Valentines...

For those of you who know me...you know that I never have (nor ever will) win the "school mom of the year" award. I'm terrible at keeping up with all the stuff required. A small milk carton, friday "drink money," what time each party starts (it made sense to me that they both would start at the same time...thus I was over an hour late to Chloe's Thanksgiving Celebration). Every time I turn around, there is a party. I'm not a party girl. I do not remember having so many parties (and bringing home pounds of candy) when I was in school. But that is the reality of which I live now. Alas, on Friday it is the Valentine's Party. The first issue I had was when I received a sticky note from Emmi's teacher last Friday. It said "Please return the McDonald form on Monday." Hmmm. McDonald form? I had no idea what she was talking about. After a few emails, I was informed that the form was supposed to have been returned on Friday along with $3. Who knew?

There are also other requirements for these Valentine Parties on Friday. Each girl had to decorate a shoe box and bring to class. What happened to two pieces of construction paper stapled together to hold the Valentines? A box? Decorated? Really?

And of course, let's not forget the Valentine's that we have to bring for each child in the class. Now, I may not like having to perform all these tasks (remember, my girls cannot read or write anything but their names) HOWEVER, if I'm going to do it, then I'm going to do it right AND it is going to be enjoyable for me. Enter our Valentine project...I did this for them 3 years ago, but they were too young to participate. I enjoyed it and knew that they could do most of the work this time around.

We started with crayons. Preferably the Crayola ones because through experience I have found they have the most pigment and perform best. No, I did not go out and buy Crayolas just for this project. We have a local thrift store where you can get good sized bags of crayons for $0.75 or less. I got 2 bags last week to help add to our crayon collection.

 

 Then I had the girls peel the paper off the crayons. Little did I know how long this would take them. We are talking two 1 hour sittings! I like this crayon unwrapping...it keeps them busy.

 

  

  

 Once peeled, we broke them up and filled these nifty heart shaped silicone cupcake holders. 

Then placed them in the oven on 250 degrees for about 14 minutes. Meanwhile, I had Chloe & Emmi cutting out the circles that will be the actual "Valentine." They had to cut out 17 each and sign the back. I wrote "You Color My World" on the front.

We pulled the hearts out of the oven to find fun melted crayons.

 

  

Once they cooled, they pop out of the molds and you have a neat heart-shaped, multi-color crayon.  We attached them to the the circles and voila, we have Valentines for the classmates. 

It would be easier to have more than 6 molds (especially when we had to make 34), but we are getting it done. Three years ago I used some disposable aluminum foil heart-shaped molds. I liked how those turned out better, they were more shiny, but I looked at 2 different stores and could not find those this year. These have turned out great though, and it was a fun project for all (well, chloe isn't thinking that is it so fun right now b/c she is having to peel more crayons. apparently, she is a slow crayon-peeler).