How to Learn Colors While Making Rainbow Crayons

Last Updated on March 31, 2026 by Sheryl Cooper

Inside: How to learn colors while making rainbow crayons – easy and fun! We had our preschoolers sort crayons by color before making our own crayons that we then used at our writing table. A creative way to learn the colors of the rainbow!

You’ve got a huge stash of crayons taking up space in the closet. You could do art activities every day using them and never run out. Well, this was us, anyways. I’m sure some well-meaning folks felt that we could never have enough.

Well, did you know you can make your own rainbow crayons? Using bits of crayons you already have?

Why yes, you can make your own rainbow crayons! And we did!

We like to do this during our rainbow theme in March, but you can do it any time of the year. A fun addition to your writing center!

How to Learn Colors While Making Rainbow Crayons

This is a great way to use up old crayons, especially those that are broken!

What you will need:

Crayons
Muffin pan
Silicone liners (or paper liners, or a silicone muffin pan)
Color sorting bowls (optional, but fun for adding some color recognition)

Preparation:

Remove paper from crayons and break them into pieces. Some preschoolers might even want to help with this!

Getting started:

I set our color sorting bowls in rainbow order and invited the preschoolers to sort the crayons and place them in the matching bowls.

Rainbow Crayons - Teaching 2 and 3 Year Olds

They then placed a few of each color into the muffin pan.

I pre-heated the oven to 200 and then set the pan of crayons in it. I realized that this was too low, so I increased it to 250 degrees. It took about 10 minutes. You want to keep a close eye on it and have the stove fan running. If you have different brands of crayons you will notice that some melt faster than others. We had a few chunks in ours after they cooled, but it was fine.

Let them cool thoroughly.

Then pop them out of the molds.