Rainbow Rice ~ Tiny Tots Cuisine

Remember my post on Puffy Paint and how i mentioned I'd put up a post on another fun activity for kids? Well, here it is. Rainbow Rice!

All kids love to play with rice. Well, my two boys certainly do! They are always getting into the rice bag in my kitchen and making a mess. So when I came across this wonderful idea at Happy Hooligans, I knew instantly this was something Kochu would love doing.
Kochu and I made colored rice for the first time recently (he picked out the colors and helped squish the mixing bags) and it was so fun to both watch him and join him in exploring this new sensory medium.. He was so excited!

We played outside, where I wasn't stressed about rice going everywhere. Kochu has great fun mixing all the colors together. He then started filling containers, pouring them out and refilling. He still hasn't tired of playing with it two days later and even with sprinkling it on himself, as if it was fairy dust and looking at the colors against the grass and cement path.

I definitely consider this activity a great success and plan to make colored rice again.

Be warned, this is quite messy in the making stage. But the excited squeals of delight from your kids will make it all worth it! And yes, I did go a little crazy with the number of pics, it was just all too colorful for me to resist! :)

Materials needed:
1 cup of rice
1/2 tsp vinegar
Liquid food coloring
Plastic zip-lock bags

Method:

To make rainbow rice you will want to fill the plastic bags with the rice. Add several drops of food coloring to each bag along with the vinegar. The vinegar just helps spread the coloring onto the rice. You want to add enough but not too much.

From here you can either let the rice dry right in the bag or lay them out on baking sheets or similar to dry. If you leave them in the bag to dry just be sure to leave the bags open. All done! In roughly 4-6 hours your rice will be ready for play.