Melting Crayons for Earth Day… part one- the posters

Y’all! It’s been forever and a day. Or a year. Or more! How long since I last posted? Well that’s too long! Ha! Teaching truly has been all-consuming. It’s been real and it’s been fun and it’s been real fun… but I’m ready for summer!! How bout y’all?

Here we are on Earth day, and I’m doing a project I have come to LOVE! Every year, my students and I collect up crayons that are broken and/or unwanted, and we jazz them up and melt them into something new and amazing for Earth day… as a true, physical picture of how you can really reuse and renew something that seems old and broken and ready to throw away!

This year our project reached new heights thanks to my partnership with the folks at Clear Path Paper! They hooked us up with some BEYOND BEAUTIFUL paper to make posters to spread around the school! We hung them up, our counselor helped with announcements, and the crayons rolled in. Seriously, y’all… I’m gonna be making LOTS of new crayons. More than I can make in just one day!!

But back to the beginning- the thing that made us so successful was our posters. For our posters, my partners over at Clear Path Paper hooked us up with some GORGEOUS Earth and water toned paper. Check out what we got:

I was able to print heart shapes right onto the mirror blue with no problem on our copy machine (just be sure to use the bypass tray and select thick paper b/c the machine handles it differently than regular cardstock). I printed some on the mirror side just to see if it showed up, but I cut those myself b/c it was a little dark on the blue to see. The kids were easily able to cut the ones with the lines on the back (white) side of the mirror paper. One even commented that it was easier (compared to regular copy paper) to cut that paper because it’s easier to hang onto the thicker paper while cutting. They also LOVED how pretty the mirror paper is, and totally thought it looked like ocean water. ❤

Then they tried to cut the recycling signs (printed on Kiwi Green) to look like islands, which they glued onto the water. Each poster got two oceans with islands, and then each student colored a “Recycle Your Crayons” print-out (again, on Kiwi Green) to color with as many colors of their crayons as they could. They loved that even white crayon would show up since the paper was green!

We hung our signs proudly all over the school, and they were a great success! The kids were even heard telling GenEd kids at a bathroom break- “did you see our crayon signs? We need broken crayons if you have any!”

Come back Monday for part two of this post- the “how to/recipe” for melting your own crayons! 🙂 -Christy