I cooked some value spaghetti and used my food colourings to make blue, pink, yellow, green and purple. I didn't want to use them that same day, though, as I wanted the colouring to dry a little so the kids weren't coloured in a rainbow of food colouring. however this may have been my downfall as when I did get the spaghetti out some of it had gone a little slimy and I had to throw most of the blue away. Never mind.
At ten months J has no inhibitions and dived right in.
H is quite a neat freak so she got quite angry at this and tried to clear it all up. I took the chance to show H that sometimes a mess is ok. I encouraged her to get her hands into the spaghetti and move it around, and then let her join in J's pasta throwing.
She had fun picking it up and putting it back in the table too, although she couldn't beat J's throwing speed and soon it was everywhere!
I was surprised that neither of them tried to eat the pasta, although if they had done it would have been perfectly safe for them, which is why this is great for smaller ones. None of the food colouring came off onto their hands either, which is a problem we've had with food colouring activities before - J has had blue hands for several days when, despite much scrubbing, it refused to budge!
On the whole this was a fun activity but it didn't seem to keep them entertained for very long. I was a little disappointed as I had such high hopes, but I think maybe adding some small world creatures would maybe encourage a little more interaction. I have recently bought some figures for this kind of play so keep your eyes peeled for those to feature!
