Homeschool Thursday- Updated

Here is Emma checking out the glorious array of colors. She couldn't wait to get her hands in that stuff! In case you were wondering, they kept the colors separate for, ohhhhh about .005 seconds! They actually messed it up on purpose!! Even the big girls enjoy playing with the rice.

I look at the bag today there are 100 1/4 cup servings in a 10lb bag. If I sweep up a 1/4 cup everyday one bag should last........ at least a month maybe even two. But after a while we would have to add more. Which means more beautiful colors!!! Hooray!

R A I N B O W FUN

I ran across this fun activity quite by accident. We are using Spelling Power this year for our spelling, and one of the things that they recommend is writing your words in/on something textured, like rice. After Mekala practices her words we let Emma have some fun in the rice.

She has a lot of fun with it. And while I was searching the Internet looking for fun pre-school ideas I discovered that teachers color it and put it in their "discovery centers". Because I needed something to keep the babies busy while I school the big girls I was all over this idea.

Some of you may be well versed in coloring rice and the likes, but I had to look it up and no one had pictures, so I provided some. We had a lot of fun making colored rice, it also is a great way to teach primary colors and mixing colors.

There are two ways to color rice.
1. Liquid Water Color
2. Food Coloring & Alcohol

I will cover both ways (not that they are too different, but.....)
You will need rice (I bought a ten pound bag, but any amount will do), baggies and your coloring choice. I measured out 1 & 1/2 cups of rice and put it in the baggie. Note: if you are mixing you can get away with regular bags, but if your toddler is mixing I recommend freezer bags to cut down on tears and spills. Emma went through 3 regular baggies...... on one color.

Then you squirt in your liquid water color. Here, I am mixing green and blue for a pretty turquoise color. The more you use the richer your color will be, and the less white rice you will have. Mekala made yellow, Hannah - green, Sarah - Orange and Emma - Olive.

Zip the bag closed and start mixing. Yes I know it is almost too easy to go to all this trouble, but what can I say I love blogging, colors and pictures, so I couldn't resist. You can see here how there are white pieces left, it makes a pretty look.

Ta - Da. There you have it. These are all the colors we made from the Liquid water colors. Which you can order online from Discount School Supplies. Click here for Discount's web site There is tons of cool stuff you can do with it. And as we experiment we will share.

Here are the Food coloring bags. If you are in a hurry, or on a budget Food Coloring is great (I bought the NEON colors and boy do the colors POP). Put a tsp of Alcohol and your desired amount of food coloring in the bottom of a baggie, add 3/4 cup of rice and seal bag. I doubled the recipe so I would have the same amount of each color.

One of the downfalls of using the food coloring method is, you have to let it dry and it stinks. I put it on wax paper in a cookie sheet and let it sit out for a few hours. And in food coloring vs watercolor battle..... watercolor is washable, food coloring is not.

Our complete color wheel (sort of).

There is the finished product. all lined up and out of the baggies. WAAAY COOL. Fifteen colors, and ten pounds of rice waiting for a textile adventure with Sarah and Emma, and I'm sure Mekala and Hannah too ;)

Add a few utensils and we hopefully have hours of discovery fun waiting for the babies. Some of the bonuses of rice are that it is easy to sweep up, unlike sand, but is just as fun to pour and mix. Also if they get tired of it in a few days, we can pour it in to big bags and put something else in the "discovery center". (aka large cheep tub from Target)

I 'll let you know how it goes later, and how long they will keep the colors separated. And I'll also share some of the other cool things we do in our discovery center when we get tired of the rice.