Wagon Wheel Pasta Prints

Some of you may have noticed I've been "quiet" much of this week. We are doing The Five Senses, and since I've already shared that unit, I didn't blog about it again. I have a different group of kids, so I pretty much did the same projects as last time. Like textured finger painting:

And corn syrup art:

But I wanted to throw something new in, just for fun. I didn't plan on it going with the theme, but it could easily be worked in. I've always liked the look of wagon wheel pasta, and I thought it would make fun prints, but how would the kids hold on to it? Corks, of course! So I took some wagon wheels,

and hot-glued them to corks. (The only reason why I used colored pasta is because that's all I had!)

I had no idea if this would work. I googled it, but didn't find anything. So when I got to school this morning, I tried it out and it worked great! I was thrilled!

So the kids got to work dipping the corks into paint,

and stamping it on their paper.

I think I had more fun than the kids!

The corks and pasta and glue held up great. Now I'm trying to come up with other things to glue to corks to make my own stamps!

Oh, and in other news, we finally got some snow. It was so pretty, but melted fast.

**Linking up to Sharing Saturdays, Living Life Intentionally, Show-and-Share Saturday and No Time For Flash Cards!**

Noodle Tracks

Today we painted with fettuccine noodles! We are learning about what foods are healthy for us and most of my art projects this week are just generic, free art. But today I decided to use food as part of our project. I cooked some noodles at home and then dipped them in paint at school.

The spoons are to push the noodles down into the paint because otherwise they just rest on top. Make sure you leave part of the noodle out of the paint, unless you want to get really messy! Then you just grab the clean end and drag it across your paper this way...

and that way...

and repeat with other colors until you have a masterpiece.

I don't know if I'm going to cut these out or just hang them up as is, but they are too pretty to not put on display in our room. I love the colors and the kids had a blast painting with noodles!

UPDATE: I decided to hang them as is:

That's actually a green wall, even though it doesn't seem to photograph that way, and it makes a great background.

Rainbow Pasta Art

Are you ready for a beautiful art project?

This was a huge hit with everyone, but I think mostly with myself! I don't know why I didn't try this sooner. Following instructions on Many Little Blessings, I spent one evening dying pasta. I had all kinds -- wagon wheels, bowties, macaroni, penne, fettuccine... Once you have your pasta, you'll need ziploc baggies, rubbing alcohol, and food coloring. The website said to use 1/4 cup alcohol to 1-2 cups of pasta. Honestly, I only measured the first time. After that I just poured in what looked right. I put the alcohol in the baggie. I had the baggie in a mixing bowl so it would stand up better and that way if I spilled, it would stay in the bowl. (I know I took pictures of all the steps, but I can't find them anywhere!) Then I put in several drops of food coloring. Once it was all mixed, I added the pasta, sealed it up, and swished everything around. I was worried because I was short on time. I only had time to flip the bags once (after 30 minutes). So after an hour (30 minutes on each side), I cut a corner off the bottom of each bag and drained out the extra alcohol. I dried the pasta on top of paper towels on top of cookie sheets on top of old bath and kitchen towels. Follow that? This is why I need to find my pictures! I had all the pasta drying on the floor of my guest bedroom. It was the only way to keep the cats away. So that's why I needed towels underneath the cookie sheets. I didn't want any colored splotches on my carpet. Anyway, I was happy with the results of only an hour of soaking. They turned out well. The kids in my class could make whatever they wanted with the pasta. They glued their creations onto white paper.

Aren't they beautiful? Actually, they are much prettier in person. The good news is I made way too much for this one project, so we can do it several more times.
By the way, I decided to leave one bag of pasta soaking overnight, just to see how much more of the color was absorbed. The next morning it didn't look any darker and the pasta was kind of mushy, so I threw it away. I wouldn't recommend that.