Sensory Bin with Colored Rice

We made our own little sensory bin today by filling it with colored rice. For this you will need, rice, rubbing alcohol, food coloring and a large container.  To color the rice put about 1 cup of rice in a ziploc bag.  Add in 3 Tbsp. of alcohol and lots of drops of color.  Seal the bag and squeeze to mix it all together.  Then lay out your rice on a cooking sheet to dry.  We actually put each color in the microwave for one minute and then laid it out to dry.  It dried completely in about 45 minutes. 

 Squish the bag! Olive loved this part!

 I got out some little toy animals for her to play with, but they only lasted a few minutes.

 She was much more into scooping the rice into different containers.  She used measuring cups, drinking cups, measuring spoons and eventually her hands!

 I thought it was interesting that with the measuring scoops, she would just scoop the rice, but to fill the measuring spoons, she would fill them by hand.  I am sure there is some psychological process going on here that I know nothing about! :)

She had a fantastic time with this activity!  As I am typing, she has been playing with the rice for 45 minutes and counting!  This is an eternity in Olive time! I think she likes it!

Pom Pom Fun!

This is such a simple activity, but Olive LOVES it.  Anytime she sees the bag with the pom pom balls in it, she grabs it and starts playing.  All you need is some pom pom balls (cotton balls would work too) and ice cube trays.  All they do is put the pom poms into the ice cube trays.

 There are a ton of ways to extend this activity to make it more "educational".  Have them count the pom poms when they put them in, create color patterns, or sort by color. A variation for older kids is to play with a partner and roll a dice and have them place in that many poms and then figure out how many more they need to fill it up, the first to fill the tray wins.   

 I use this activity with my Pre-k students, using a clothespin to put the pom poms in the trays which is great fine motor practice.  Olive wanted to try it, but her fingers aren't quite ready for that yet.