Making Coloured Rice for Sensory Play or Crafting

On the first day of Spring Break, I babysat two of my favourite babysitting kids - Scott and Kelsey.  I don't get to sit them a lot, because they're both in school full time now, but on the odd day when the mom and dad are both at work when the kids have a day off, they come to see me! 
My house seems to have been equated with the crafting centre in their minds.  Within five minutes of walking through the door, I hear, "Can we do a craft now?"  "Let's look on the computer to see what kind of a craft we can do today!"  And I'm really ok with that - I love doing crafts, but my little guy is pretty little to do most of the ones that I'd like to try out from Pinterest - so Scott and Kelsey become my guinea pigs!  :)
This time around, we looked together at my "Activities for Kids" folder on Pinterest, and they picked out a rice dyeing activity.  The original instructions called for rubbing alcohol - and while I KNEW I had some, I couldn't find it for the life of me (I knew once I remembered what I bought it for last month, I'd remember where I put it - sure enough, as soon as the kids went home, I remembered that I bought it to use while cleaning the floors, and found it with my floor cleaning stuff in the kitchen.  Duh.).  Anyhow, I did a bit of quick googling and found out that vinegar can do the same thing as the rubbing alcohol - you just have to let it dry a little longer.

 Make it:
Pour 1 cup uncooked white rice into a medium ziplock baggie. 
Add 3 Tbsp white vinegar
Add 5 drops of food colouring, colour of your choice
Let the air out of the bag, zip closed, and give to the kids to mix up and squish around and worth the colour evenly into the rice!
Pour onto a tray of some sort, and allow to sit (out in the sun, if possible) for 10-30 minutes, until the rice is entirely dry.  (If it's not dry, the food colouring will make a mess of hands and clothes!)

We made 6 different colours, though in the end, the two blues were so close in colour that the kids decided that they should combine them.

Today, we chose to use the rice to make pictures.  We did a little bit of colouring, then used Popsicle sticks to spread white glue around on the page, and sprinkled with rice.  It's a good idea to have a spare bowl on the table to gently sluff the excess rice into - though you'll still end up with rice on the chairs and floors and everywhere else.

Kelsey and Scott decided that the colours of rice that we had would be perfect for making beautiful sunsets.  I think they did a great job!

Sunset by Kelsey

Sunset by Scott

Suns, moon, and trees, by Hendrik (and me)

Peace, love, and happiness, by Kelsey.

A Sun in the blue sky and a snake in the tree, by Scott

We had a great time making these pictures, and Scott and Kelsey were excited to take the leftover rice home to make more pictures (sorry about the future mess, Kim!!). 

Coloured rice would also make a really great sensory play station - I'm looking forward to making a big tub of it with Hendrik, but I think that I'm going to wait until the spring days are a bit warmer, so that we can play with it out on the deck!