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! 

Fruit and veggie stamping

I asked Mr 3 what he wanted to do the other day and he gleefully yelled "painting!!!!!" as he yahooed around my ankles in the kitchen. Painting it was. Instead of the usual paintbrush painting we do, I thought we would do some fruit & veg stamping. I remember doing it at preschool when I was a kid... many moons ago now!!!

I had apples & potatoes to spare, so I sliced an apple in half and cut some shapes out of potato slices with tiny cookie cutters. I used some small skewers as handles and poked them in the backs of the apples & spuds. I just used acrylic paints squirted on some cardboard and stood back... N dipped the stamps in and pressed onto paper, he also used paintbrushes to paint the bottoms.

Much fun was had. 

We also have some great sheets of homemade wrapping paper now. 

Happy playing.