CRAZY NOODLE SENSORY BIN

We've been so busy, busy, busy today catching up on chores and laundry. I made the mistake of reading a ton of judgy, unrealistic blogs and articles when Kinley was tiny, so now if I go fifteen minutes without giving her my full attention I feel like the world's worst mother. It is REALLY hard to get and keep your house clean, make dinner, fold laundry, and every other thing on my list of responsibilities in 15 minute increments, but it's either that or lay in bed at night wondering how much damage I did to her fragile sense of self by making her spend half an hour playing by herself. I know, I need mental help. And a nice, looooong vacation! Note to all expectant first time moms--even if you feel like you are doing everything wrong and you think you need to search the web for ways to do everything right, DON'T DO IT. Just don't. And stay far, far away from babycenter's community boards...those women are nuts. Trust me.

Back to today, I wanted to sit down and do something fun with my goo for a few minutes, so I thought we would try crazy noodles. They are really fast and easy to make and she had so much fun playing with them that I hardly got any good pictures...they were mostly all blurs of excited hands and wads of noodles flying through the air.

All you really need is food coloring and the noodles of your choice. I had an open box of thin spaghetti that I needed to use up so that's what we used, but I bet penne or farfalle or wagon wheels would be awesome, too. I tried the tiny alphabet soup noodles once and they didn't work very well--they are just too little and all mushed together and the daycare babies just got very angry because they couldn't get the tiny noodles off of their hands. 

You are gonna need a different pot of boiling water for each color you want to make because you just add the food coloring straight to the water before adding the noodles. I used paste food coloring today, probably about 1/8 of a teaspoon to a soup pot full of water.

I cooked the noodles to just under al dente (because I didn't want them to be too sticky,) drained them and spread them out to cool for a few minutes on wax paper, then just threw them in the sensory bin with some tongs. PLAY TIME!

See what I mean about the noodle wads flying? (If you are wondering why she is wearing a too small swimming diaper, it's because she was taking a bath after noodle time and I had to change her before noodle time for stinky reasons and didn't want to waste a real diaper. It backfired though. I ended up with a pee-soaked tshirt...live and learn.)

Not very tasty, I guess, but so much fun! Kinley used these noodles for bracelets, wiggled her toes in them, launched them at the cabinets, you name it! She's really gotten into trying to pick things up with tongs, thanks to a game my mom made her (tutorial coming soon,) and these sticky noodles were really easy for her to snag with them. 

I put them in a big baggie in the fridge, I'll let you know if they are reusable. I'm guessing they will turn into a big tangled mass, but we'll see. 

This activity is a little messy if your kiddo gets as excited about it as Kinley did, but it cleans up easy and none of the food coloring came off on our fingers. 

Give them a try--even if your little doesn't like playing with them, you can just pour some spaghetti sauce on top and voila! Lunch is served! :)