Objective:
Creating fun rainbow sensory bin for play
Skill Development: Sensory
Minimum Age: Preschool
Messiness: Medium
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Materials
- Pasta of your choice
- Liquid Watercolors
- Baggies - one for each color
- Alligator Tongs or other jumbo tweezers
- Optional: you can choose to use food coloring rather than watercolor. Then you would also need some cooking oil.
Rainbow Sensory Bin Playtime
Sensory play is so therapeutic for children (and adults! Go on, dig in and play... it's very relaxing)
This simple Rainbow sensory bin is great for color recognition, increasing fine motor skills, and provides great texture.
Creating sensory bins for your child is a great way for them to explore in a safe environment, wonderful for increasing fine-motor skills, and even language development. There are so many benefits and these are just a few of them. So let's get started!
Step 1:
Cook your pasta of choice like you normally would if you were to eat it. I use gluten free pasta personally and in this example, we used spaghetti noodles.
Step 2:
After you've drained the water, rinse it in cold water. Then divide the pasta into different ziplock baggies based on how many colors you are going to use. Of course, I had to make a Rainbow since that is my favorite color.
Step 3:
You can choose to use food coloring or liquid watercolors. I personally like the liquid watercolors because they won't stain your hands.
Here are my Favorite liquid watercolors from Color Splash! These are just 1 oz each but a little goes a long way and there are So Many fun art lessons you can do these these so if you're wanting a larger set, try these.
Here are just some of the art projects you and your child can create.
Step 4:
If you use food coloring, add a splash of cooking oil to the baggie along with a few drops of the coloring.
My children love helping out with this part and the mixing!
Step 5:
Shake, Shake, Shake the pasta, mixing in the coloring. Then I opened the top and let them sit for a little while to soak in the color. I just love the rainbow colors.
Then rinse the pasta in cold water.
Now you're ready to play! Empty the baggies of Rainbow Pasta into a bin. I like adding the sensory toys like the tweezers in rainbow order also.
If you decide to not play right away, I suggest putting the baggies in the refrigerator, since this is cooked food.
Here's the time where we made Super Bright pasta for another sensory bin. I love how there are so many options.
Happy Creating!
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