Crafts, Eye Hand Coordination, Fine Motor Skills, Occupational Therapy, Occupational Therapy Activities, Sensory

Learning with Dyed Alphabet Pasta

Colleen Beck OTR/L

Colleen Beck, OTR/L is a pediatric occupational therapist and the owner and author of The OT Toolbox website. She manages all of The OT Toolbox social media accounts and runs the popular newsletter. Colleen created The OT Toolbox in 2011 and since then has written thousands of blog posts designed to support therapy providers, educators, parents, counselors, admin, and caregivers in promoting the healthy development of kids. Check out Colleen's blog posts below:

by Colleen Beck OTR/L
August 16, 2024

Grab a box of alphabet noodles for a fun multisensory learning activity that builds skills in many areas. We used letters pasta to create a sensory bin that incorporates fine motor skills and a letter learning activity.

Alphabet Noodles

You might remember eating alphabet noodles as a child in soup. But if you have a box of letter noodles on hand, it’s easy to create a sensory play activity that builds skills.

This easy dyed pasta activity combines learning with fine motor development. From the scooping to the neat pincer grasp activity, this is a great way to build many skills! Younger children can use scoops and spoons to develop coordination needed to scoop and pour while gaining exposure to letters. What a fun way to build so many areas!

Alphabet Pasta Activities

So, in addition to the ideas we shared above, we love using dry alphabet pasta in other activities to support fine motor and visual motor skills. I love that you can incorporate the tactile sensory play in learning and skill development.

Some of my favorite ideas for alphabet pasta:

Alphabet Sensory Bin Search: Fill a sensory bin with dry alphabet pasta and small items like pom-poms, beads, or toy animals. Hide letter cards or small objects in the bin, and encourage kids to search for specific letters or objects. This activity helps improve pincer grasp and hand-eye coordination while engaging their sense of touch.

Letter Pasta Sensory Bottle: Create a “Alphabet Seek-and-Find” Sensory Bottle by filling a clear plastic bottle with dry alphabet pasta. Add a few small, colorful beads or buttons to make it more visually stimulating. You can also include a few small trinkets or themed charms to match a specific letter (e.g., a tiny apple for “A”). Seal the bottle tightly with glue to prevent any spills. Here are other sensory bottle ideas to use, like adding scrabble letter tiles to the sensory bottle as an I spy activity.

Pasta Art and Letter Matching: Have kids glue dry alphabet pasta onto construction paper to create letter art or spell out simple words. For an extra challenge, provide them with a printed word and have them match the letters using the pasta. This activity develops both fine motor skills and visual-motor integration as they match letters and manipulate the small pieces. It’s a great letter recognition activity!

This was such a fun activity! I found a bag of alphabet pasta at a local grocery store on sale for a dollar and couldn’t pass it up! We used a little from the bag and used the rest in wedding soup. (Little Guy’s most often request and favorite meal!) Because the only thing that makes wedding soup even more awesome is fun shaped noodles 🙂

How to dye alphabet Pasta

We dyed the pasta in a baggie…added a few drops of red food coloring and 2 Tbsp of vinegar. We dyed this batch back in May and the color is still going strong. The vinegar doesn’t leave an odor when playing with the pasta, but helps the coloring to “stick” to the pasta.

Have the kids shake the bag (or use a lidded plastic container for a fun auditory component!) and get their wiggles out.

I put up a few strips of masking tape on our easel and put out the bowl of pasta. Baby Girl had the job of scooping letters from the bowl onto a plate. She loved using my measuring spoons to scoop. Toddlers seem to love scooping any little bits…peas/beans/rice/sand…and it’s such a great fine motor task for them.

Pinching those little letters was a fun fine motor exercise for working on their tripod grasp and pincer grasp.

I positioned the tape strips high up on the easel to encourage an extended wrist. This wrist position allows for efficient use of the fingers in such a small motor activity.

Big Sister worked on locating letters as I told her how to spell words.

…Baby Girl couldn’t let her big sister do something and NOT get involved…

We also used the alphabet letter pasta to work on a little reading/spelling activity: I stuck on the -AT letters and asked Big Sister to find the letter we needed to spell different rhyming words. Fun!

Alphabet letter pasta can be used in many ways! How do you use this sensory activity to learn and play?

Working on fine motor skills, visual perception, visual motor skills, sensory tolerance, handwriting, or scissor skills? Our Fine Motor Kits cover all of these areas and more.

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