Earth Day 2013: Earth Day Crayons, Globes, and Paper Plate Earth

Earth Day Crayons!

What better way to celebrate Earth Day than by making crafts in the likeness of our planet Earth! 

Materials:

Old/Broken Blue/green, blue, green, white crayons

Small Muffin tin

Fine cheese grater 

Oven

 Pam or non-stick spray

Where I am all about recycling and reusing materials, I dug through our crayon container and found several crayons that were broken or that the paper was coming off of. Singled out the blue-green and green and also found a small white one. We made our own crayon pucks last year around Christmas time, some were multicolored and some were red and green. They were fun to make and fun to color with. I thought, why not try to make an Earth shape with blue and green. When I found the little white crayon I wanted to make the earth crayon have clouds, just like the real Earth has.

The children and I peeled the papers off the crayons and broke them into small pieces. Before putting the crayons in the tin, make sure you spray it with a non-stick cooking spray like Pam.





We first added blue bits to 9 of the 12 mini-muffin tins. We then added the two shades of green. After this was complete I used a cheese grater to shave off little white bits. We sprinkled those on top of the blue and green.



Bake in the oven at 200 degrees for 5-7 minutes or until all the crayons are melted. be careful when you remove it from the oven, the wax will be very runny and HOT!



Let the muffin pan cool completely. You should be able to turn it over and the crayon earths will fall out, if not, shake or twist the pan like you would an ice cube tray.

They should turn out something like these! 


Use the crayons to color on paper and watch as the color turns from blue to green and back to blue again. It is a really fun way to color!

Earth Day Globes

Materials: 

Air Dry Foam Modelling Clay in Blue and Green

Wax paper/parchment paper

Air dry foam clay can be found almost anywhere, the most economical is Dollarama stores. There is not always a wide variety but I try to stock up when its available.

Roll a ball with a chunk of blue modelling clay. Immediately get a much smaller chunk of green. Break the green up into 6-8 smaller chunks varying in sizes, flatten these out with your finger on the wax paper to make a random shape. Stick the random shapes on the round ball, to look like the green land and blue water on a globe. 

Paper Plate Earth

Materials:

Paper plates

Blue paint

Glue

Scissors

Green paper or other material, prefurably recycled or reused

(we used old paint swatches)

Paint paper plate blue. I asked the children to do their very best job to cover all the white. 

Cut out completely random shapes of green, this is a great way to practice cutting skills! 

Glue the green stuff on the paper plate. So simple!