We haven’t played with cooked spaghetti in quite some time – so I was curious to see if Travis would interact differently with the game this time around. Low and behold, things were very dissimilar.

Unlike last time, now Travis was old enough to help with set up, too. First, I cooked a full box of spaghetti, and divided it into three bags. Travis helped me add food coloring to each bag, and loved squishing the bags until the color was dispersed.

I set up an area on the floor with colanders, trays, and kitchen utensils, and let Travis have at it. Surprisingly, he didn’t want to touch the spaghetti this time around, always using either a utensil or asking me to help pick it up. But that didn’t deter him from experimenting with stirring:

rolling pins:

and mashing with a mallet. His favorite was to squeeze a portion of the spaghetti in an orange juicer and make “pies,” and he had fun telling me which colors to add to each pie e.g. “Red and green for this one!”

I thought maybe the spaghetti was too sticky for his hands since I didn’t coat it with any oil, so he helped me drizzle on a little canola oil. Even then he didn’t want to touch the stuff. Oh well, it still made for great exploration!

Overall, the game was very different from his play at 20 months old, when he just used his hands to transfer spaghetti back and forth. This time we talked a lot about the colors, and used our imaginations for a fun spaghetti bake shop.