Candle Rolling

To go along with the leprechaun rainbow theme for St. Patrick's Day, we opened up this candle rolling kit that Grandmother C. found at Magic Cabin (my new favorite place to shop!). I love the rainbow of colors that the beeswax sheets come in.



Nicholas decided to make his first candle out of green beeswax in honor of St. Patrick's Day and he decided to make it a tapered candle. So we lined up the tapered candle template on the sheet of beeswax and scored it...



...and cut it.



Next we cut a piece of wick to fit our candle with an extra inch for lighting. Then Nicholas started the rolling process by crimping one side of beeswax over the wick.



Then he rolled the rest of the beeswax over the wick until he had a finished candle.





I lit the candle for him. At first the flame was only burning the wick so it was a very small flame. But as the flame hit the first drop of melted wax, it suddenly burst into a real flame and Nicholas' eyes popped with surprise. Then he just got more excited as he saw his own candle burning "like a real candle".





Of course, my boy must play so then he moved on to seeing how many different ways he could blow out his candle!



Even Daddy had to get in on this action. He showed Nicholas two tricks with the candle flame. First, he showed Nicholas how to light a match without touching it to a flame. The chemicals in a match head will start to liquefy as they heat up from being held just above the flame. The match head seems to start sweating and then it ignites. Cool! Then he showed Nicholas how the smoke from an extinguished candle contains flammable chemicals and will re-ignite the match in a burst of flames without ever touching it.



Nicholas is really proud of making his first candle. Sure, someday we'll move on to actually melting wax and pouring it into molds. But I'm not ready to deal with melted wax and a busy 5 year old so for now I love the simplicity of rolling beeswax sheets into candles...and so does Nicholas!

No comments:

Post a Comment