Playdough & Pasta Sculptures

I saw this post on The Imagination Tree and I thought it was a clever way of using spaghetti, so I put a similar thing out when I needed a quiet activity to calm Poppet down post temper-tantrum while I got on with making tea. We didn't have beads but I have a bag of penne pasta I keep specifically for playdough play so used that instead.



It was the perfect activity to keep her engrossed and she concentrated very hard on threading each bit on. She liked putting the maximum number of penne pasta pieces possible onto each strand of spaghetti (there is a lot of alliteration in that sentence).



It's definitely an activity I will be pulling out again in a tantrum related emergency!

Spaghetti Messy Play

This was our first ever messy play activity in our Tuff Spot. I first read about Tuff spots over on Edspire and was inspired to get one as part of the messy play legacy of Matilda Mae, a beautiful 9 month old little girl who was taken from her family too soon. Hopefully it will encourage us to engage in more messy play and make lovely messy memories.

They are great for messy play activities indoors and outdoors, making cleaning up a lot easier!  I cooked up a batch of cheap spaghetti, dyed it green and put it on the tray along with a selection of things - a yoghurt bucket, tongs, dustpan, knife, doctor's scissors things, a car, horse and mini wok.

Now I should probably mention that Poppet is not the biggest fan of getting messy! Even as a baby she didn't like her feet in grass or sand, and hates having 'dirty' hands. She was quite cautious when faced with the pile of spaghetti but was definitely curious..... Anyway I left the room for a second and when I came back Little had a pile of spaghetti on her head that I am pretty sure she didn't put there by herself so Poppet must have overcome her fear.

Little displays none of her older sister's mess aversion and got stuck in. Everything goes into her mouth at the moment. Poppet was really concerned about this, shouting "don't eat it it's dirty!" at her.

Poppet preferred using the utensils to pick the spaghetti up, and fill the bucket with. She really hated it if any spaghetti got stuck to her feet and wanted it taken off immediately. We talked about what it felt like and decided it was 'cold' and 'very sticky' and 'not nice'. Fair enough!

She finished up by making dishes and plates of spaghetti pizza and spaghetti pie and spaghetti cake.

Poppet: 2yrs 4mos

Little 7 mos