I can't believe that it's taken me 4 years to finally do messy spaghetti play at home with the kids.  I knew how much the nursery kids that I used to teach loved it, but we just hadn't got around to it at home, until today!  Halloween seems like the perfect excuse to play with messy spaghetti, and we even get to pretend that it's worms (but now that we've done it and loved it, I won't need Halloween as an excuse next time!)

It's so simple to make messy spaghetti, you'll ask yourself why you haven't done it before too!  I prepared the spaghetti according to the instructions on the package, going for the slightly shorter cooking time to make them a bit more firm (or al dente) so they don't get too mushy.  Once the spaghetti is cooked I rinsed it under cold water to cool it down, then mixed it with a bit of oil to keep it from sticking.  Finally I added some food colouring to get the desired wormy colour I was going for.


Then I left it to dry for as long as the children would allow me too (to let the food colouring soak in as much as possible to avoid getting their hands too coloured) then I added some plastic spiders, and then we dove right in!


At first they were both a bit apprehensive, just picking up one piece at a time and getting a feel for it. I was asking Ethan questions about what it felt like and what it looked like.  It really is a full sensory experience!  Ethan said that it smelled like spaghetti, it felt slimy and it looked like wriggly worms.  Ivy was just happy to pick up as much as she could and let it slip through her fingers.


Soon they were both picking up handfuls of messy spaghetti, and trying to thread pieces through the spiders.  It was great to watch them get stuck in, but soon it did end up quite messy with spaghetti being thrown around.  Next time I would definitely try to take this activity outside and into a bigger tray!


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