Not one but TWO Easy Dollar Store Crafts

I interrupt my regular scheduled educational blogs to share two super simple dollar store DIY projects. You obviously need to be at the Dollar Tree this week buying back to school items so get the following: 1 box of crayons (possibly baby ones with no paper,) paper muffin cups, Rigatoni, food coloring and white vinegar.

When you get home, either recruit a sensory seeking child to peel the paper off of the crayons or grab a sharp razor/Xcato knife and get those suckers off yourself. A tip from a DIY failure: don't watch Modern Family reruns while using an Xcato knife. Ugh.

Have your child fill a paper cup lined, muffin baking sheet with broken crayons. You only need to make a single layer of crayons per cup. You can take this a step further and ask your child to sort the colors and put a piece of each color in each individual cup. Or let them make each cup be a mish-mash of whatever they chose.

Set your oven to 250 degrees Fahrenheit and let the crayons bake/melt for 10 minutes.  I let my son watch the melting action by turning on the oven light. Take out your new trippy crayons and let them cool. Our crayons popped out of the paper easily after cooling.

For DIY number two, have your child count 5-10 pieces of pasta into plastic sandwich bags. We took this opportunity to casually introduce the concept of skip counting. We made four bags of ten pieces of pasta. My son was surprised that we could count to forty in groups of ten so quickly.

Have a small bowl of white vinegar set to go. Your child can scoop two tablespoons of vinegar into each bag. Help them squeeze five drops of your color of choice into each bag. These are more opportunities to touch on skip counting.
Close the bags up and have your child shake and spread out the vinegar and dye in the bags. Now as an adult who doesn't want to dye their family or clothing orange, I recommend placing the bags on a high counter, opened, to let the dye set. After a few hours, remove the pasta to dry completely on a paper towel overnight.

The next day, you can string your pasta beads to make an exquisite bracelet or necklace. Practice patterns or make different carbo-loaded accessories for different occasions.