Colourful Rice and Pasta

Bean loves helping dye rice and pasta. She enjoys stirring the food colouring into the white vinegar or rubbing alcohol base and watching the colour spread out. Then she pours the rice or pasta in and mixes it up with a spoon. I assist at the end to make sure the colour is mixed in evenly.

The recipe is simple:

A few teaspoons or tablespoons of either white vinegar or rubbing alcohol (we used white vinegar with the pasta and rubbing alcohol with the rice, both have the same result and the smell goes away shortly after they dry), depending on how much rice/pasta you plan on dyeing. 

Liquid food colouring (we used the McCormick brand)

Pasta or rice

Coloured rice is fun in sensory bins, but this time we used it with the new CAT construction vehicles we picked up at Target. Munchkin and Bean loved mixing the rice with their hands as well as pushing it around with the backhoes and loaders. 

We use the pasta as a base for our bigger sensory bins. Sometimes we keep the colours separate and do colour themed bins or mix them altogether for a rainbow themed bin. We also use them for colour sorting activities. The coloured penne, and any tube-like pasta, can be used like beads to string them together on thread or pipe cleaners. Penne and farfalle (bow-tie) pasta can be used in caterpillar and butterfly activities. 

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Sorting Colours

Bean and I are trying to teach Munchkin how to say colour names and how to sort them. Bean likes to use pom pom balls, but Munchkin is more familiar with his foam cubes. Sadly, his cubes only come in four colours, but it's a start. So we lined up four bowls and Bean showed him how to sort them by colour.

He then realized what we were doing.. and his thoughts must have gone to the last time we sorted colours using the pom poms because he ran off and came back with his tractor. At the end of our last sorting colours game we had used the tractor to toss up each pom pom to haul it away..

And so it happened with the cubes as well. We will sort the colours another day.. in the meantime it's time to play :)

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Beans and Pasta Sensory Bin

One of our regular sensory bins is food based. We use a mix of dried beans and any assortment of pastas.

Today we chose to use penne because Munchkin has been practicing his fine motor skills. Bean likes to show him how to do it.

We normally use Cheerios or beads for this activity, so it was exciting to see how quickly they adjusted to the penne despite it being bigger and harder to put on the pipe cleaner.

Bean also enjoyed the challenge of putting the penne on the soba noodles, as they would snap if she wasn't too gentle. We explored the durability and flexibility of the penne and the soba noodles. The penne could resist pressure (using their hands to press down on it and squeezing it) and the soba was flexible enough to bend it gently before POP! it would snap and pieces would go flying. Bean made sure every piece of soba was broken before we cleaned up this bin. She had so much fun!

And of course, more scooping and pouring :)

Then we decided to add old fashioned oatmeal which we haven't used in a sensory bin in such a long time! (Mainly because we have all discovered how good overnight oatmeal is in yogurt.)

But it was munched on along with some animal crackers that had wandered into the bin...

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Beach Themed Sensory Bin

Today it was very cold and we had been hoping for some more nice, warm weather. But that is not our luck here in New England. So the trip to the park was cancelled and instead we decided to play in the sand in our living room. Bean loves digging and Munchkin loves adding things to sensory bins, so sometimes we have to build two separate ones, but today we were able to make a compromise. We let Munchkin pour the sand into the bin and then we played on the side with a bowl of shells and rocks while we gave Bean some time to dig in just the sand.

(Kaede needed to see what was going on so she poked her nose in to check it out.)

For our beach themed sensory bin we added assorted shells, river rocks, a chunk of old coral, sand dollars and blue, green and clear glass rounds.

After a few minutes Munchkin wanted to join, so he began adding the shells and rocks to the bin. He showed her that she could use the sand dollars to scoop the sand and she showed him how to build a little hut.

Then they took turns with the shovel pushing the shells around and scooping sand into their pail.

Bean, who normally doesn't like gritty textures, LOVED getting her hands into the sand. She molded the sand into mounds and then into balls to show me.

She had already crushed the ball before I could take a picture. The sand was slightly moist so it could be moldable. 

Trying to mimic his sister. And of course he wanted to put his feet in..

And when the kids wanted to move on to the next bin, Kaede was awarded her choice of rocks for being so patient and waiting for her turn.  

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Edible Paint

Munchkin loves to paint, but he still puts things in his mouth. That means that there have been a few times that he has dunked his paintbrush into a cup of regular paint and proceeded to feed himself.. He never much cared for the taste, which is lucky, but I don't want to deprive him of the fun experience either. Normally we make our paints in the kitchen, but whenever Bean receives paints for Christmas or her birthday, we have to shelf it until we can manage to find a time that Munchkin will go down for a nap and she can enjoy them without him eating them on her.

Thus we make edible paints! This way they can both enjoy painting and I don't have to worry about either of them getting it in their mouths. Our favourite base for edible paint is yogurt (we use vanilla Chobani Greek yogurt), then we add about a tablespoon of milk and a few drops of food colouring. After that you just mix it all together and serve it in small bowls. We have a round plastic tray from the Dollar Tree that we use to paint on. Today we made yellow, green, blue, purple and red. We also added some sprinkles that were leftovers from decorating Christmas treats (although they dumped them out and ate them rather than using them to sprinkle in their paint cups).

Munchkin is always delighted when he can taste the colours he's painting with. We didn't add any flavouring today but sometimes we do. It is also interesting to give them different things to paint with instead of the brushes, like cinnamon sticks and pretzel rods, or nuts like walnuts and almonds. They will swirl them around on the tray and watch for the designs they leave behind. You can also give them spoons to practice scooping and feeding themselves.

Pudding is also a fun edible paint. We love mixing vanilla pudding with crushed chocolate chip cookies and chocolate pudding with crushed Oreos, then driving through it with construction trucks and hunting for gummy worms and digging for buried treasure. :)

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Painting

For Bean's 3rd birthday she got a new set of paints. Normally we wait for Munchkin to take a nap before we take out the real paints because he likes to taste each colour. For him I typically mix some food colouring into vanilla pudding or plain Greek yogurt and let him paint with that since I won't have to worry about him putting it in his mouth. The only problem with Bean painting is.. she always manages to get paint all over her glasses, so on this particular day we set them aside.

For Bean, mixing is essential. She rarely ever keeps colours in their separate cups. She always ends up mixing them together and making a mess. But so long as she is having fun I am happy :)

Works of art!

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Painting With Tea

We have done this kind of activity with spices before but today we tried something new and used tea leaves! I am constantly drinking tea, so I am surprised that I never thought to use the wet tea leaves before. We normally use cinnamon since we love the smell, but coffee grinds will also work.
Simply mix a small amount of water into the spices, ground coffee or tea leaves (for the last two I would suggest using them first so you aren't actually wasting them). This kind of activity can also be used to teach colours, but mainly we were doing it to explore the textures and watching the tea stain the paper. In the future I will now be saving all my used tea leaves to dry and save for this project.
We used an old fruit tray to hold the tea and water. Bean enjoyed lifting the tray and moving it around to watch the water slide and mix with the tea leaves. This was a good exercise to teach her coordination to prevent the water from spilling over the side.

Bean added her Hello Kitty toys to splash around in the "mud" as she called it :)

Munchkin was all about painting his face instead of the paper.

Bean being silly.

Munchkin tasting the tea paint.

Playing in the mud.

Suggestions for colours - spice painting
Brown - cinnamon
Orange - turmeric
Yellow - ground mustard seed
Red - paprika

We normally use powdered sugar for White and dried basil for Green.

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