Pinned Up Monday!! Today's for the kiddos!

Good Morning!

Today is Pinned Up Monday - yay!  Today I'm sharing a fun and easy activity that you can do with your toddler.  And you probably have everything needed in you cupboard!  I found this on Pinterest and pinned it to my "For the Kiddo's" board - which is chalkful of fun activities, crafts and educational printables for Adam and I to do this summer!

{Kaleidoscope Rice courtesy of momtastic.com via Pinterest}

This was super easy to make.  Here's what you'll need...

Ziplock bags - we used sandwhich size but you can use larger if you're going to make larger amounts.

Vinegar

Rice

Food Coloring

1 Cup Measuring Cup

Tbsp Measuring spoon

Small cups to mix your food coloring in

Oh ya, and a willing assistant who fakes his smiles no matter how hard I try to get him to give a realy smile!

I poured 2 Tbsp of vingar into the glass bowl/cup, then Adam squeezed a few drops of the food coloring into the vinegar and stirred.

We created all of our colors first, that way I could put it all away as we went.  He then scooped up 1 C of white rice and put it in the plastic baggie - we had 4 colors so we made 4 baggies of rice.  Yes, it was a little messy for him to handle the rice and yes, I did consider just doing it for him and skip the mess, but I figured that a quick vaccum was worth him having a little more independence.

(I know, it's a blury shot - but hes scooping rice)

He then held open the bags while I poured the food coloring mix in.  Yep, I don't mind a little rice on the flour, but cleaning up food coloring did not sound like my idea of fun!

We then sealed the bag and went to town mixing the color into the rice.  This was a fun step for both of us.

I lined a cookie sheet with wax paper and we laid our rice out on it to dry.  We set it outside in the sun, it was dried after nap time (we made if in the late morning). 

I love when an activity keeps going and going...  so, I grabbed a few pieces of scratch paper, Adam's glue stick and pencil, a small plastic bin with a few random toys in it and a mason jar with scooper and we went outside to play with the rice.

First, I let him create a rice jar - do you remember doing that with sand?  I do.  So, I let him use a small measuring cup (I can't remember if it was 1/3 or 1/4 Cup) and one of my mason jars...

He scooped and scooped...

Color after color... and he narated the whole process, which is pretty cute.  He also pressed it in, because he needed that...

And here is our rice jar.  Which he was promptly ready to dump out.  So we moved on...

I grabbed this plastic bin and put different toys in it.  This was a good sensory, recall and guessing game.  I showed Adam all of the toys in the bin, then asked him to close his eyes.  I then poured the rice into the bin and he had to feel and grab the different objects in the bin.  I had him guess what they were and I wrote down the results, I starred the correct guesses and wrote down the incorrect ones.  It was pretty interesting, he did really well.

And last, we made rice art.  Adam drew pictures on his paper and then used his glue stick and rice to color his picture in.

And that was that.  We had fun play that I was educational at the same time - my favorite part of the project was the guessing sensory game (he made me do it too!), his favorite part was layering it in the jar.  He said he liked making a rainbow - which was such a cool way of looking at it!  I love hearing his explanations, it makes me look at things differently! 

So, that's it for me today!  I'll see you tomorrow with a fun 4th of July banner!

Andrea