Sensory Bins: Colored Rice

Arielle (mommy): Sensory bins are a great activity to explore measuring, pouring, Sense of touch, and to just have fun digging!  Today we are enjoying colored rice.

 Lil used the measuring spoons to fill the cups.  I also gave her colored paddles she could look through to see how the colors changed.  

I could see right away that O is still a little too rough to play with a box of rice.  As I envisioned him dumping 4 cups of rice all over the dining room floor I decided to replace his rice with Pom poms.  

His occupational therapist gave me the idea of using these along with an empty Lemi Shine container (it's a dishwasher rinse aid).  The container is great because it has a little hole at the top that the Pom poms can be pushed through and you can take the lid off to dump them out.  

Making your own colored rice is easy and the kids love getting involved as well, it's a great time to teach about colors and changes in matter.

What you need:

Rice

Vinegar

Food coloring

Zip lock bags

Cookie sheets

Pour in as many cups of rice into a plastic bag as you like for each color (I did two cups for each color).  For each cup of rice add a teaspoon of vinegar.  Add as much food coloring as you need to cover the rice and get it the color you want. 

 Zip up the bags and let the kids shake them up until the rice is colored.  Pour the rice onto cookie sheets to dry for about an hour.

Cynthia (Nanny): As Arielle mentioned sensory bins are a great way to allow children to learn through their senses as well as explore math and science concepts. Another benefit to this activity is it works to promote language and vocabulary development. 

As the girls worked to fill and pour the rice I asked them what it feels like and how they were using the measuring cups and spoons.

To add some shape name practice, I threw in some foam shapes that the girls could bury in the rice and then find and name the shape. Plastic letters or small toys could also be added into the rice bins. 

Guru moment:  A great conclusion to the activity would be to give the kids dust pans and brushes to let them clean the rice off the floor.  They will like the challenge and it will be less work for us!  

We want to hear from our reader "gurus"!  What ideas do you have for making this activity even better?