St. Patrick’s Day Jewelry

I had the best intentions of stocking up on some St. Patrick’s day stuff for my dramatic play area when I went to the dollar store a couple of weeks ago, and I did end up buying a few things – some Leprechaun hats and shamrock sunglasses – but what I really wanted were some mardi gras-type necklaces, and call me cheap but I couldn’t bring myself to spend $1 on two necklaces.  Anyway (I promise that I really do have a point..) today we made green necklaces to wear on St. Patrick’s day.

We use beads often, so I really didn’t think that this activity would attract that much attention, but apparently I underestimated it. My kids spent more time doing this one activity than they have doing any other activity all week. It may have been their extreme interest in anything have to do with St. Patrick’s day, or the fact that our beads were really the same pasta that we had used in the sensory table last week – with a little twist, or maybe it was just a good day to sit and work on a project. I don’t know, but I’ll take it!

I colored the pasta to make it festive. If you’ve never colored pasta before there are a few ways to do it.  I put all of my dry noodles in a gallon size zipper bag, added a little vinegar (i didn’t measure it, but it was more than a tablespoon and less than a quarter of a cup, roughly), and a couple drops of food coloring.  I zipped the bag and shook it all up, adding more food coloring until the noodles were the color that I was looking for.  Then I put some paper towels on a tray and spread the pasta out on top of the towels to dry overnight.  The next day they were ready to use. Usually when I make colored pasta I let the kids help me add the food coloring and shake it up, but since I was only making one color, I did all the work, there just weren’t enough jobs to go around.  I love the way that these turned out because they are all a slightly different shade.

After the noodles had dried, the kids strung them onto a piece of string, I was ecstatic that they spent as much time, and strung as many beads as they did – usually we get a few beads on the string and call it a day! I thought about making one for myself to wear on St. Patrick’s day (I’m having a hard time remembering if I own any green clothing…), but I didn’t want to take the chance that the food coloring would come off on my clothes, because that would be my luck!