Pasta Threading Activity

Messy Little Monster January 23, 2018 No Comments
Whether you have a toddler or preschooler working on fine motor skills or you are looking for an easy and fun challenge for older kids, this pasta threading activity is great. It is easy to set up and keeps the kids busy. Using just dried spaghetti, cheerios and playdough you can set up the tower challenge in minutes. Who can build their tower first?!
Fine motor pasta threading activity for kids. An easy and fun tower building challenge that works on fine motor skills. Great for toddlers and preschoolers working on hand eye coordination and strengthening fingers ready for writing. Using just dried spaghetti, cheerios and playdough this challenge can be set up in minutes.

I love the simplicity of this pasta threading activity. It only took a few minutes to grab all the supplies and it kept the kids busy for ages. Turning this pasta threading activity into a tower building challenge makes it appeal more to older children, especially boys. 

We have also used cheerios to make cheerio bird feeders and dried spaghetti to work on fine motor skills. 

Pasta threading is a great activity for toddlers working on fine motor skills as well as hand eye co-ordination. Picking up the tiny cheerios will help work on strengthening their fingers and they will need good coordination to be able to carefully thread the cheerios onto the pasta. Activities like this are so important for young children to get their hands and fingers ready for writing. Here are a few more activities that would be great for working on fine motor skills and strengthening children's hands and fingers (click on the links for full details):

Picking flowers and making a suncatcher
Water pistol painting
Painting on foil with Q-sticks
Pushing nature into playdough to make a small world
Use jumbo eyedroppers for colour mixing
Painting using nature
Making conker spiders


SCROLL DOWN TO SEE A VIDEO OF THE PASTA THREADING FINE MOTOR CHALLENGE IN ACTION



You will need:


  • Cheerios
  • Dried Spaghetti
  • Playdough



Pasta Threading Activity 


 To set up the tower building challenge take a couple of balls of playdough (at least one for each child) and place them on a table. Stick a piece of dried spaghetti into each if the balls of playdough and you are ready to start threading. 

 You can stick with one colour of cheerios to thread or have a mixture. Having two or more colours introduces the possibility of working on patterns whilst threading.  You could even use fruit loops to introduce even more colours and pattern opportunities. 
Fine motor pasta threading activity for kids. An easy and fun tower building challenge that works on fine motor skills. Great for toddlers and preschoolers working on hand eye coordination and strengthening fingers ready for writing. Using just dried spaghetti, cheerios and playdough this challenge can be set up in minutes.

We decided to fill little bowls with cheerios ready for the challenge and we separated the colours into different bowls. The children prepared two bowls of cheerios each and then they were ready to start threading.


Fine motor pasta threading activity for kids. An easy and fun tower building challenge that works on fine motor skills. Great for toddlers and preschoolers working on hand eye coordination and strengthening fingers ready for writing. Using just dried spaghetti, cheerios and playdough this challenge can be set up in minutes.

Harry (aged 5) and Daisy (aged 2) both loved threading the cheerios onto the spaghetti towers. Harry loved that it was a race to see who could build their cheerio tower first, while Daisy was happy taking her time, and eating lots of the cheerios as she went.

Fine motor pasta threading activity for kids. An easy and fun tower building challenge that works on fine motor skills. Great for toddlers and preschoolers working on hand eye coordination and strengthening fingers ready for writing. Using just dried spaghetti, cheerios and playdough this challenge can be set up in minutes.

And Harry WINS!!!!!

Fine motor pasta threading activity for kids. An easy and fun tower building challenge that works on fine motor skills. Great for toddlers and preschoolers working on hand eye coordination and strengthening fingers ready for writing. Using just dried spaghetti, cheerios and playdough this challenge can be set up in minutes.

It's very tempting to eat a few of the cheerios as you build! Harry decided to eat them off the towers after he had finished building them.

Fine motor pasta threading activity for kids. An easy and fun tower building challenge that works on fine motor skills. Great for toddlers and preschoolers working on hand eye coordination and strengthening fingers ready for writing. Using just dried spaghetti, cheerios and playdough this challenge can be set up in minutes.

Once we had finished the tower building challenge harry set himself his own challenge to see how many towers he could build on one ball of playdough.


Fine motor pasta threading activity for kids. An easy and fun tower building challenge that works on fine motor skills. Great for toddlers and preschoolers working on hand eye coordination and strengthening fingers ready for writing. Using just dried spaghetti, cheerios and playdough this challenge can be set up in minutes.

The kids loved this pasta threading activity and I love that it keeps them busy without much mess or lots of supplies. So grab some dried spaghetti, cheerios and playdough and have a go at the tower building challenge. Don't have any cheerios? Not to worry, you could easily thread pasta tubes instead or even cut up straws. 

Fine motor pasta threading activity for kids. An easy and fun tower building challenge that works on fine motor skills. Great for toddlers and preschoolers working on hand eye coordination and strengthening fingers ready for writing. Using just dried spaghetti, cheerios and playdough this challenge can be set up in minutes.

Here is a video of the children doing this fun fine motor challenge. 

Video - Harry (age 5) Daisy (age 2)

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