How to Make Rainbow Spaghetti for Sensory Play

Rainbow spaghetti is such a good material to use for sensory play! Follow our easy step by step instructions below to discover how to dye spaghetti in a ziplock bag. Coloured spaghetti is so easy to make and young children love playing with it. Babies, toddlers and preschoolers all enjoy exploring the colour and texture of dyed spaghetti and as it is edible there are no worries about them putting it in their mouths.

If you are looking for more rainbow activities take a look at our edible rainbow paint that we used for painting on bread, our rainbow flower craft or have a go at doing the rainbow skittles science experiment.

I have included affiliate links in this post. If you use these links I will earn from qualifying purchases at no extra cost to you.

More rainbow sensory play ideas:

• Rainbow playdough
• Rainbow rice
• Rainbow coloured salt
• Rainbow sensory bottle

The rainbow spaghetti sensory play activity that we are sharing today is so much fun for little children to explore. To make it even more fun we paired it with the book,  'A Rainbow of my Own' by Don Freeman. Scroll down for more activity ideas to accompany this book and to see a youtube video of the story being read.

Take a look at our list of must have rainbow items.

How to make spaghetti video directions

 

How to Dye Rainbow Spaghetti for Sensory Play

Rainbow Spaghetti Supplies:

• Spaghetti
• Ziplock bags
• Food colouring
• Water
• Colandar 
• Container/ tub for the rainbow spaghtetti

How to make Rainbow Spaghetti

STEP 1: Prepare supplies

You need surprisingly few supplies to make this coloured spaghetti, but it is still good to be organised and have everything to hand.

STEP 2: Cook spaghetti

Cook the spaghetti following the instructions on the pack. Drain and rinse the spaghetti. 

STEP 3: Add spaghetti and colouring to ziplock bags

Put the spaghetti into ziplock bags. You will need one zip lock bag per colour. Add food colouring and a few drops of water to each bag.

STEP 4: Mix colouring and spaghetti

Zip the ziplock bags up and mix the spaghetti and food colouring together. Daisy (aged 2) helped me with this part. Squash it, squeeze it, throw it in the air, just keep moving the colour around the bag until all of the spaghetti is totally covered. Repeat with each colour.

STEP 5: Rinse coloured spaghetti

Once all of the spaghetti is covered in food colouring put each colour into your colander and rinse the spaghetti under the tap. This step is really important, if you miss it out your child will end up covered in food dye!

Put the rainbow coloured spaghetti into a container or tub and it is ready to be played with.

Rainbow spaghetti sensory play

Now you have made your coloured spaghetti it is time to invite your baby, toddler or preschooler to indulge in some sensory play.

If you are doing this sensory play activity with a toddler or preschooler a small container full of rainbow spaghetti on the table works well. If you are doing it with a baby you may be better off adding coloured spaghetti to a large tray on the floor for them to sit in or next to. 

Playing with rainbow spaghetti is a great sensory experience for babies, toddlers and preschoolers. It feels slimy and slips through their fingers easily. It's also a great activity for helping little ones to learn their colours.

Daisy (aged 2) loved mixing the different coloured spaghetti together.

As the spaghetti and food colouring used to dye spaghetti is edible you don't need to worry about young children putting it into their mouths (if they are still at that stage).

You could enhance this sensory play idea by hiding plastic minibeasts or numbers in the spaghetti for little ones to hunt for, you could even give them some giant tweezers to use to pick up the items they find. 

The addition of small pots and pans would enable children to mix the spaghetti up or separate it into different pots as they cook up dinner or a magic potion. It would also be really fun to do this on a huge scale so that the children are able to sit in the rainbow spaghetti to explore it. 

We had fun adding ponies to our rainbow spaghetti (at Daisy's request)

If you are doing this rainbow sensory play activity alongside reading the book 'A rainbow of my Own' like we did here are a few more rainbow activities based on the book that you might like to try.

• 5 Math Games using Painted Rainbow Counters - The Educators' Spin On It
• Rainbow Alphabet Activity- Growing Book by Book
• Easy rainbow name game - Toddler approved
• Find the Unicorn Rainbow Sensory Bin - Inspiration Laboratories
• Taste Safe Rainbow Sensory Play - Adventures and Play
• Preschool Color Activities - Roll and Cover Rainbow
• Awesome Rainbow Experiments for Kids- Teach Beside Me
• Construction Paper Rainbow Craft from The Moments at Home
• Mixing Colors to Make a Rainbow - Mama Smiles
• CVC Word Family Rainbow Puzzles - Sea of Knowledge
• Rainbow Words - Rainy Day Mum
• Rainbow Preschool Music Craft & Song - Preschool Powol Packets

If you don't have the story book share the video below with your child.

We hope that your babies, toddlers and preschoolers enjoy this rainbow spaghetti sensory play and that you have fun making coloured spaghetti using our easy how to dye rainbow spaghetti guide.