St.Patrick’s Day Lucky Green Sensory Bin
This is a fun easy to do sensory play activity that is great for the St. Patrick’s Day holiday or can be done with any color to help encourage color recognition. A rainbow of sugar would be pretty and would entice any toddler or preschooler to dig into sensory play.
What you need:
Sugar
White Rice
Macaroni Noodles
Green Food Coloring
Scoops, Spoons, Cups…
Step One:
Dyeing sugar is quite simple and can be used for many projects or recipes. All you do is put your sugar in a bowl or pan. Drop food coloring in the sugar all around and stir quickly. Use a spoon and squish the darker spots mixing them with the lighter spots till an even color is formed. You can’t let it sit for long before you stir or the color won’t take as easily.
The colored sugar alone is fun to play with. It smells nice and looks pretty. They can play in it like sand, use their fingers to practice letter writing, or use it as a cause and effect lesson ( such as if I pour this in the top of this, this will happen)…
Step Two:
Give the children scoops, spoons, or cups. Filling and dumping is a great motor skill building activity and kids LOVE to practice it.
Step Three:
Dyeing Rice is also very simple. I have done this before with great results but I used vinegar to help with the color process but we all hated the smell. This time I did not use the vinegar which caused a more uneven color but still they are green. It was a much more pleasant play experience with no dry time. All I did was put the rice in a bowl drop the liquid food coloring in and stir. You can also put it in a baggy and add the coloring and allow the kids to bounce around with it.
I did two different colors of green rice. One was dark and one was neon green.
Step Four:
Add the rice to your sugar… FUN!
Another fun addition is silicone baking cups. The kids love to “make” and decorate cupcakes!
Step Five:
For more fun add some dyed macaroni noodles. I dyed these the same way as the rice. Add your liquid food coloring and stir. They do require some dry time. I left these over night and stirred two times during their drying time to separate the noodles.
My daughter played for an hour with this and has asked to play with it again since we took these pictures!
Suggestions, requests, questions, or comments?
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