Our Regular Life: Coloured Rice!

I've been getting pretty bored with being cooped up inside the house all winter long (we can only go outside for short periods of time since someone won't leave her mittens on), especially now that Laura is feeling better and actually has enough energy to get off the couch and do things other than watch movies over and over.

So, yesterday we made "insh rice". For those of you who don't speak Toddlerese, this translates to "Orange rice". Laura's seemingly favourite colour right now is orange (or maybe it's just the colour she can consistently get correct - it's a fine line), and the other day we attempted to make some orange Flubber (that failed). She had been asking for "insh" every time we go into the kitchen since then, so yesterday I suggested we could make some orange rice. When we were getting set up, she also proclaimed that she wanted "geen rice", too. I made the executive decision that we should have three different colours, and going with the 'secondary colours' theme, I picked purple.

I loosely followed the directions from here, but basically I just put 1/3 cup of white rice in a baggie with a splash of vinegar and a few drops of the food colouring of choice. It's definitely not an exact science. Laura was excited to help shake up the bag/ smoosh the rice around, and she did a really good job, too! (The last few days have been exciting for me because Laura has actually showed interest in fun activities like this, unlike before when all she wanted to do was play with reusable ice cubes). After we were satisfied with the colours, we spread the rice on an old pan and put it in the oven @ 170 for 10 minutes. When it was done, we mixed it all up and it looked like Mardi Gras! :)

Today we went out and got a bigger bin to keep it in so we could make the rest of the colours. Laura actually did a good job of trying to keep it contained while stirring it with her wand, and scooping it back and forth between buckets. Luckily, it is much easier to clean up than sand, and as an added bonus, not so toxic if she happens to decide to try and eat it!