Here’s a novel way to talk about the different colors of the various planets in our Solar System, while making a neat piece of art. Kids are sure to love this craft because anything involving melted crayons is just cool.

We only had two paper plates, so decided to make a blue and green one for Earth and a orange and yellow one for Jupiter.

I cut the wrappers from jumbo crayons, and first we tried making small pieces by grating them on the large holes of a grater.

This didn’t work that well, so I ended up chopping the crayons with a knife instead. Arrange the pieces as you want them to look on each paper plate, then begin microwaving at about 1 minute intervals until the wax melts (you may need less time, depending how thick your crayon pieces are).

As they start to melt, swirl the colors into the design you want with a toothpick. Our Earth came out pretty neat!

The orange and yellow, unfortunately, mostly just blurred together for Jupiter, but we added next textured lines with a toothpick.

Without even a single prompt, Travis realized, “Mom, we need the giant red spot!”. Simply add pieces of red crayon to one portion of your plate for that.

If you have enough plates and crayons, go ahead and make all eight planets!