Crafts

What do you do when your pantry is full of pasta and you still have coupons to get more pasta for 30 cents a box? You dye it!

Easy-Peasy Dyed Pasta Tutorial

Materials:

fun-shaped pasta

rubbing alcohol

food coloring

-Place pasta in a plastic bag

-Pour a few tablespoons of rubbing alcohol into the bag (I didn’t measure…neither should you!)

-Place a few drops of food coloring into the bag.

-Close bag and Shake! (If you have a zipper bag your little helper could do this part! My helper was sleeping and I only had really, really, really cheap bags or my special freezer bags to choose from…yes, the bags were so thin I needed to double bag my pasta!)

-Pour your pasta onto a plate with a paper towel and let it dry!

-If your little one becomes impatient, place it outside to speed up the drying time….

Now you have colored pasta for lots of activities….

Sorting by colors
Sorting shapes of pasta (bowties, corkscrews, penne, etc.)
Counting Pasta
Making Patterns
Pasta Art
“Which one doesn’t belong?” (3 of the same, 1 different)

Just a side note: Jonah (2 years old) immediately started sorting without much guidance from Mommy! He sorted by colors (I only gave him 2 colors to start with) and he sorted by shape (I gave him all the same color and he sorted “butterflies” and “horns”…he even named the pasta!)
I used dyed pasta in my kindergarten class all the time for cheap manipulatives for math skills/games. The possibilities are endless!
Now go dye pasta, your kids will think you’re even more awesome than you already are…