Pasta Threading

A while ago Mr 3 & I dyed some pasta. It was a fun activity on it's own, sorting the pasta into piles, choosing the colours, adding the food colouring to water & mixing the primary colours to get our green & purple & orange. 

I'd quite forgotten about the 2 buckets of colored pasta I had tucked away, until today, when it was simply too hot for outside play. I had to come up with something cool..... so pasta threading it was. Not long ago, I accidentally ordered this plastic rope thread from officeworks online (thinking it was ribbon) so I used that as our thread, I sticky taped a half sized skewer to the top of the plastic string and that was our threading needle. It was fun, as well as educational.We counted, sorted and picked out colours. It also took a lot of concentration & some fine motor skills, for a little person. 

After a while, N accidentally stepped on one of the prices of pasta. It crushed underneath his foot, making the most delicious crunching sound.... I let him stomp on a few more before the activity turned back to threading. 

Dying pasta:

1 packet of penne style pasta

Various food dyes

Mix 1ltre water with 1-2 teaspoons of food colouring (cold water is fine) add pasta, leave for a couple of minutes, remove with a slotted spoon and leave to dry overnight on paper. 

You can used the pasta for threading, gluing or shakers or even pretend kitchen play.

Happy playing!