Can you believe it is that time of year again? We sure hope you had an amazing start to your school year! Sometimes, the transition from summer into the school routine can be hard. This activity is designed to help children put a positive swing on their mindset about going to school and to remind them that school is not just a wonderful place to learn but to also create! This hands-on craft incorporates important skills such as cutting, writing, identifying shapes, and practice using a ruler by simply designing their own personalized crayon box—both a fun and familiar shape that will get children
excited for the upcoming school year.
This activity is designed for school-aged children
but is also great for younger children with caregiver supervision.
Supplies:
-poster board (any size, any color)
-construction paper (one color for each letter of your name)
-black marker
-scissors
-ruler
-glue
-decorations (stickers, bulletin board paper, colored markers, sparkles, etc.)
Instructions:
Welcome everyone! Let’s start making the personalized crayon box! Gather all the necessary supplies and pull up a chair to a table or hard surface of your choice.
Step 1: First, trace the very outside of the poster board with the black marker. For the bottom and two side edges, take your time and trace along the straight edges as close as you can! For the top of the poster board, instead of following the straight edge exactly, draw a slight curved line from corner to corner.
Step 2: Using your scissors, cut along the curved line you just drew to get rid of those sharp edges because we want the top of the crayon box to be rounded!
Step 3: Next, take out your ruler and set it down on the poster board about 2/3 away from the bottom, or in other words, little over the half-way point of the poster board. Now, draw a line going straight across from one side to the other with the marker. Great job!
Step 4: Next, we are going draw a line for you to write your name on! Using your ruler again, place it a little below the line you just drew and center it in the middle. The line you want to make needs to be long enough that you will be able to write your first name! Using your marker, draw a straight line across and stop when it is long enough.
Step 5: Now, at the end of the line you just drew, write an apostrophe and a “s”. It should look like this: ’S. Excellent work!
Step 6: Next, write your name on the line you just drew in your best handwriting! ☺
Step 7: Once you have finished writing your name, write the words “Crayon Box” below, in any way you would like to. Feel free to have fun and decorate this part of the poster board. For this example, we decorated ours with polka-dots!
Step 8: Now, we are going to transition into making our crayons! Set aside the poster board and pull out your sheets of construction paper, there should be one sheet for every letter that is in your name. For this example, there is 6 sheets of paper for the name “Taylor”.
Step 9: Then, stack all of the sheets on top of each other and fold them in half, “hotdog” style.
Step 10: Next, take your scissors and cut along the folded line. If the stack is too thick to cut all at once, you can cut out one at a time instead. Set aside half of those papers to use; the other half can be thrown away or used for another craft some other day!
Helpful Tip: if you have a longer name (8-10 letters), repeat step 10 to make your crayons small enough that they will fit on the poster board.
Step 11: Now, we need to make the crayons a bit skinnier! Using the sheets, you just cut out, stack all of the sheets on top of each other again. Make another “hotdog” style fold, but this time, only fold 1 inch of the paper over.
Step 12: Next, take your scissors and cut along the folded line.
Step 13: Great work! The last cut we need to make is what gives these sheets of paper the look of a crayon. Holding your scissors at a diagonal angle, cut off the top two corners of the sheets. Continue cutting off strips of the corner until both sides just about meet in the middle. You should have a triangle-like shape in the end.
Step 14: Now, restack the crayons on top of each other. What we need to do next is make these crayons shorter.
Place your ruler a few inches above the bottom of the sheet of paper to where it would
make a “square” shape.
Draw a line straight across with your marker to make the square. Now, using your scissors, cut on that line you just drew. Remember, if the stack is too thick, you can repeat this step and cut out a square on each sheet of paper! Ta-da! Now you have your crayons!
Step 15: Next, we are going to draw some features on the crayons. Lay out one of your crayon on the table or hard surface in front of you. Using your sharpie, start by drawing a line straight across the crayon, right below the triangle shape at the top, corner to corner. Next, draw three more lines just below the one you just drew! Follow the instructions above and do the same for each crayon you made ☺ Take a look at our example in case you have any questions!
Step 16: Now that you have finished drawing the lines on, arrange all the crayons out in front of you in the color order you would like them to be.
Step 17: Next, underneath the lines, write one letter of your name on each crayon.
Step 18: The next step is to glue down the crayons onto the poster board! Arrange the crayons in order of your name and place them at the top of the crayon box, sitting on the big line you drew in the beginning, and glue the crayons down one at a time (your crayons may need to overlap which is totally okay!).
Step 19: Lastly, it is time to decorate the crayon box! For this example, we used blue “border” paper (which you often see on your teacher’s bulletin boards) and the extra strips of paper that we cut off earlier. You can cut them to even smaller pieces to make it look like confetti and glue them down.
However, you can add whatever you would like—stickers, drawings, glitter, stamps,
etc.! Have fun with it and make it your own ☺