DIY Rainbow Rice - Complete these easy steps in 15 minutes
Making Rainbow Rice
Today we're going to share a quick and easy DIY for you - rainbow rice. This is a great way to get extended play out of your existing toys - or even random things you have around the house. At our home J loves rainbow rice and it'll keep him busy for a good 30 minutes... which is a lot in toddler time.
What you'll need:
- White Rice
- Food colouring
- Vinegar
- Clean container(s)
- Small mixing bowl(s)
- Optional: medicine dropper
- Optional: flat pan
For this DIY you can make as many colours as you would like. However we recommend that you create a minimum of two colours for some variety. You don't have to use up too much rice for this too - it could be as little as 1/2 cup split up into 1/4 cups per colour. If you're trying to fill up a bin, you can increase as necessary.
- Measure out around 1/3 cup of rice and pour it into a clean empty container.
- In a separate bowl, add 3-4 drops of food colouring to equal parts vinegar. To make things easier, we used one of the medicine droppers we had around the house.
- When mixing the food colouring to the rice, you want just enough of the colour mixture to coat the rice while remaining as dry as possible.
- Optional: if your mixture is too wet, you can try to add a little be more rice. Adjust as needed for remaining colours.
- Once fully coated, lay out the rice in a pan or a clean container and let it dry overnight. Two nights for good measure.
- Ensure rice is fully dry before playing.
Time to play!
Cleaning Rainbow Rice
Once you're finished playing, it's possible to salvage most of the rice - even on carpet. Usually we'll grab the takeout container lid and scrape it towards the natural direction of the carpet. Once you have enough piled up you can store away what you can grab. For hard surfaces, a dust brush and pan should work well.
Remaining rice: Vacuum.
Tip: we try to contain the play area so that we don't end up with rice throughout the whole room or house. This makes it a bit more easy to clean.
Storing Rainbow Rice
Storing the rice is simple, you can re-purpose an old takeout container and just store at room temperature. We had ours for a few months now and it still hasn't spoiled.
Pictured: Goki number puzzle.