Noah loves to help me cook. He loves using a variety of cooking utensils and always wants to measure and pour. I used to let him measure and pour dry oatmeal into muffin tins, but it makes a huge mess! Out of that came the idea to use different shapes of dry pasta instead. Much easier to clean up!
This bin is really simple and I’m betting you already have everything for it in your kitchen! Here’s what I used for this bin:
Assorted shapes of dry pasta.
Muffin tin or small box
Paper towel roll (the inside cardboard part)
Straws (for threading pasta)
Small strainer
Big spoons
Noah has a great time dropping the pasta through the center of the paper towel roll. He also loves to scoop the pasta into the muffin tin!
Here are three more ideas for using the materials in this bin:
Thread the pasta onto straws. This works best with the straight pieces, so I picked a few of those out for Noah to use for this activity.
Create a counting activity. Draw dots in the bottom of each muffin tin (like what you see on dice) and have them count out the correct number of pieces of pasta for that muffin cup.
Pasta Shape sorter. Sort the pasta by shapes into the muffin tin!
I love bins like this that have many different ways to use the materials!