Colouring rice to use as a sensory activity is brilliant. Children can become so creative and love the feeling of the rice gains running through their fingers.
How to colour rice
What you’ll need –
*Uncooked rice (brown rice works too)
*sandwich bags
*hand sanitizer (or white vinegar)
Separate the rice into the sandwich bags. One colour for each of the bags.
Add 10 – 20 drops of the food colouring.
Obviously the more drops you add the darker the colour.
Add a squirt of hand sanitizer.
The reason we use this is because it stops the colour from rubbing off onto our hands when we are playing with the rice.
Have a little one help you shake the bag and change the colour of the rice.
Possum loved watching this.
Here are the colours I chose to make.
IMPORTANT: Open each bag and leave for 24 hours. This gives the rice time to absorb all the colouring and the alcohol from the sanitizer will be gone.
Couldn’t help have a play with it myself.
The next day I filled Possum’s tray with the rice and took it outside (for obvious reasons).
Looks fun!!!
Surprisingly Possum didn’t one put try to put it in my mouth. She seemed to really enjoy looking at the colours and picking the bits of rice from between her fingers. Bliss.
The possibilities with coloured rice are endless.
You might like to give your little one a cup and scoop and leave them to it.
A game of ‘shops’ might emerge.
You could hide some small objects within the rice and provide your little one with a checklist and spoon for discovery.
Give them your cooking weights and watch as they see how light or heavy
a particular amount of rice is.
Great opportunities for discussion.
“Which cup has the most/least?”
“What colour is this one?”
“Which one do you think would be the lightest/heaviest?”
“How many green grains of rice are there?” (tough one but could have an interesting answer)
Of course you can also colour pasta and have your child play with that.
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I hope you have enjoyed this post and find time to have a go yourself.
What other things have you coloured for play?
Kate X
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Is there any alternative to the hand sanitiser for babies? My 10 mth old still eats everything
Great question and you’d not be alone. Use vinegar as an alternative. Wouldn’t taste great but not toxic.
Oh, thank you! I’ve really been wanting to try playing with coloured rice with my Squirm (And thank you for the vinegar alternative – I think I’ll try that first)
Too awesome!! My kids love messy play. They love playing with rice – but coloured rice?! They’ll think their birthdays and Christmas have arrived.
thanks for this great idea! I just made it now for my 6 month old bub who loves to play in our garden box everytime he goes outside. So I thought instead of him tinkering with the barks and soil, its better he plays with the coloured rice instead, I’m just so excited with his reaction when he sees it 🙂
Elaine thank you so much for commenting and sharing that with me. I’m so pleased you made some coloured rice and provided that alternative experience.
If you dye some penne pasta, you can use it for threading necklaces, etc! Coloured macaroni is also fun to glue onto cardboard.
Can I ask what color combo you used to get dark brown?
Thanks!