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Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Coloring Rice

Today, my son and I had an incredibly fun lesson in color! I have seen so many recipes online for how to color rice, so I thought what an inexpensive fun activity for a toddler to do while learning about color mixing at the same time. I altered it a little bit but the main idea is to take rice, cheap food color, a little rubbing alcohol and shake it in plastic bags. I don't have plastic bags in the house, so instead we used some of the remaining reusable plasticware with tight sealing lids.

Most sites recommend that only an adult should use the food color, but what fun is that? I kept a couple of rags close by, stripped my son down to his diaper (we would have used an apron or smock if it were not so hot today) and let him experiment and have some creative liberties.

I measured out enough rice to cover the bottom plus about an inch thickness in each bowl. I showed my son how to open the food coloring and how to resecure the lids (this may have been his favorite part).

First we did just single colors:

Adding red food color


The fun part of shaking and mixing the color


Making blue rice


mixing and shaking blue rice


Mixing colors to see what they make - we made a batch of purple rice, then this had almost all the colors in it and made a dark green colored rice.

I put the rice in baking pans for about an hour at 200 F, stirring occasionally. Then we poured the rice into storage jars for use later.

We already used our rice for a transfer activitiy. I took the rice that had spilled on the table while pouring it into storage jars and put it all in one bowl. Then left one of the baking dishes for him to ladle rice from the bowl to the baking dish. This kept him busy for about 45 minutes - just transferring rice from one dish to the other - maybe there should be a Zen rice ladle bowl set for adults.



transferring rice with a ladle

5 comments:

Unknown said...

How cute! That is such a good idea!! He looked like he was having a blast

katielyn said...

Now that sounds like fun! Looks like he enjoyed it too.

Unknown said...

great idea for keeping a toddler busy! i love it sounds fun and may try it to keep me busy. lol.

Stacy Passell said...

WOW how did I miss this one? Can't wait till PR is old enough to try it. Probably that means when she won't everything. 8))

Unknown said...

RR - Give PR about 6 months or so - she just needs to be able to stand very easily and hold something to shake the containers. N still puts things in his mouth so I had to remind him that although this is food, we are using it for art and not to eat. It is a hard concept at no matter the age. But really, what is the harm in a little uncooked rice in the belly??

No Mother Left Behind