Rainbow Rice

I love a craft activity that is captivating for more than just a few moments and is so much fun. When the whole family can be involved, when your kids can jump around and use their whole body, or sit quietly and practice fine motor skills, when there’s not too much mess to clean up and when the resulting art work can be played with over and over again. This is my kind of kid’s art activity. Rainbow rice is ALL these things!

What you need;

• Any variety of white rice

Any kind of white rice will work.

• ziplock bags or washable containers

• food colouring in a number of colours. You can also use natural substances to colour the rice (although this does make it a bit more time consuming). I used turmeric for yellow, Berry powder for purple, charcoal to make black, “mermaid latte” powder for blue and smoky paprika for orange. I mixed a tablespoon of powder with enough white vinegar to make a runny paste. The rice mixture became a lot wetter this way and I did need to put it in the oven for about 15 minutes to dry it out before it was ready to play with.

natural food colourings can be really fun!

Method;

Step One;

Put a small amount of rice into your container or ziplock bag (If you normally steer clear of ziplock bags and don’t want to buy any, you can re-use a frozen berry bag or anything else you can think of that is washable and won’t leak.

Put some rice in a reusable container. A separate container for each colour.

Step Two;

Add a few drops of food colouring (more colouring leads to darker colour). You can also try mixing colours to create orange, purple, aqua etc.

add a few drops of colour.

Step Three;

This is the fun bit! The mixing can be done in a variety of different ways! The age and personality of your child/ren, plus your imagination and enthusiasm, will determine how you mix the rice and food colouring. By gently rolling the rice around in the bag, just using your hands, the food colouring will soak into all the rice. You can also throw and catch the bag to mix it up. Throw your own bags in the air and catch them yourself, or throw them to each other (my family’s preferred method!). Make sure your ziplock bags are strong enough for this. It hardly needs to be said, but definitely don’t mix the colour in this way if you’re using a glass jar! You will also need to decide whether this is an indoor or an outdoor activity for your child/ren.

Other options are bouncing the bag on the trampoline or spinning in circles with the bag in your hand. If you have a net, you could throw and catch in that.

Repeat Steps One-Three for every colour you desire to create.

Natural colours

rice coloured with food colouring

Step Four;

Your rice is ready to be played with. BEFORE YOU MIX THE COLOURS…read on and decide what you want to do with your rice.

1. Make some presents - add layers of different colours into pretty jars and give them as gifts or party favours.

2. Make a sensory tub - add all the colours together in a large container and let the kids run their hands through the rice.

3. Make a treasure hunt - bury “treasures” in the container and play a game of finding them again. Treasures can be coins, buttons, feathers, wool, little toys, bouncy balls, rocks, gumnuts, Lego or whatever you have or think your child/ren will enjoy finding. There is a potential for these treasures to be a choking hazard, so be mindful of this, make choices that suit your child and supervise them as necessary.

4. Fill up your socks with Rainbow Rice and go for a walk! I’ve taken this idea from a 4 year old because it was riotously funny. We looked like we had Smurf or clown feet and the socks became quite stretched, but it was such fun. It has become an often-retold story and a funny family memory.

5. Use the rice in your play kitchen or restaurant and serve up delicious, colourful “food” and “drinks”.

6. Fill a clear plastic bottle with Rainbow Rice, seal the top securely and you’ve made a shaker toy to add to your Musical Instrument collection.

7. For little ones who love fine motor games, or a quieter activity, offer a more mindful challenge. Finding 10 grains of blue rice, separating the colours or picking out your favourite colour are my ideas. What are yours?

8. For those kids who prefer a full-body, physical experience, why not turn the Rainbow Rice into rain? We put a big tarp outside to be the ocean, added a tub for a boat and an umbrella as a sail and then we played “storms”. The sound of the Rainbow Rice was remarkably similar to real rain and the game was fun enough that we swept up the rice and had quite a few “storms”. My 5 year old friend quietly sang “it’s raining, it’s pouring” while I was pouring the rice so it was a musical adventure too.

9. Use the Rainbow Rice for art projects. Squirt some glue and sprinkle the Rainbow Rice on top. You and your child can decide who does which bit and what kind of art works you create.

For some children the fun of making the rice turn different colours in the fun bit, for others if is the mesmerising feeling of sinking your hands into cool rice, for others it will be something I haven’t even thought of! Whatever it is that you, your child and your family enjoy, Rainbow Rice has something to offer you all.

Happy Playing.