How to Dye Pasta for Kids Crafts with Kool-Aide!

When you have a toddler/preschooler, you are always trying to find fun activities for them to do to keep their little hands busy! So I thought I'd try a new project with my daughter: Dyed pasta bead necklaces! So I set out to dye the pasta to make her "beads" after she went to bed, so that the next day we could make her necklaces. And here's how I did it.

For this project, you will need:

- Large bottle of hand sanitizer with pump

- Kool Aide envelopes, whatever colors you want to make

- Ziplock bags (I used quart sized, but sandwich sized or gallon sized would work, too, as long as it has a zipper seal)

- Pasta (I used whole grain penne because it was what I had in the cupboard, but you can use any kind that has a hole in it to thread yarn through. White pasta will give you more vibrant colors, while whole grain will be a bit more muted, but they still become vibrant and pretty)

- Paper Towels

- Tray

To begin, get your tray ready to lay your bags on, because you will need it as soon as you are finished filling your first bag.

Open a ziplock bag and pump quite a few pumps of hand sanitizer in the bag (I used between 10 and 20 pumps a bag), if you don't have a pump, just put a nice big squirt in there.

Next, I opened a Kool Aide packet and emptied the contents in with the hand sanitizer. Once all the powder is in the bag with the sanitizer, seal the bag and give it a good shake until all the color is well mixed in there with the sanitizer and no powder is visible.

Now put a couple handfuls of pasta in the bag with the sanitizer/kool aide mixture, seal, and give a really good shake! Lay the bag flat on the tray and try to get the pasta in a single layer. Do this for every different color you wish to do, using a separate bag for each color.

Let sit in bags for about an hour, turning every so often so the color gets nice and even on them.

Next, drain out the sanitizer/kool aide, rinse pasta in water, then pour the pasta out on a paper-towel-lined tray and let dry overnight.

In the morning, you should have beautiful pasta "beads" ready to make necklaces with. And... Voila! A beautiful array of colors to craft with! Happy crafting!