Pasta collage pictures

This week we're doing a "The Tiger Who Came to Tea" theme (will blog about that seperately next week) and we've been creating some pasta pictures. Not strictly to the letter of the book - but the tiger did eat everything in the cupboards, and I certainly always have pasta in mine!!

In the past I've done pasta collage with dry pasta and have not always been impressed with the results - difficult to stick onto the card and very brittle. This time I slightly cooked the pasta and coloured it with food colouring before the kids got started. Dead easy to do - cook the pasta as usual with a splash of oil, cook til it's just the hard side of "al dente" (you don't want it too soggy) and then when drained stir in a splash of food colour and leave to dry.

We used big sheets of card for this activity - paper is always going to be a bit too flimsy for heavy pasta. I put big bowls of the coloured pasta on the table, some feathers, tissue paper, the button tray, glitter and some "gloopy glue" (PVA) and let the children start creating! It was a big hit - I had two 18 month olds starting my class today who sat for absolutely ages at this station working on their creations! The different textures of the pasta, buttons and feather are really fascinating and tactile for little ones.

Here's a couple of the fab pictures they created....

 

 

 

 

 

Just to add a quick word about using glitter with tots - a lot of mums I know shiver with dread at the word "glitter shaker" and glitter and carpets really don't mix well! But I absolutely LOVE glitter - any excuse to break out the sparkle in my book! In my tots classes I pour the glitter out into bowls rather than stick glitter shakers on the table. The children then use their fingers to pick up and sprinkle the glitter onto their artwork. Doing it this way encourages the development of their pincer grip  and fine motor skills and means that the glitter (hopefully!) actually goes where they want it to go on their creation.

 

 

Happy creating!