It’s no secret that we love sensory play in our house. Like a lot. Sadly, our recent move meant saying goodbye to many of the sensory materials that had become staples in our everyday play repertoire… (What – It doesn’t make sense to ship pounds upon pounds of coloured pasta, pea gravel, packing peanuts, dried beans, and glass gems?? Hmph.) And so we begin again! This week’s mission was replacing our stash of coloured rice, and did we ever! In fact, we now have 22 pounds of vibrantly coloured rice.
While we used handsanitizer and glass jars to colour our rice last time around, this time we used white vinegar and plastic grocery bags we already had in the apartment instead. Gracen was in charge of counting scoops of rice and putting them into the bags, while I was in charge of adding the vinegar and food colouring.
For each colour, we used approximately 5 cups of rice, 1 tablespoon of white vinegar, and 2 big globs of gel food colouring (regular liquid food colouring does work, but you need quite a bit more of it and the results never seem to be quite as vibrant). We put everything into a plastic grocery bag, tied it in a tight knot at the top, and then added another ‘just in case’ bag on top.
Then we got our shake on {and oh lord – let me tell you, it takes a whole lot of shaking to colour 22 pounds of rice} and laid it all out on some flattened Ikea boxes to dry in the sunshine pouring through our windows.
When the rice was dry, Grae decided she wanted it poured into a large box instead of her sensory table. The sensory table is still being occupied by her beloved sink or float station and a box works out just fine for me! (So many boxes…)
As soon as the rice had been carefully poured into our box, Grae satisfyingly sunk her hands into it and swirled the colours together. Since then, we’ve done some simple play with cups and scoops, as well as a few larger scale treasure hunts using it too.
Grae doesn’t know it yet, but I also have a brand new rice activity in the works… Can’t wait to bust it out next week.
To see how to make coloured pasta, click here.
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these look great and a good idea for a treasure hunt. what else do u think can be coloured as i dont like using so much ‘food’ for just play?
I just did this and they look great (much smaller scale!!) – I added glitter to the purple (more like brown) batch! sooooo pretty!
xx
Is gel food coloring something you find in the baking aisle, or craft aisle?
Kelly, I found gel food coloring in the cake decorating aisle at Hobby Lobby.
How long does it take to dry?
Do you use instant rice or long grain or does it matter?
Can you just put it in the oven on low heat like 100 degrees instead of waiting for it to dry
I think you could, but I’ve never tried it before! Even just laying it out in a warm, sunny spot helps!