Crayon Drawing on a Warm Surface

I got the idea to use wax crayons on a warm surface from the book
The Instant Curriculum, Revised: Over 750 Developmentally Appropriate Learning Activities for Busy Teachers of Young Children Great book by the way, tons of activities I am excited about trying.

We gave this activity a go last Wednesday when I was babysitting another preschooler. First we read a few books about Fall and did a couple worksheets printed from KidSparkz Thanks for sharing this website Val, I will be using a lot of these awesome free printouts!

While the girls were occupied with their Autumn pattern worksheets, I set up an electric griddle on warm, put about 4 layers of newspaper, and then a piece of brown grocery bag. I then drew tree shapes (using a white crayon, neat effect on the brown paper), with the idea that the girls could then decorate their trees with Autumn leaf colors.

Zara was nervous about being so close to the griddle, not surprising since we are always warning her about the danger, so I gave her a hot pad to put over her non-drawing hand. For those who may be concerned, with the layers of paper the surface was only a tad warm, no where near hot enough to burn. Actually I think the activity would work much better with the drawing surface being a bit warmer allowing the wax to melt more. Zara did think it was cool how smooth drawing felt compared to usual crayon drawing.

This is about all she wanted to do, she colored it some more at the table. I gave Zara's friend a turn and then we talked about what the warmth did to the crayons as they were drawing. Overall, I think this was a neat experiment and I will for sure repeat it in a year or so.