That Satisfying Feeling
Sensory play or activities that stimulate senses like touch, smell, hearing, sight, and movements, do not just benefit small kids or toddlers but anybody of different age. By stimulating the senses, these activities greatly improve the brain development by strengthening its neural pathways.
We love working with playdough -- I make it from scratch using food-grade ingredients to make sure that my kids get to play with safe materials. The mere kneading of the dough is so satisfying even for me as an adult, and even feels like a stress reliever.
Colorful Rice
I decided to make these colorful rice for a change today. Not intending to put too much to waste, I only used 1 cup of uncooked rice and made three colors out of them.
First, I divided the rice and put them into three separate cups then added water. As we want it to be visually appealing and stimulating, we add a few drops of food coloring to each cup and let it stand for at least 10 minutes. For this activity, I used red, green and orange colors. Look at how bright they are!
Once the colors have penetrated the rice, drain the water and let it dry completely. I kept them under the sun for around 30 minutes (hey, it's desert summer! It's too easy to dry even your blood. LOL).
What should we do with it?! My two little ones asked.
"Hmmm, how about I mix them together and then you sort them again per color and count all the bits?" I asked.
Of course, I got a big glare from my Little Madam. "That will take forever, Mommy!"
They're like rainbow sprinkles!
Oh, do I even have to reiterate how obsessed my kids are to "rainbow sprinkles"? They love it on their cakes, donuts, ice cream...
So when I put all the colored rice together into one bowl, they were so happy to see it look like, yeah, rainbow sprinkles!
For my Little Man, we did some scooping exercises -- try to transfer the rice from one bowl to another without spilling. For some reason, he did not like to touch it with his hand and we used spoon for his activity. I guess I will have to try it out with him again tomorrow.
Little Miss on the other hand, extremely enjoys playing with it. She loves putting her hands in the bowl and covering them with the rice. She also squeezes the rice into her hands until it breaks into smaller bits (the rice became brittler and breaks easily after the soaking).
Needless to say, Little Miss came up with lots of things to make with these colorful bits. I even saw her put some colored cotton for added texture. One moment, she even played "cooking" with it. The sound of the rice being transferred from one bowl to another also was quite satisfying.
I am glad that she liked what I prepared for them today, and the cup of rice did not really go to "waste". Even I feel good each time I touch the rice and play it with them. It's a little messy, with the a few bits spilling here and there, but nothing that is really out of control. I let them play at the dining table so it is easier to clean up afterwards.
We can still keep this rice for a few days (or a couple of weeks even), and try to do more exercises with it. Any suggestions you can give, on how we can make use of these colorful bits in our playtime?
