Broken Crayon Activities: Easy Kids Play Ideas

Repurposed Play Part 4: Broken Crayons

November 15, 2021

Brittany McKnight, MS OTR/L

Welcome back to repurposed play where we take ordinary household items and repurpose them into meaningful developmental toys and play strategies. In this installment, we have compiled a list of fun activities that use one of the most common and widely trashed items in households with kids. Today, we will be repurposing… broken crayons!

Broken Crayon Play-Doh

This is a wonderful way to up-cycle broken crayons and engage your kids in a multi-step craft. Find this activity here .

Crayon Floam Dough

Similar to the play-doh but adding a little more of a sensory tactile component to the fun! Find it here.

Color Sorting Activity

This is more of a hands-off and cost saving approach to teach our little ones how to identify and organize colors. Click here for this activity.

Melted Crayon Dot Art

This one is my personal favorite on the list for our bigger kiddos. This activity teaches them fire safety awareness, fine motor skills, and temperature awareness, while creating really cool dot art with the crayon wax. You’ll definitely want adult supervision for this activity. Find it here.

Broken Crayon Coloring

It’s always good to remember that although the crayons are broken, they can still make beautiful art. Plus, from the perspective of an OT, using shorter crayons really addresses the pincer grasp needed to evolve into the desired handwriting grasp for the future.

We hope you enjoy these activities! As always, if you have any questions or concerns about your child’s development, our therapists would love to help. Visit our website at hoggtherapy.com or give us a call at 859-353-3666.

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The Power of Coloring

June 1, 2026

Coloring is more than just a fun activity, it is a powerful tool therapists use to help children build important developmental skills while keeping therapy engaging and playful. Coloring can support communication, movement, coordination, focus, and creativity all at the same time. Best of all, children often do not even realize how much they are learning because they are having fun! We recently hosted a coloring contest in our clinics, and the kiddos had so much fun showing their creativity! At the end of this post, we've included two coloring page designs that you can download, print, and color at home or on the go!