Homemade Bath Crayons

As a frugal parent, I could never justify spending the money on kids tub crayons; I mean, they basically use them once and then they're garbage if they are even left. And with 3 rough boys, I would have to buy more than 1 package at a time. So this project creates very cheap bath crayons that a parent can make on their own or a child can easily help to make.  If your child helps you, then you get 2 things to occupy your kid - one time to make the soap and another time to play in the tub for awhile drawing up a storm! A child can easily grate some soap, add food coloring, add water, pack the soap into molds (like playing in the sand) , and put them into the freezer. Hopefully, if they help, they can forget about the crayons for a few days while they properly dry out (or they will crumble when they try to write with them).

1 bar of soap (something simple like ivory)
spray vegetable oil
food coloring.
a grater
water
ice cube tray or small mold


1. Lightly Spray an ice cube tray or similar mold with vegetable oil spray
2. Using the smallest holes on your grater, grate an entire bar of soap.

3. Add 15 drops of food coloring to the soap.

4. Add 2 tablespoons of warm/hot water to the soap. Stir an add more water a teaspoon at a time until it looks like a thick dough. (try not to overdo the water as it will take much longer to dry).

5. Press the mixture into your mold of choice.

6. Freeze for 30-45 minutes.
7. Pop out the crayons and let them dry for a minimum of 2 days.

Kitchen Fireworks - 2 ways

These are both 2 easy things to do with the kids. 

We all have the ingredients on hand too!

Kitchen Fireworks #1

1. Pour  about 2 cups milk (the more fat the better) into a cake pan or baking dish.
2. Scatter numerous drops of food coloring in several different spots in the milk.
3. Squeeze some dish washing detergent into the milk, mainly near the food coloring drops.
4. Watch the "firework display" in the pan. The "fireworks" are the result of the liquid dish washing detergent separating the fat in the milk, thus causing it to move.
5. Supposedly when the "show" starts to die-down, you can add more liquid detergent to the milk and it will start over again. I didnt find this the case but maybe we did something wrong. It was cool to see once though!

Kitchen Fireworks #2
(these were WAY more impressive!)

1. Pour water into a clear glass leaving roughly an inch of space at the top of the glass. Water must be room temperature so either: let it sit out a bit -or- make it room temperature from the faucet.
2. In another cup, add about 3 tablespoons of vegetable oil. Then add 1 or 2 drops of the each (red, yellow & blue) food coloring to the oil.
3. Using a fork, carefully stir the vegetable oil and food coloring just enough to break up the drops. (only slightly stir the mix so you will have a variety of large and small beads).
4. Pour the vegetable oil mix slowly into the glass of water. In around 30 seconds, the beads of color will shoot through the vegetable oil making small streamers and tiny fireworks!!

2nd time we used Red, Yellow & Blue and this mug-cup and it worked better!