It seemed like it was about time that Baby T got involved in some messy play with L and A. I wanted something that he could have fun with, but that wouldn’t be too bad if he ate some of it. So I decided that cooked spaghetti would be great to try. Of course, after cooking the spaghetti, it had to be completely cold before the kids could play with it.

I wanted to make the spaghetti coloured. I thought that if I cooked the spaghetti first, and then mixed food colouring through it, the food colouring would probably just rub off on the kids when they played with it. So I cooked the spaghetti in four batches, each with a different food colour added to the water during the cooking. This worked quite well, and gave us some lovely, vibrant colours. When I tipped the coloured spaghetti into the colander, I rinsed it thoroughly with cold water to cool it quickly and to wash any excess colour away. Some of the colour still came off on the kids’ skin, but it washed off easily. L and A kept trying to eat bits of it too, even though it was cold.

We started with four separate colours of spaghetti in a tub, but it quickly became mixed together. All of the kids really enjoyed this simple activity, running it through their fingers, squishing it, swirling it around. And because it was a bit sticky, they also enjoyed lifting their hands in the air and wobbling about the spaghetti that was stuck to them. Baby T also enjoyed throwing it, mushing it on his tummy, putting it in his hair, and trying to eat it several times. Overall, he had a ball with it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After a while we added some water to the tub to see what would happen. This made the spaghetti slippery instead of sticky, and provided a new sensory experience for them.

This was a very messy activity, and I was very glad we’d decided to do it outside. The kids came in one by one for a bath each, and I attempted to pick up as much of the spaghetti off the grass as possible. There was plenty of grass mixed up in it by then, so I put it in our compost bin. All the kids have asked to do this sensory activity again soon.