Nature Craft for Kids: Walnut Candles

I am a candle-loving mama. Given that I am also a craft-loving mama it is a shock that I had not thought of this sooner! We have made candles before, but they were always SO big, requiring a ton of wax, and therefore quite expensive. But these little gems solved that dilemma, and added in some little hand strengthening too.

My little ones and I go to our local Waldorf school once a week. We love it. One of the activities we did recently at our school were Walnut Candles. We loved them so much that we made more when we got home. And the next day. And some the following week. And I have no plans on being done either!

To make these little walnut candles we originally used beeswax. But to cut down on cost, and to make it even more fun for my kids, we made these candles with crayons and they turned out lovely too.

For these walnut candles you need walnuts (no surprise there), wax (either beeswax, crayons or an old candle will work), and a wick.

To begin, break the walnuts in half. We used a nut cracker, and had plenty of walnuts available. This is a great activity for strngthening hand muscles. It was much too hard for my 2-year old to do on his own, but my 4-year old could manage once he got the hang of it.

While there is a method for crunching the walnuts so they break neatly in half, we never really got the hang of it. More or less we would simply crunch them kind of gently and attempt to salvage half of the walnut shell for the shell of the candle.

We use about 20 walnuts per time (lots of hand strengthening crunching time) and wind up with about 10 candles or so.

Next, melt the wax. If you are using crayons, simply peel the paper off, break into pieces, and melt slowly either in the microwave or on the stove stirring often. Beeswax, or old candle wax, can be melted the same way.

Once the wax is melted, cut the wick into small pieces—about one inch long or so. Coat the wick in beeswax and allow to dry. It dries very fast.

Stick the wax covered wick to the bottom of the walnut shell. Then simply pour the wax in the shell, almost all of the way.

And that is all there is to it! These little candles float in water (which is actually a pretty good idea, as the shell could eventually catch on fire).

These candles are not really made to burn for long periods of time, they are really just for fun and decoration. But they are very cute!

I think we will make a bunch of these in different crayon colours to decorate our snow. A nice way to add a little colour to our white winter days!