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

Why Do You Like to Break Your Toys?

For the last couple of months, we have been giving our son toys that he immediately dismantles.  This started happening just before he turned two.  At his 2nd birthday, he did receive quite a few presents, and many which could easily be "broken."   They are not really broken because they are easily repaired.  We have even set up a toy hospital in our office.  I did not want to come right out and ask "Why do you break your toys?" for fear of the accusational tone, as well as really hating to ask why questions ever of anyone - do any of us really know why we do things especially when we are put on the spot.  How presumptuous of me to assume that he really is breaking his toys.

Finally, one day, as we were playing in my son's room, and he had dismantled most of his toy cars, I said, "It sure seems like you enjoy taking apart your toys."

His response "I do, mommy, I really do!"

"What is it that you like about taking apart your toys?"

"Learning to fix them and build them!"

I thought, "oh what I wouldn't do for an old fashioned erector set!"  My family happened to be at IKEA the next day where we picked up a BYGGA - the Swedish version I guess of an erector set.  We took it home and learned how to build a motorcycle from the set.  

My son is learning to build things, and I am learning to assume that children have the best intentions at learning (not destructing).