Crayon Melt Burning Bush

This Crayon Melt Burning Bush was such a simple and quick process art experience for my kiddos that also turned out as a really cool decoration that would be perfect for supplementing the story of the Burning Bush or your Passover learning experience!

What You’ll Need

Crayons in red, orange and yellow
Wax paper
Rock or hammer
Hot temperatures outside or iron
Paper bag or other protective surface to work on

Putting It Together

Gather your crayons and peel off the wrappers. This is a great fine motor skills practice for little kids and their fingers! We chose crayons that were already broken.
Put the crayons on the wax paper, then fold the wax paper over the crayons from the bottom to create a little pocket with the crayons inside.
Put a paper bag or scratch paper or other protective surface that you won’t care about getting crayon wax on underneath your crayon pocket. We forgot to do this part but our pavers remember!
Since it was 110 degrees when we did this activity, we were able to do it outside. Place the wax paper crayon pocket (with that protective surface under it!) in the sun. Use a rock or a hammer to break the crayon pieces inside the pocket. Try not to tear the wax paper.
Once the crayons are broken into smaller pieces, you can arrange them how you want. Or just leave as they fell!
Stand back (in the shade!) and let the sun do its work! Within minutes the crayons started melting and it was completely melted in a little over 5 minutes!
Once melted, bring it inside and let it cool down.
If you are not doing this where it’s a gazillion degrees outside, you can use an iron to melt the crayons. But you want to make sure you use some kind of protective surface both under the wax paper crayon pocket and above it to protect both your table and your iron. You don’t want melted crayon on your iron! If you don’t want to use the iron, you could also put it in the oven for a short time; when the crayons are broken up they melt quickly.
Once your wax paper crayon pocket has cooled you’ll see it already looks like a cool burning bush! You could leave it as is, use a sharpie to draw the branches of the bush, cut away any excess and/or attach to a window so you can see the light really making the bush look like it’s burning!
Make sure to pair this craft with your favorite story about the Burning Bush or our Burning Bush 3 Part Cards so your kiddos understand the importance of this symbol to the Torah story, and the larger book of Exodus!

Finished & Loving It!

I love knowing that not all crafts and activities have to be complicated and time consuming to be meaningful and to fill my kiddos’ creative cups! This is a super short activity with not a ton of child input. And the kids were totally satisfied and engaged with it!

The kids enjoyed searching for the correct color crayons and peeling off the wrappers. Though simple tasks, these are obvious practices for color matching and fine motor skill development which is awesome.

They also liked (really liked haha) using a rock to break up the crayons. I liked using the rocks because they were right there in our backyard, the shape requires the kids to use fine motor skills and pincer grasp, and it’s something atypical for them to use as a working implement.

They didn’t want to touch the crayons as they were in the process of melting because they were worried it would be too hot. I loved touching them and seeing the crayon wax move and spread! We talked about how the different sized chunks melted at different rates.

The kids were fascinated with the Crayon Melt Burning Bush after it cooled down. It’s hard and when you hold it up to the light it really does look so cool!

We decided to attach it to a window to see that burning continue! The kids would definitely be up for doing this again during our Passover unit and it was such a great, hands-on way of supplementing our Burning Bush Torah story learning!