Rice Play

We love rice in this house. We love it in sushi and we love it for playing with as well. Rice creates such a sensory play experience for children and can be reused over and over again for different games and activities, and can be as messy or contained as you like. Today we used a huge cooking pot to hold some rice while we experimented with funnels and tongs, and used containers and cups to practice pouring and explore volume. We also pulled out the box of recycling things and used empty toilet rolls to pour the rice down and counted how many scoops it took to fill different jars to the top.

WE USED:
* a large cooking pot, bowl, box or similar.
* rice - as much as you like
* things to use for rice play - funnels, animal toys, jars, cups, bowls, spoons etc...
* a mat or sheet to play on is a good idea for making clean up easy, like a bedsheet or a large plastic table cloth.

Other ideas: you can colour rice by mixing it well with a small amount of food colouring and leaving it spread out on newspaper to dry before using. Use coloured rice to make layers in jars or mix it up to make rainbow rice. Fill clean dry empty bottles or jars to make shakers, and experiment with measuring cups and spoons. You can also hide small toys and objects amongst the rice for children to dig out with shovels or discover using large holed sieves.