Rice Box Fun

In college, I volunteered at a children's hospital. Every floor had an activity center for the kids to play in and all the younger ones were obsessed with a simple box of colored rice. I have been excited to make one for Claire for quite a while, so as soon as I thought she might be old enough to enjoy it, I got to work! 

I bought six 5-lb. bags of rice at the grocery store and dyed each one a different color - red, yellow, blue, green, orange and purple. To dye them, you put four cups of rice in a plastic bag with two tablespoons of vinegar and twelve drops of food coloring. Shake it until all the rice has absorbed the color. I was worried about weevils {we got them once from rice and it was a huge, gross mess} so I spread the contents of the plastic bag on two cookie sheets and stuck them in the oven at 250 for ten minutes. Each 5-lb. bag of rice contains about twelve cups, so I had to repeat the process three times for each color. It took four or five hours total, but most of that time was spent waiting on the oven. Not too shabby! 

I dumped all the rice in a plastic storage container and thew in some cheap sand toys from Ikea. Little cars or trucks would also be a good idea though! 

Claire seems to be a pretty big fan so far! She is a little young for it, I think, and gets the most enjoyment from just throwing the rice out of the container. But it still keeps her occupied for a quite a while, so I'll take it.

It's a balcony-only toy, so cleaning up is pretty easy {just sweeping up the rice and tossing it back into the box.} The morning after I finished dyeing all the rice, it was raining outside so I let Claire test it out in the kitchen. 

We're still finding rice on the floor. Never again...