I know that if I had my time over I’d ban all toys that require batteries. Particularly ones made by large American toy companies that have irritating yet catchy tunes that you find yourself singing long after you’ve bestowed said toy upon the nearest frenemy, or charity shop. Entertaining your children doesn’t have to involve masses of mass-produced garishly-coloured toys.
Take pasta, for example. It’s inexpensive, easy to find, and a great learning tool, whether you are at home, grannies house or, as in our case, in a holiday apartment. It doesn’t particularly matter which pasta you use, although the shapes seem to work best with little hands: the longer dried pasta has a habit of breaking into very small pieces far too easily. If you are worried about your children eating dried pasta, you could always cook the pasta first, although I have found that, even if my children do put it in their mouths, they soon spit it out again. Then you can:
- Give them bowls, spoons, cups and so on and let them mix up the pasta, transfer from one bowl to another, work on their spoon control and use their imaginations. It’s best to put all the bits on a large mat or tray to help the tidying process.
- Make a necklace: use a lace, or a child’s needle and some wool, and they can thread the bits of pasta. Use pasta tubes as they will be the easiest to thread. You could also use several different types to create interesting patterns.
- Play dough hedgehog: form a lump of play dough into a hedgehog shape, then stick bits of pasta into the body until you have a hedgehog. You could use salt dough if you wanted to keep the creature for posterity, or give to grandparents. Spaghetti is the best pasta to use for this as it creates excellent spines: it could be a porcupine if you prefer.
- Road trip: use the pasta to make the outline of a road and drive your cars up and down. For smaller children a basic lane is enough, but for bigger kids you could fashion a racetrack, or a town, complete with houses and people.
- Funny faces: draw a basic outline of a face on a piece of paper then use pasta to put features such as hair, eyes and mouth on the face. Then tip all the pieces off and make a new one. This is a great exercise for learning about what facial features are and where they go, and provides an opportunity to talk about emotions, and expressions.
- Pasta bowl or basket: cover an upturned bowl with cling film, then cover with strands of cooked spaghetti (then starch in the pasta should act as glue). Leave to harden overnight, then paint. You could also do this free-hand by making ‘nests’ from cooked spaghetti or linguine. If you want to keep them long-term, you will need to varnish them when thoroughly dry.
- Hide and seek: fill a bowl with small pasta shapes and bury some small toys in it, then get your child to feel around the pasta to find them. You could hide buttons or coins if you don’t have any small toys. Obviously this presents a risk of choking so do keep a close eye on proceedings.
- Kings and Queens: Cut a crown from card, and get your child to stick pasta shapes on it. Once the glue has dried, your child can paint the crown, then staple/stick the two loose ends together to fit your child’s head. You could also spray paint it gold when your child isn’t around for a more regal look.
- Colour factory: dye batches of pasta different colours. Once dry, you could mix up the colours and get your child to separate them out, or start off with bowls of separate colours and leave your child to mix them all up. It’s a great way of helping to teach them about colours.
- Pasta painting: dip dried pasta in paint and use to print shapes onto paper. You could also use leftover cooked spaghetti to ‘paint’ by dipping it into the paint and dragging across the paper. See what shapes you can make using each technique: does the dried pasta make different lines to the cooked? Can you use them in differing ways?
For other crafty ideas, check out these parties.
Candace @ NaturallyEducational says
What a wonderful list! I am definitely going to try some of the ones we haven’t done yet! My kids are fans of dyed pasta for jewelry and crafts and I love the “funny faces” idea! I will definitely share this with facebook fans–thank you for stopping by the Smart Summer Challenge!
Domestic Goddesque says
Thanks Candace: what an awesome site you have. I’ll be making regular visits!
I love these ideas and am saving this for future reference.
Thanks Rose!
Fab ideas! I like the road way one, we’ve never tried that before.
Thanks for linking up to Mad Skills Monday!
Thanks for all the lovely comments: I always struggle to come up with easy play ideas on wet days, so I thought I’d share the love.
Love the spray painted crown idea. Great list of fun with something almost everyone has on hand.
We love to play with pasta! I never thought of using it with play dough. Thanks for the idea!
Thanks for the great ideas. My two year old loves to string dry ziti on pipe cleaners.
Love this! Pasta was always a great source of distraction on those difficult days. We have not played with it for ages. You have inspired me to give it another go. Pasta hedgehogs here we come!
Love this. We make lots of things with macaroni noddles.
I am sharing a link with my Facebook readers. 🙂
Great idea!
Oh my this is a 10 for 1…. I think i really like the pasta hedgehog at the bottom.. looks adorable. We haven’t actually crafted much with pasta yet.. but must soon! If I can stop them from eating it raw!
Thanks for a fab Kids Get Crafty link up!
Maggy
This is so cool! Such a simple idea and so brilliant. I love the noodles in the clay. My kids will love this. Found you on teachmama.com and so glad I did. 🙂