Rainbow pasta

This is a great thing to make once and then keep in a jar and bring out whenever the kids are bored or want something slightly different to do. Because the pasta is not cooked it will keep for ages - we've had ours well over a year now.

To make it, use a similar process to the rainbow rice (see here). Put the pasta in a ziploc bag, add some food colouring and a small bit of vinegar and shake like crazy until the colour is evenly distributed. Then spread out on a covered baking tray to dry and make the next colour. 

So how do we play with it? There are so many things you can do (and your kids will probably invent a few games of their own!) but here are a few things we've enjoyed doing over the last year:

Counting

Super simple but a nice way to practice counting. D tends to count a pile out to Iz, who then counts it back to him :)

Making necklaces (or other miscellaneous objects!)

Add some pipe cleaners or ribbon and you can make bracelets, necklaces, crowns, belts... Good for manual dexterity/manipulation as well as dressing up fun!

I think Mr MFDS had a lot of fun making this creation!

Threading on spaghetti

Use a lump of playdough as the stand and get threading. D made a rainbow tower, Iz kept breaking her spaghetti as she was too rough with it and so ended up improvising and making a hedgehog!

Sorting colours

This was great for D last year and Iz is now the perfect age. You can get them to sort the colours, identify the colours or pick ones based on what colour you say.

Building towers freestyle

Self-explanatory. The highest we've managed to build so far is 12 pieces high :)

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What's nice about this toy is that I'm happy for them to get the bottle out by themselves and they feel so grown up unscrewing the lid and deciding how many pieces to take out (although who am I kidding - if it's Iz in charge then it's usually the whole lot!). Definitely worth the initial 20 minutes prep time!