Sensory play is one of the best ways to encourage children to get creative, use their imagination and develop their senses! One of the most popular types of sensory play is playing with coloured rice. Playing with different coloured rice provides children with both a tactile and visual sensory experience.
With different coloured rice, children can make a variety of different themed sensory rice bins and activities. In this blog, we explore some of the most fun and creative coloured rice sensory play ideas out there! From rainbow theme to ocean themed, valentines day themed and Halloween themed rice sensory play, there is an idea in this post that every child will love!
Seasonal Ideas
Valentine’s Day Rice
To create a base for a valentines day themed rice sensory bin just mix red and pink rice together.
Some great items to add to a valentine day themed rice sensory bin are heart-shaped confetti, toy hearts, heart-shaped scoops and bright red and pink flower petals.
Fall Harvest Rice
To create a base for a harvest-themed sensory rice bin just mix yellow, orange and brown rice together.
Some great autumn-theme resources to add in are pumpkins, autumn leaves, pine cones, autumn-coloured pom poms, and seeds.
Take this activity to the next level by getting your children to play with this fall harvest rice mixture with our autumn leaves mini tuff tray mat.
Christmas Rice
To make Christmas-themed rice just mix red and green rice together.
Make your Christmas-themed sensory bin extra festive by adding in Christmas-themed pom poms, figures, sequins and sponge stampers.
Springtime Rice
To create a base for springtime rice sensory bins just mix a variety of pastel-coloured rice together.
Add in some flower petals, toy bunnies and butterflies and resources from our spring colours collage pack to create the ultimate spring-themed rice sensory bin!
Halloween Rice
To create a base for your Halloween rice sensory bin just mix orange, black and purple rice together.
Add in some spooky resources like black and white googly eyes, toy spiders, bug toys, toy bones, neutral-coloured pom poms, witches’ cauldrons and Halloween paint sponges.
To make this sensory bin truly spook combine it with resources from our Halloween tuff tray kit!
Ideas for Small World Play
Rainbow Rice
For this just mix multiple colours of rice together to create a rainbow effect. Add in small toys, scoops, kitchen utensils and containers and let your children explore all the colours of the rainbow.
Get children to try and organise different coloured rice into a nice rainbow or get messy and mix and match colours together to create new ones.
Ocean Rice
To create a base for ocean-themed rice sensory bins just mix blue and green rice together. Some resources that are great to add to this are ocean animal figures and sea beans. To enhance ocean-themed rice play why not put on an ocean waves projector to get children truly immersed in their ocean world?
Some great resources to play with ocean-coloured rice are coral reef tuff tray mats or under-the-sea tuff tray play sets.
Galaxy Rice
To make galaxy rice for a galaxy sensory bin just mix black, purple and blue rice together alongside glitter.
To emphasise the galaxy theme add in some galaxy-related toys like stars, aliens and rocket ships.
Combine your galaxy rice mixture with our space tuff tray play sets to take this activity to another dimension!
Dinosaur Rice
To create a realistic environment for your children’s dinosaur figures just mix green and brown rice together.
Some great resources to add to a dinosaur-themed rice activity would be pretend mini dinosaur skulls and bones, dinosaur figures, dinosaur footprints and ancient fossil toys!
Further, emphasise the dinosaur theme with our dinosaur tuff tray play set or Jurassic-themed mini tuff tray mat.
Beach Rice
Beach rice is the easiest themed rice to make! Just mix tan or brown rice together.
Then add in some resources that would normally fit beach environments. Some great additions are sea shells, small buckets, toy beach balls and sand rakes.
Final Thoughts
Themed rice sensory play is a fun and interactive way to engage children in imaginative and sensory play.
By mixing different colours of rice with various resources, children can explore and learn about different themes and environments whilst stimulating their senses and developing their motor skills.
Whether it’s a rainbow rice or an ocean rice sensory play activity or something more specific like a dinosaur or Halloween-themed rice activity, or something more specific like a dinosaur or Halloween-themed rice activity, there is no limit to the creative possibilities with coloured rice!
Grab some rice and resources, and get ready to let your child’s imagination run wild with these fun and easy sensory play ideas!
