Today I want to share another craft for kids that you and your children might enjoy doing together. It is also made with rocks and crayons. Our recent crayon crafting inspired more crayon projects. This time, instead of baking crayons, we baked rocks. It was a fun project in which the children could express their creativity and love for color. Also nice was that each child had something tangible to take away with them to use at home. The rocks make good paper weights, look pretty on a shelf and also make nice teacher gifts or gifts for grandparents, etc. 
What you will need:
*crayons (any color will do but sparkly ones look extra pretty)
*clean rocks (best to use rocks that are not too much larger than the palm of your hand)
*a protective work surface-- such as newspapers-- covered with a sheet of aluminum foil
*an oven or microwave
*a good pair of oven mitts or several potholders. (Nice to have a pair for each child but if not, have at least one pair for the adult who is in charge.)
Before I go any further, I want to stress that this is a project that your children definitely need supervision with because of working with hot items.
What to do:
*Make sure all rocks are clean and dry.
*Cover work surface first with sheets of newspaper.
*Cover newspaper with aluminum foil.
Hint:You may want to turn the aluminum foil up around the edges making a little lip
on it to resemble a tray, in case your rock painters are a bit messy.
*Assemble crayons. You will want to choose nice bright colors. Metallic crayons such as silver, gold and bronze look especially pretty.
*Remove paper from crayons.
*If you have them, place a pair of oven mitts beside each child's work surface. If not, let only the adults handle the hot rocks.
**Remember, never leave any child unattended when working with hot items.
Preparing the rocks:
After trial and error, we found the best way to heat rocks is to heat them on a high temperature in the oven until very warm. You want the rocks to be warm all the way through so this will require heating for at least 20 minutes-- if using a conventional oven.
We didn't have as much time as we might have liked, so instead, we heated our rocks in the microwave. (I still think the conventional oven was best but this worked too) We quickly found that it does make a difference in how your finished rock looks if you do not heat your rocks to an extra hot temperature as it effects the way your crayons melt.
If you are using a microwave, heat the rocks until they are very hot.
If a rock is hot enough, the wax from the crayons melts very easily. If the rock is not steaming hot, you can actually draw a picture on the rock in a melted fashion. (Will show an example below)
*This is the time when the ADULT will remove the rocks from the microwave (while wearing padded oven mitts) and place them on the protective surface on top the sheet of aluminum foil.
While supervising your children, use crayons to color the rocks. The crayons should melt easily.
They will melt and run off the side of the rocks and pool on the aluminum foil.
While wearing an oven mitt, you can pick the rock up and move it around a bit to create unique and random designs with the wax. If not, just allow your children to draw & melt the crayons anywhere they like on the rocks. No matter what design they decide on, the finished rocks are quite pretty.
Here is an example of drawing a shape on rocks. This can be achieved when the rock is hot but not so hot that the wax runs off the rock. Experiment with different temperatures for different results.
By allowing the rock's temperature to cool to somewhere between hot and warm, the following pattern
was achieved by one little artist:
This next rock was a bit warmer. The little artist tried to draw on the rock but the wax melted a bit more than planned. This one also looks a bit like a fish to me, yet the artist says it is a turtle. What do you see?
This last rock is perhaps my favorite. It was achieved by heating the rock to an extra hot temperature and applying crayons to it. (Although it is difficult to see, the silver metallic crayon looked especially nice.) Once the wax was on the rock, the rock was tilted from side to side to allow the wax to run and merge with other colors. The result, I believe, is beautiful.
*Remember to wear oven mitts when picking up a hot rock to avoid burning little hands.
*Let rocks dry thoroughly before moving them.
This craft really didn't cost us any extra money. We used some rocks that we had gathered for a previous craft project. We already had crayons, oven mitts, potholders, newspaper and aluminum foil. Everyone had a fantastic time with this craft. Clean up was simple and easy.
Now, I don't know about you but finding a craft that the children love that is basically free, fun and has quick and easy clean-up is a winner in my book.
I hope you can try this project and that you and your family have as much fun with it as mine did.
Thanks for stopping by my blog today.
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