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R is for Rainbow

rainbow penne

In honor of St. Patrick's Day, we did a rainbow week. (See last year's St. Patrick's Day ideas here.) As with marshmallow week, since this was a month ago and I really can't remember the specifics of our week, I'll just do the story-by-picture version. 

I dyed two boxes of penne pasta for stringing necklaces -- just a splash of vinegar and food coloring in a ziploc bag, shake it all up, and spread it out to dry. My blue and purple both turned out rather black, but I didn't bother experimenting to find out why or how to fix it. 

drying on waxed paper

Levi went through two rounds of the rainbow before losing interest. It was harder than I anticipated for him to get the yarn (which kept fraying at the end) through the small penne hole. Owen didn't even try. I kept one large jar of dyed pasta and threw out the rest. Maybe it'll make another appearance in the future!


Strange: we had a bout of the stomach flu surrounding St. Patrick's Day both last year and this year. By the end of the week, though, I decided tummies were well enough to brave fruit again, and we had rainbows for lunch. Marshmallow clouds on one end, lemon yogurt (which really should have had some lemon zest for color, but I forgot to pick one up at the grocery) for a "pot of gold" at the other. 


The highlight of the week, which you may have seen on Facebook that week, was our epic rainbow sensory tub. I scattered a bunch of gold coins (on clearance at Michael's ON St. Patrick's Day) in the tub, then dyed five bowls of shaving cream with liquid watercolors (also from Michael's) and spread them out in the bathtub.


It took about two cans of shaving cream to fill the tub about an inch thick. The liquid watercolors were pricey, so I only bought the three primary colors and mixed the rest myself. I'm glad I invested, though; I hardly used any for this project, and I think they'll come in handy for art in the future.

Ooh! A gold coin!

Just beginning to get messy . . .

Silas wanted no part of being in the tub. The texture issue, I think.

Good times.

After I got everyone clean and dressed, I sent them downstairs to play while I did a quick rinse of the tub. (Later, I just showered in there and finished wiping down the walls. It really wasn't hard to clean, though the whole upstairs did smell like shaving cream for nearly a week.) When I came downstairs, they'd set up a table and were playing restaurant. (The rainbow of bowls was a fortunate accident.) Love these creative kids!!


The second fortunate accident was the painting of Grandpa's "happy birthday" banner. I didn't get a picture of the finished product, but it was a superb finish to rainbow week!

Little artists hard at work.
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