Lego Rubbings

Do you remember discovering crayon rubbings as a kid? I remember being in Primary School when my teacher gave us all licence to take crayons and paper and do rubbings of whatever we wanted, inside and outside. We loved exploring textures and discovering that some things made interesting rubbings (leaves, concrete, etc) and others... not so much (tabletops, vinyl floor, etc).
With a view to introducing Eden to this same type of texture exploration, I thought I'd introduce her to the world of crayon rubbings with a Lego board.

I simply taped a piece of paper onto the Lego board, provided some homemade crayons (see the end of this post for the how-to) and showed her how to do it with one sweep of a crayon. That's all I got in, 'cause once she saw the pattern the Lego board made, she swatted me away so she could get to work.

Here she is, hard at work...

Eden traced her hand (she always traces her hands!), and I helped her to colour in around her hand-outline...

Simple, but effective!

I'm looking forward to doing some more of these with her, and then going to the park and finding interesting textures to do crayon rubbings of!

How To Make Your Own:

1. Preheat your oven to 120ºc (250ºf).

2. Cut up some crayons into small chunks - I used crayons that were nearly finished, the ones where the stubby bits would've otherwise gone to waste.

3. Lightly grease a mini muffin tin, or candy moulds (metal, not silicone!!) with vegetable oil, and divide the cut up bits of crayon into them.

• Mix up the colours for multi-coloured crayons, and which kid doesn't love multi-coloured crayons? I used two to three colours per mould. Remember, the more cut up bits you put into the moulds, the thicker your crayons will be. Keep them to a manageable size for little fingers.
• Be careful to not overfill your moulds, especially if they're shallow. The crayons become quite viscose when melted and could overflow. You don't want to be scraping melted crayon off the bottom of your oven. 

4. Pop the moulds into the oven for 7 - 10 minutes. Keep a close eye on them, as they melt very fast.

5. Allow to cool a little before removing from trays, but allow to cool completely before giving to children.

Thanks for reading! ~ L.



Linking up to:

ABC and 123
Crayon Freckles
Sun Scholars
Adventures In Mommy Land
Delicate Construction