Dear Reader;
I am so giddy at how well these little mini lessons are going! I always told myself that “someday,” I’d do fun letter activities but I just never felt good enough or like I had the time to do such fun things. But I made a goal to spend more time with my kids, and then I made the goal to focus on letters. And it’s been so rewarding.
This activity was about the /s/ sound. And squishy slimy rainbow-colored spaghetti was just so fun to make! My kids wished I would have let them help, but I was the mean mom that did not feel like cleaning up food-colored clothes or kids or carpet.
To make rainbow spaghetti, just cook the spaghetti to done, add 20 drops of coloring and 2 tbs of water into a sandwich bag. mix it up and then add some spaghetti into the bag. It was about 2 pinches full of spaghetti, but really it’ll depend on how much spaghetti you cook.
- For red, I simply did 20 drops of red.
- For orange, I did 15 drops of yellow and 5 of red (and I could have favored the yellow even more than I did.
- For yellow, it was easy peasy. 20 drops of yellow.
- For green, I did 12 drops of neon green, and 3 drops of true green. it was such a pretty color!
- For blue I did 15 drops of my cyan from the neon set and 5 drops of straight blue.
- Purple was made by 12 drops of the neon purple, 5 drops blue, and 3 drops red. Honestly it was dark, so maybe it doesn’t need all 20 drops?
- I had extra spaghetti so I decided to make some teal (12 drops cyan, 2 drops blue, and 5 drops of green) and some magenta (I only did 10 drops on this one because I wanted it to be more of a pink than a red. 7 drops neon purple and 3 drops red). You can look for them in the picture above if you want.
You’re supposed to only leave the spaghetti in for a minute… but I have kids. Yeahhhh, that spaghetti was in there for more like 5. And it didn’t end up all evenly colored, because ideally I would have at least mixed that spaghetti around every so often. But eh, my kids didn’t care and honestly, I didn’t either.
After it’s been in for the “minute,” rinse each color individually. after rinsing, I dumped them all back into the pan, and I’m telling you not to do that. Keep them all in their own bowl until right before serving/giving to your kids, them to keep the blues from dying the yellows.
Now that that is done, time for our little mini-school! We read the second lesson in our Teach your Child book, the letter S from the activity book, and then we made s shapes and traced them with our fingers. then I just let her and her toddler sisters play in the spaghetti (after they washed their hands… because I totally intended to count the munching I knew would happen as lunch)! Sensory play for the win.
I pulled out a few noodle colors and let them dry in S shapes so she can have something to trace throughout the week. I tried to dry them onto the paper so they’d just glue themselves to the paper but the noodles shrink as they dry and the paper got all curly. So before they ruined the paper and their shapes, I pulled them off and flipped them over to dry the rest of the way. As the lessons progress I’ll have her trace them with her fingers to include kinetic input into learning.
