Brain Noodles

We went out for ice cream a few weeks ago and wandered into Becker's Teacher Supply Store. This is a surprisingly fun store that makes me long to be a teacher so I can decorate bulletin boards and have bins of little bears to teach counting with.

Then I remember the part where there would be a bunch of kids that aren't my kids and I am over the whole teacher fantasy.

But I still get sucked into all of the cool STUFF at the teacher store!

This time I got caught in the vortex of these HUGE pipe-cleaner-like things called Brain Noodles. They came in different colors and patterns and are really huge (like maybe an inch across?) and fluffy. We got the striped ones (as shown in the picture there). They were $14, which is admittedly insane. But I was hopeful that they would be SO FUN that I wouldn't continually question my decision.

You get 12 Noodles in the set, and really decent directions for how to make a few different projects.

Tater and I made this tiger. He insisted that we use the non-matching noodles. I squelched my control-freak tendencies and followed his wishes - but it would have been way cuter if it was all one pattern. Sorry, Tater.

We also made this flower. And Tater made a bunch of letters (that spelled out "I [heart] Mom").

I [heart]ed him right back...

Sprout got in on the action and made some huge contraption that used ALL of the noodles. This resulted in some disagreements about the appropriate distribution of resources. I was unable to get pictures due to my refereeing duties during the dispute. But let's just say - it ended up half the size it started out.

I guess maybe part of the assessment of how much fun a toy is could be the level of grabby-ness it inspires in the children. More hoarding = more fun?

When we were done creating, we untwisted everything and put the Noodles back in the original box for next time. They were relatively undamaged in the process and I love anything that can fit back in the box it came in for storage.

So, all in all I would give Brain Noodles a thumbs up - although I do still question the sanity of paying $14 for 12 pipe cleaners!