Playing with Colored Rice

Playing with colored rice is one of the easiest play ideas. We’ve been playing with colored rice as a sensory base for a long time. But I realize some of you may not know how wonderful colored rice is to play with. It’s easy to make and leads to lots of play time in sensory bins. Before I share how we played with it, I’ll share how to color rice.

Here’s what you need:

1 tablespoon (about) of rubbing alcohol
1 bag of white rice
food coloring (I used gel food coloring)
Ziploc gallon-size bag
wax paper
cookie sheet

To start out, place the rice in a Ziploc gallon-size bag. Then pour about 1 tablespoon of rubbing alcohol in the bag (or enough to coat the rice). Close the bag and shake it around. Then drop in some food coloring. Close the bag and shake some more. Let it sit for about 5 minutes.

Then pour the rice onto cookie sheets lined with wax paper or parchment paper.

Let it sit until the rice is dry. It takes a couple hours to dry.

After the rice was dry, I mixed them together and even sprinkled in some more white rice.

Then I placed the rice in a large bin along with tools to play with it. I put in a small shovel, scooper, cups, vase, funnels and more.

The kids were so excited to get their hands into the rice! It feels so wonderful!

I think their favorite thing to play with was the funnel!

The played with the rice for about an hour. Even dad played with them! Playing with rice may seem so simple, it really is a great sensory play activity. Honestly, I think my kids play with colored rice more than they do with their toys!

I also put the rice into an empty water bottle and added some blue confetti to make a sensory bottle for my baby. He loves to look at it now, but when he’s older, he will be able to shake it. It’s our January sensory bottle and you can see all the sensory bottles I’ve made here.