100 Days of School!

Last Monday, Aiden came home with TWO project assignments. The first (due the following Monday) was the 100-Days-of-School project. They ask the kids to collect 100 "somethings" that you might have laying around the house and present the collection in a "creative" way.

[Why they couldn't give us
a little more than a single week
to come up with this creative project,
I don't know. But I digress.]

Thankfully, I'd seen some ideas for 100-day projects on Pinterest and showed them to Aiden. He loved this idea of collecting crayons (and I loved it because I knew we had at least 100 crayons on hand). We saw them presented in a variety of creative ways, but we both really liked this idea at Kitchen Advenures: http://www.52kitchenadventures.com/2011/09/12/melted-crayon-art-tutorial/.

We decided to switch it up a bit, though, so our project looks a little different (and "different is good").

After counting out 100 crayons, we sorted them into two piles and organized them by shade. Then we attached 50 to two edges of a 20x16 canvas. I attached ribbon to avoid having small fingers remove any of the crayons once they arrive at school.

We covered one side of the canvas with foil and a piece of painter's tape to protect one set of crayons from being melted on while melting the first set.

One side melted and ready to melt side two!

While the crayons melted in a more liquid fashion than expected, Aiden loved the outcome (and I think it's pretty neat, too!). He couldn't keep his fingers off the melted trails of crayon while we took pictures!

How is your school celebrating 100 days?