The Chaos and the Clutter

Remember the days of making macaroni necklaces at school to present to your mom for Mother’s Day? Coloured pasta is just as fun now as it was back then! Once you learn how to dye noodles, you can use them for sensory play or a variety of other activities with kids. In our house, we do a lot of sensory play. I keep a variety of materials on hand for this including dyed noodles and dyed rice. Read our instructions on how to dye rice.

How to Dye Noodles:

Supplies needed:

• macaroni noodles (or other small noodle)
• food colouring*
• rubbing alcohol or white vinegar
• plastic resealable sandwich bags (you’ll need one for each colour that you want to make
• paper towel lined baking tray

*A note about the food colouring: You can use regular food colouring or for more vibrant colours, you can use Wilton food gel.

Directions:

1. Add 1 cup of dry noodles to each zipper bag. Do not seal the bags yet.
2. Pour 1 Tbsp. rubbing alcohol or 2 tsp. vinegar into each bag.
3. Into each bag, drop 10-20 drops of one colour of food colouring.
4. Seal the bag well.
5. Mix the noodles around in the bag by moving with your hands and shaking gently until they are is evenly coloured.
6. Open the bags and pour each colour of macaroni (or other noodle shape) onto a tray to dry.
7. Check on the macaroni noodles during the drying process and stir around to ensure the noodles are drying properly. It can take several hours for them to dry. I usually leave mine overnight to be sure.
8. The coloured noodles are now ready to be used in sensory play.
9. When not in use, store your dyed pasta in an airtight container or sealed bag. 

You can now use your brightly coloured noodles for art activities, preschool crafts, stringing onto yarn to make a necklace, or all kinds of sensory play. Dyed noodles make a great sensory bin filler or can be used in sensory bags or sensory bottles. You can make a simple sensory bottle by filling an empty bottle with coloured noodles or you can make an I-Spy type bottle by “hiding” other items in among the noodles for kids to find. 

This method can be used to dye pasta of any shape. For larger noodles, you may find that you need slightly more food colouring. I find that you get the best colour results from using small pastas such as orzo, mini shells, Alphabet noodles, and macaroni. 

Some schools don’t allow food to be used in classrooms for play. If that’s the case, we also have a list of non-food sensory bin fillers.

Looking for other sensory play recipes to create fun options for your kids? Join us for a free five day email series on Sensory Activities and Solutions and get a free sample of our Sensory Play Recipes eBook.

You may also want to read:

How to Dye Rice for Sensory Play

Frog Sensory Bin with Dyed Pasta

Sensory Bin Fillers and Tools

This is one of those easy to set up activities that packs in a lot of learning. Lego Letters playdough activity combines fine motor, sensory, and letter recognition practise into one simple preschool activity.

Sensory Lego Alphabet Activity: 

Supplies needed:

• Lego bricks in a variety of lengths
• playdough (store bought or you can use homemade playdough)
• rolling pin, toy rolling pin, or can to roll the dough with
• Scrabble tiles or magnetic alphabet shapes

Directions:

1. Make the playdough into a ball and roll it out.
2. Set out a selection of Lego bricks.
3. Select several letters to practice.
4. Choose one letter to start. Encourage your child to say the letter, then stamp the shape of the letter using Legos. 
5. After your child completes one letter, have them roll the playdough smoothly again and try to recreate another letter.

It can be helpful to start this activity with letters your child is most familiar with such as the letter their first name starts with. 

With curved letters, it can be best to use smaller Lego pieces.Be sure to allow your child to come up with their own way to stamp the letter in the playdough. As long as they get the basic shape of the letter, there is no “right” or “wrong” way to create it. It can be tempting to step in and show them and you may need to show them how to do one as an example, but once they get the idea, step back and allow them to create. 

Ways to expand this activity:

1. Talk to the child about what the sound of that letter is and have them see if they can think of words that have that letter as their beginning sound.
2. Numbers or shapes can be stamped into the playdough.
3. Sing the alphabet song.
4. Set out books about the alphabet.

Chicka Chicka Boom BoomDr. Seuss’s ABCAnimalia (MY PERSONAL FAVOURITE!)Touch and Trace ABC Board BookA is for Apple (Kids Trace-and-Flip)The Handmade AlphabetEating the AlphabetM Is For Maple: A Canadian Alphabet

You may be interested in some of our other preschool learning ideas:

Alphabet Sensory Bin

Thankfulness Bingo Style Game

Rainbow Playdough Counting and Colours Game