Fun with Dyed Rice

Another perfect craft for rainy day weather.  It is like playing with colored sand, but the process of making it is half the fun for the kiddos :)

What you NEED:
* 1 cup of dry white rice for each color you want (I made 6 colors = 6 cups of rice)
*food coloring (There are some fun colors out there now, but I just used the main 4 and mixed for other colors)
*vinegar (1-2 tbsp per color)
*plastic sandwich bags, 1 bag per color x2 (one bag per color for the wet process, and one for storage once it is dry)
*cookie sheet(s); used for drying out the rice
*a dish for mixing colors
*paper or card stock (since the glue gets paper soggy you might prefer card stock)
*glue

Optional:
*wax or parchment paper, this makes it easier to pour the rice back into baggies

What Next?
1. Pour a 1 cup of rice into each ziplock bag
2. In the mixing dish mix your vinegar and food coloring
3. Pour the liquid mixture into the bag of dry rice and close tight getting rid of as much air as possible.
4. Now the fun part for the kids... mush the rice around in the bag until all of the rice gets colored.  If the color is not as vibrant as you want simply open the bag drop, some more color in, close up and mush some more.
5. Once the rice is evenly colored pour it onto the cookie sheet to dry.

You can see I only eyeballed my 1 cup of rice.

6. Once it is dry pour it back into a dry bag.  **This is why I loved using the wax paper.** What I did, if you look at the image above, is push the rice to the sides and cut down the center so that I could easily pour the rice into the bag.

**another trick I learned from Andy's grandpa: put the bag into a mug and pour in without needing more hands than we have ;)

 Now the kids are ready to play and get creative with the rice.

We used glue bottles to draw the designs and sprinkle rice onto the wet glue.  Again, I used the cookie sheets for easy clean up to pour the extra rice back into the bags. 

You could also have an extra bag for a rainbow selection of mixed colors.

Ta Da!