Pasta & Playdough Rainbow

A wonderful kids activity with a big dose of fine motor exercise. All while building a happy rainbow with pasta, playdough and pipe cleaners. Rainbow activities for kids are fun and makes everyone happy, right? Not to mention they are the perfect St.Patrick’s Day activity for kids. So when all these happy activities turn into a fabulous fine motor activity and a color matching, wouldn’t you be excited? I was! Materials **

• Play-Doh Rainbow Starter Pack
• Chenille Stems
• Penne
• AmeriColor Food Color { our favorite}

How to prep this rainbow fine motor activity

Set out rainbow colored play dough { we love the starter pack linked in the materials section}, pipe cleaners in all the rainbow colors and colored pasta. I would set up the materials on a large clear tray or inside a clear storage container. We found that dividing the playdough from one canister into two was perfect for this fine motor activity. For the pasta, I think penne pasta would have been a better choice than rotini because penne is lighter and you don’t have to do a lot of balancing { which may be great for an older child - to find the perfect spot for the playdough balls so that the structure is stable and doesn’t topple} Here is the tutorial for coloring pasta. Explain to your child that you are going to arrange the play dough in rainbow order and start poking the pipe cleaners through the play dough while color matching.

The idea is to have your little one { great for 3+ kids}to first have them color match all the pipe cleaners to the rainbow playdough. Using their fine motor skills they will be gently pressing one end of the pipe cleaner into the playdough of the matching color. This will be a good chance to talk more about the rainbow colors. Then the children will thread the pasta onto he pipe cleaners creating pipe cleaner- pasta towers. As you can see below my daughter chose a different route and ended up lacing. But for younger children creating the pasta towers first will be better and effective and more importantly will lessen a lot of frustration. Once they create the pipe cleaner- pasta towers the child will bend the pipe cleaner and and poke the other end of the pipe cleaner on to the corresponding playdough on the other side forming an arch. We found that 5-6 rotini pasta is good enough to make a stable rainbow. My child pressed the first and the last pasta into the playdough for extra stability. { More engineering and building activities here} I love it when the kids make their own discoveries through trial and errors and hands -on learning activities. There you have it - a simple fine motor activity with just playdough, pasta and pipe cleaners.

Thanks for reading