Rainy day activity: Making colored pasta

The past couple of days, Logan has been getting in some of his two year old molars. He hasn't been sleeping well at night, and he hasn't really been napping during the day. Around four every afternoon, he starts to get overtired. Sometimes he gets a bit grumpy; other times he gets extremely hyper.

So I decided to do this project with him to keep him entertained and to stop him from trying to throw his toys down the stairs for the fifth time. I googled "how to dye pasta" and a million websites came up. Everyone of them has the same basic idea. Gather your ingredients. (The rubbing alcohol is not shown, because I was too lazy to go get it. I used the hand sanitizer by the sink instead).

Would you look at this kid? He has no idea what we will be doing, but he can tell it is going to be awesome!

In each plastic baggie, put a couple of drops of food coloring and a couple squirts of hand sanitizer. If you have a kid that might be tempted to sample some of the pasta, you might want to forgo the activity. Or not add the sanitizer. If you chose to add nothing, the dye will come off on the child's hands if they get at all wet. I have also seen versions that use vinegar, so that might be another alternative. Add some pasta and seal the bag. Hand it over to the kiddo to shake to their heart's content.

Next put it on a pan with paper towel over it to dry. The hand sanitizer version dried pretty quickly for me. I believe it was about a half an hour. Then repeat to make as many colors as you so desire.

Finally once it was dry I put it into Logan's sensory bin and let him play with it for a while. Remember, this type of stuff needs to be supervised play. Even while I am supervising, Logan tries to sometimes dump the whole thing out! I actually have another idea for this alphabet pasta, so stay tuned for another post in the future.

This was SIMPLE and fun. I imagine it would work just as well for rice. It lasted just enough time to keep the peanut occupied until dinner time and even for a little while after. I think I might love this small, colorful, alphabet pasta.

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