Kids Co-op Link Up

 

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Its time for Kids Co-op. Please link up your child orientated posts. I will be linking up the following:

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(Goblin is 35 months)

I am sure nearly everyone who has ever read a blog has come across a rainbow rice tutorial by now. But just in case there is one lone person out there desperate to know how to colour rice so their kids can have a colourful sensory experience, I am throwing my hat into the ring with my second rainbow rice tutorial - you can find my first here. 

Before you start colouring your rice you should decide where you are going to dry it - it needs to be spread out so it will dry so you need a relatively large surface that your child isn't going to be able to get at. I chose a big under the bed storage box on top of the cooker so I could use the cooker's extractor fan - you will find out why in a minute. 

You will need

• rice
• surgical spirit or alcohol based antibacterial hand gel
• decent food colouring (we used Sugarflair Paste Colours)
• sandwich bags - zip lock or stick down are best (you can actually use regular plastic carrier bags if they haven't got breathing holes in them)

Decide how many colours you will use and take that many sandwich bags and fill them evenly with rice. Having said that if you have lots of darker colours you may want to make a larger quantity of the lighter colours - like yellow - to brighten up the rice once its all mixed together.

Once you have the rice in the bags add your food colouring. If you are using the pastes you really only need the tiniest amount (you can always add more). If you add too much it takes longer to dry and is more likely to leave clumps that will stain hands and clothes. 

Finally add a small squidge of hand gel or less than a tablespoon of surgical spirit to each bag. Rather than adding the gel to every bag I suggest adding to one at a time, then sealing that bag, shaking the contents until it looks like the colour has taken evenly, then moving to the next bag to add hand gel. The reason for this is that if you do all the bags and then start shaking by the time you get to the last one the alcohol may have evaporated a bit. 

Once you have all your rice coloured, pour the contents out onto your tray/tub/newspaper and leave over night for the alcohol to evaporate leaving dry coloured rice. This can really stink the room up and probably isn't great for your kids to inhale - hence me drying mine under an extractor fan. Don't be tempted to let your kids play with the rice before its completely dry unless you want to be picking rice off their clothes and your surfaces for weeks to come. 

Once its dry tip it out and Play!

And now for the linky