Bring at home without school or playdates has impacted the youngest person in our house, the most. Without preschool, and playdates, we’ve had to get creative and pull out some of the long-lost kids activities that we did at the time when we only had one kid to entertain.
Today’s activity is a throwback to one of the regular activities that we did when our ten year old was a toddler: making coloured pasta beads for her to string on laces, again and again. We used the beads for stringing, we used the beads for counting, we used the beads for sorting, they’re incredibly versatile and you can make a full set in just a few minutes, for just a few dollars.
You’ll need:
- pasta with holes for lacing
Note: depending on the age of your toddler, and their lacing ability, you can use penne, larger pasta noodles, or even smaller noodles (we found some fun farm-animal shaped pasta at The Italian Centre). - food colouring
- hand sanitizer with alcohol
How to Make Colourful Pasta Beads
- Sort the beads into four small sized sandwich Ziploc bags and leave them open. This is a great part for toddlers to help with.
- Drop approximately twelve drops of food colouring into each bag, with one squirt of hand sanitizer, or a half teaspoon of alcohol (we had hand sanitizer on hand, so that’s what we used)
- Seal the bag, removing as much as air as you can from the bag before squishing around the color.
- Open the bag, and remove the pasta, and dry it on a baking rack or parchment paper
- Let the pasta beads dry completely before using
Enjoy!