Crafts for kids – make your own colored pasta

Pasta and kids crafts seem to go hand in hand.  But macaroni noodles only get you so far before your sanity needs you to branch out and try something different (or maybe that’s just me?)  Dying pasta bright colors is a great way to spice up your “noodle craft” activities!

We focused on playing with the noodles themselves today, which I’ll describe more below.  But once Leah looses interest in sorting and counting games, you better believe these bright little guys will be used for some awesome crafts!

Make your own colored pasta

It’s really easy to do!  All you need is white vinegar, food coloring and pasta.  I’ve also seen this done with rubbing alcohol too, but vinegar seemed a lot less toxic to me.

You can check out Teaching Tiny Tots and Happy Hooligans for more dyed pasta ideas.

I used 6 different shapes of pasta:

Take 1 tsp of vinegar and put it into a zip lock bag.  I know it doesn’t sound like much, but it goes way further than you think.  Add 20 drops of food colouring to get a nice strong color:

Add about 1/2 cup to 3/4 cup of uncooked pasta noodles to the bag:

And give it a good shake:

Let the bags sit for about 10 minutes, give them another shake and then let them sit for another 10 minutes:

Pour the pasta onto waxed paper or parchment paper to let them dry:

We got busy with other things and left the noodles for 4 hours and they were completely dry by the time we got back to them.

I was shocked, but Leah LOVED this.  She loved helping me dye the pasta them, but she also loved playing with the colored noodles!

We did sorting activities:

Matching activities:

Pattern activities:

Counting activities:

Sequence activities:

And of course, she loved picking them up in handfuls and putting them into piles.  They really are a neat little tactile experience.

And when you think about how to use them for crafts, there are so many more possibilities!

I didn’t think this would be so much of a hit, but it worked out wonderfully for my 3 year old.  She loved making it, and she loved playing with it, which probably makes this the best toddler activity we’ve done so far!

Source : onelittleproject.com
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