On rainy days, I often have to use every creative bone in my body to come up with new & exciting indoor activities for my active toddler. On our last “Rain Day”, I rummaged around my house for some supplies I had on hand, thought back to my early-80′s kindergarten craft room days and came up with a fun activity we could do together – pasta necklaces!
This DIY pasta necklace craft is a cheap and easy activity for children ages 2 and up. My toddler loved to see her “macaronies” (as she lovingly calls them) change colour in the food colouring. I helped her string them, and she wore her necklace proudly and made one for her grandma. It was an hour of entertainment for both of us!
DIY Pasta Necklace
Supplies:
- Food colouring (we used red, green and blue and we mixed red & blue to make purple – a fun colour mixing lesson in itself!)
- dry pasta (we used macaroni, but pasta with larger, straight holes for threading would be better)
- string or yarn
- yarn needle (if the holes on the pasta are small)
Directions:
- Fill four or more mugs with approximately one cup of water and add about 10 drops of food colouring to each – an older toddler can add the food colouring themselves. Let your toddler experiment with different colour mixes!
- Have your child drop several pieces of pasta in each cup, explaining to them how the food colouring will change the pasta different colours. Let your toddler stir the pasta in the mugs periodically and scoop it out with a spoon every now and then to watch the transformation.
- After about 15 minutes (or longer if your toddler has the patience and/or wants brighter coloured pasta), scoop the pasta out of the cups with a slotted spoon onto paper towel to dry. As your toddler to count the pasta pieces as they dry or play with them and feel how they change in texture.
- Once the noodles are dry, cut a piece of string the length that you want the necklace, tie a knot in one end, and thread the pasta pieces onto the string. If your child is old enough, talk about making special patterns with the different colours. (We had to use a yarn needle on the end of our string because we had to poke our macaroni noodles in the center to thread the string through because the hole was too small.)
- Have your toddler make one for herself, and one for a friend!
Christina Dennis is a mommy to two adorable girls, a wife to one adorable husband, and they live on an acreage in a teeny cottage west of Edmonton. She is the owner and designer behind indie baby fashion label, Golly Gee Baby, and (instead of cleaning her house) she blogs about her craft-geek adventures at www.thediymommy.com.
