Colored Rice- New Quarantine Activity For Toddlers

“Do not play with your food!” Well, why not? Colored rice is a great, cheap activity to spend time with your toddler.
My Noam has the best occupational therapist! She is amazing! I got the idea for this activity from her. I’m really glad I did it because it keeps Noam busy for hours!! He plays with it in all sorts of variations, and it’s also pretty cheap to make it.

Activities that can be done with colored rice

First of all, I highly recommend spreading a sheet on the playing surface. At the end of the game, you can concentrate the rice in the center of the sheet and return it to the box.

1. Hide objects in the rice, such as: a spoon, a fork, puzzle pieces and basically every item you want- and ask the child to look for it.

2. You can combine different games with the search for them in the rice. For example:

– Bury beads (large and age-appropriate) in the rice and ask the child to look for them “Let’s look for the purple bead”. After the child has found the bead he must thread it on a pole or thread.

– Put different pieces of a puzzle in the rice, and ask the child to find specific parts of the puzzle “Let’s look for the cow”. After the child has found the piece he has to put it in its place. By the way, we have a lot of simple wooden puzzles (animals / shapes / vehicles / fruits) that Noam has long known how to put together and he just abandoned them. The search in the rice brought them back to use in our house .

– Hide blocks in the rice and asked the child to find them and build something out of them.

3. Give the child a teaspoon and ask him to fill a cup with rice (good practice also for eating with a teaspoon)

4. Ask the kid to transfer rice from cup to cup, or from cup to funnel.

 

So what will you need to make the colored rice?

1  plastic storage container, about 15 liters

1  bag of 5 kg rice (about 11LBS)

Edible color – I used 2 colors, blue and red, you can of course go crazy with the colors.

About half a cup of white vinegar

 

Preparation

I divided the rice into three equal amounts

I left one quantity as it is: white.

I put the remaining amounts each in a bowl, add food coloring and 2-3 tablespoons of vinegar each and mix with a spoon. The amount of food coloring is entirely up to you. You can put a certain amount, mix – and if you want the color to be stronger add some more.

Arrange the rice on a tray / plate and let it dry (about two to three hours depending on the amount of rice)

And that’s it! Transfer to a the box and start playing!

***It’s important for me to note that my Noam is two years and three months old, and he doesn’t put anything in his mouth. Luckily even when he was younger he didn’t just shove things in to his mouth.
 Each mom knows whether this game suits to her toddler or not. I am of course not a professional, just sharing my child’s enjoyment of this activity.

Do you have more ideas for DIY toddlers inside activities?
Share them with me! Write me here a comment, on Facebook and if you like this idea don’t forget to pin it on Pinterest.