Materials
- Playdoh
- spaghetti noodles
- other noodles or cheerios for lacing
Directions
- Cover your surface with wax paper.
- Stick a spaghetti noodle upright in a chunk of play dough.
- Use it to string other noodles with a circular shape or cheerios.
- B had a lot of fun with this and it is a great way for young kids to practice fine motor control. As you can see we got carried away and made a lot of these.
Other Ideas
We also used this for working with patterns (noodle, cheerio, noodle, cheerio).
Another idea is to make a line of noodles like we did and work from left to right and each time just add one more noodle. On the first one, add one noodle. The second spot gets two noodles. Continue until you get to five or ten depending on the age of your child.
Set up two noodle towers for lacing and offer two different types of noodles for threading. Challenge your preschooler to sort the noodles. All of one type of noodle goes on one tower and the other type of noodle on the other tower.
Learning Activities with Pasta
Colorful spaghetti can be made in just a few simple steps with things you already have at home. Check out our recipe for how to dye pasta.
Use shoe laces and noodles to make pasta necklaces. The noodles are like beads. Penne noodles are easy for little hands to hold onto or try wagon wheel pasta for more of a decorative bead.
Different kinds of pastas are a great base for a sensory table. Stores even carry different pasta shapes for every holiday that would be fun to use during sensory play. If you want to add different textures, cook some of the noodles and add them to the sensory bin.
Older kids can use this activity idea to practice addition facts. 3 noodles plus 1 more noodle equals 4 noodles.
Lace noodles onto pipe cleaners to make a noodle bracelet. Ditali pasta is a smaller size (almost like a bead) that can add an extra challenge.
Use lasagna noodles as a canvas! Here are 6 more ideas for how to use the painted lasagna noodles.
Make letters with cooked spaghetti noodles. This was a fun activity to try while we were waiting for dinner to be done.
Make a pasta mosaic piece of art. Use different types of pasta. Glue them onto thick paper. Let the glue dry. Then, add paint to make the design more colorful.
There’s an old Italian myth that pasta is cooked just right when you throw it at the wall and it sticks. I think that has been proven to not be true, but your kids don’t need to know that. Have a noodle experiment. What will noodles stick to? Set aside a small bowl of noodles and send the kids outside to see if the noodles stick to the fence or a tree. The noodles will dry up overnight and aren’t a mess to clean up.
Make a noodle craft. All you need is cardboard, glue, noodles, and paint. This can be turned into a magnet or an ornament. So fun!
Play Dough Noodle Threading Activity - hands on : as we grow
Monday 28th of October 2013
[…] link up your favorite fine motor skills activity. Nicole [The Activity Mom] linked up her Spaghetti Noodle Lacing activity that caught my […]
Play Dough Noodle Threading Activity - hands on : as we grow
Monday 28th of October 2013
[…] link up your favorite fine motor skills activity. Nicole [The Activity Mom] linked up her Spaghetti Noodle Lacing activity that caught my […]
Kayla Rice
Tuesday 4th of September 2012
Doing it now. Love this idea.
Kristy
Friday 9th of December 2011
This looks so fun for a toddler. I've got to pin it so I remember to do it! Also shared it on my FB page. Thanks!
The Monko
Friday 9th of December 2011
I love this idea. I think in our house there might be quite a lot of broken spaghetti sticks but i'm going to give this a go anyway.