.


• We didn't use quite enough yellow on the bottom of ours, so it mixed in almost completely with the orange, a wider stripe of yellow would have made a more striking candy corn.


• Don't forget to keep a close eye on the iron - unplug it, and move it to a safe spot, as soon as you're done with the ironing step, to keep it out of reach of little hands.

It's great to be a homeschooler.