Messy Bath Play- Alphabet Letter Hunt

It is time for more messy play in the bath & sink!

For those of you visiting Growing A Jeweled Rose for the first time, the purpose of this series is to encourage messy play by illustrating how easy it can be to contain and clean any mess. Each week, The Golden Gleam will share a messy play activity in the sink, and I will share a fun playtime in the bath.

Rosie has really taken an interest in the alphabet, so this week I set up an Alphabet Letter Hunt in the bath using pasta!

Messy Play Alphabet Hunt

To set up this activity, I filled the tub with spaghetti noodles. I used two large packs of noodles that I purchased at The Dollar Tree. I prepared the pasta as instructed on the package, and then ran it under cold water. I added a bit of vegetable oil to prevent sicking, and then colored the noodles using food coloring. I was very pleased with how vibrant the noodles turned out!

Once the pasta was in the tub, I hid Rosie's magnetic letters throughout the noodles.

Then I drew the letters of the alphabet on the tub using Rosie's bath crayons. The idea was for her to find each letter, and match it up with the letter spot drawn on the tub.

This worked really well!

Rosie loved this activity, and had lots of fun finding all the letters!

Rosie was so excited each time she found a letter!

This was such a fun way to practice Rosie's letter recognition!

I was very surprised by her abilities too! She found and correctly identified all 26 letters, and matched them to their corresponding spot on the tub. The only mix-up was the w and the m. Rosie thought the w was the big m and the m was the little m. However, I was happy to see that she is beginning to recognize the lower case alphabet!

Once Rosie had found all the letters, I brought Jewel in so that she could play too!

Both girls had a blast playing in the pasta together, and played for some time!

Then, once the playtime was over, we gathered all the pasta into a strainer, and the girls had fun splashing around in a bubble bath to get clean!

I must say, this activity was a bit messier then the others in this series. As the girls played, some of the noodles got smushed in the tub, and had to be wiped out with a Clorox wipe. However, all the mess was contained, and because of that, still much easier to clean then playing with pasta in other areas of the home. All the mess was also very easy to wipe out of the tub, as the tub surface is very easy to clean!

While neither of my girls attempted to eat any of the pasta ( we had lunch just before this activity so that they would be less tempted) I do recommend cleaning your tub thoroughly before this activity in case your little one decides to eat a bit of the pasta during play.

Also note- we will use this pasta several more times before we toss it so that any food waste is minimal. If you do this activity, here are some other fun ways you can make use of your pasta:

Create a fun sensory pool outside

Try an Ocean Themed Sensory bath

Let your child explore with some pretend play cooking

Try painting with pasta

This was such a fun activity, and one we will definitely be doing again, perhaps on a rainy day when the girls are in need of some indoor fun.

Be sure to pop over to The Golden Gleam and see what messy fun she got into using jello in the sink!

Also be sure to check out the other activities that have been shared as part of this series:

Creative Art Bath Station

Fun with Water Beads in the Sink

GIANT Volcanic Eruptions in the Bath

Cleaning Sink Science Fun

Jello Ocean Small World