Rainbow Rice

We have been doing lots of colour activities this week. One that I was very excited about was Coloured Rice.

How to make coloured rice

You will need

rice

vinegar

food colouring

baking tray

oven

Put the rice into a bowl and add vinegar, I never work in exact amount so just made sure there was enough to cover all the rice.

Add your chosen colour, again just put enough so it colour all the rice in the shade you want.

Then spread over a baking tray and cook for about 30mins at about 120 degrees. 

Repeat with another colour if you wish.

 I decided to do three colours this time. I put the diferent colours into seperate bowls. I put them into a big tube and also included some pots, utensils and funnels.

 The children had lots of fun, pouring out and mixing the colours.

 The children enjoyed poring, scooping, mixing and investigating the rice.

 This activity is also great for mark making. Older children could even write their names in the rice.

 Some of the other activities we have done this week are;

Coloured Spaghetti

 

Frogs in Green Jelly

Coloured pom poms and tubes

 Blue water and blue objects

Posting Pom Poms though coloured tubes

I have always been a fan of pom poms for developing fine motor skills and Hartley has enjoyed posting them through tubes since he was about 6 months old. 

This week I am doing lots of COLOUR activities with Hartley and the children I look after. I saw this idea on pinterest a few months ago and knew I had to do it 

 I painted the old wrapping paper tubes with colours that matched the pom poms I had. Luckily I also had matching coloured bowls.

I tied the tubes onto my fireguard but you could tape them to a wall or piece of furniture.

 Hartley loved this activity. He instantly knew what to do and keeps going back to it. He is a little bit too young to understand you have to match the colours yet, however I talk to him about the colours and I am sure by doing more and more activities like this he will begin to sort and match colours.

The older children I look after were able to sort the colours and have began to name the colours. 

The children have had lots of fun with the pom poms and have used them in lots of their play including filling cups with them and then pretending to drink them!

Of course pom poms should not be used with young children unsupervised, but I am a big believer that we should allow our children to develop their fine motor skills by handling small items.

I have lots of ideas of how I can extend this activity so watch this space!

Sensory Tea Time - using real ingredients

Hartley loves playing with his tea set at the moment. He spends hours pretending to serve his teddies tea and loves pouring water from his tea pot in the bath.
I decided to add a sensory element to his play and make it even more fun.

I put together a tray with his plastic tea set. I put water in one tea pot and filled a small jug with milk (I mixed a bit of milk with water) I then added pots of sugar, coffee granules and tea bags. I then left out the tray ready for Hartley and his friend to play and explore.

 Hartley loved scooping coffee and sugar and mixing it together.

They both enjoyed pouring the milk and water, sometimes they even poured it into the cups! I had to refill the pots many of times.

I then got a bowl so they could reuse the water and milk and it contained it better.  In the end this contained an amazing mixture of coffee, tea and milky water.

The great thing about using real ingredients was they got to feel the different textures and experienced the different smells.

The children played and explored all morning. We talked about the colours, textures, smells. The noises that the tea bags made when dropped into the water.

This was a great activity that I will be doing again soon. You could also use different types of coffee, hot chocolate or anything else you want. You could also use real tea pots if you wanted to.