How to make rainbow oats for sensory play

I thought you might be interested to learn how to make rainbow oats for sensory play. Of course the texture of oats is very different from your typical sensory bin, which can include rice or beans. So if you have some stale oats at the back of the kitchen pantry, colour them and get your kids to dig their fingers (and toes) in.     It’s not very often that you see oats in a sensory bin, but when I had the motivation to clean out our kitchen pantry and found some super stale oats at the back of the cupboard, I couldn’t help but use them in a sensory play experience. This post by Next Comes L also came to mind and inspired me.

Recommended age: 2 years +  (Strict and active supervision of kids is required to make and play with this)

How to make rainbow oats for sensory play

To colour oats for sensory play you will need – 

• Rolled oats 
• Zip-lock bags
• Food colouring or gel
• Water

Add your oats to the zip-lock bag, add in your coloured water and shake, shake, shake! It’s always a great idea to tip them out onto a dish or tray to dry out before your child plays with them. Oh and one more important thing….  Learning from mistakes Okay, so I got a little confident and thought I could colour the oats without much of a problem. I ended up making cold, coloured porridge in a bag…. LOL  My advice when colouring oats is to stick to the rule of 1 cup of oats to every 1.5 tablespoons of coloured water. It’s hard to go wrong when you do that. You’ll have oats that give off a vibrant colour and not become so damp they turn into mush.  Important! Be sure to colour the water before adding it to the bag of oats. Adding water and then the colouring will not work and, again, turn your oats to mush. 

We added our rainbow oats to a large clean container. I was a little worried about the mess Boo (aged 1) would make so we went outside and I placed an old towel down to catch any oats that didn’t make it back to the container during play. 

Texture of Oats

Children learn so much through touching a wide variety of textures and offering rolled oats to dig into and explore can be quite unique experience for them. With this approach to colouring the oats, children can almost mould it, due to them having that extra bit of moisture in them. At the same time the oats separate enough that they are a great size so children can pinch out pieces or hide small objects. 

 Possum (aged 4 years) couldn’t contain her excitement when it came time to play with this sensory. She loved talking about the colours and describing how it felt between her fingers and even at one point had her feet and knees in the tub of rainbow oats. Boo (aged 1) loved playing with it too and enjoyed putting it everywhere BUT inside the tub. LOL

Do you think your child would enjoy these rainbow oats? 

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