“When you’re free, you can play and when you’re playing, you become free” – Heidi Kaduson
Rice play is something I have done with Molly several times over the last 2 years. I use this type of sensory activity a lot in my work and find it incredibly effective. I wanted to try a simple Christmas themed rice play activity to keep Molly occupied as the weather was set to be rather pants! All I did to colour the rice was mix normal white rice with food colouring and leave it to dry. I Then laid it out onto a baking tray, added a few pompoms and Christmas characters, a cup, funnel and spoon and left her to it. She was asleep when I set it up, so when she woke it was ready and waiting for her.
Play time..
Molly thoroughly enjoyed this activity and ran straight over to it when she woke up. She was picking up the grains of rice one by one and transferring them to the empty muffin tray, and sprinkling them into the funnel. Then she started passing handfuls of rice from from hand to hand, allowing it to fall through her fingers and giggling when it went everywhere! Using the spoon, she was scooping rice into the funnel that was sat in the cup. She’s then lift up the funnel and watch the rice fall through, before pouring the rice back into the tray and doing it all over again.
These may seem like simplistic actions for a toddler to do, and not incredibly exciting, but all of the above contribute to the development of fine motor skills. Poring into containers is allowing her to explore Math – concepts of volume and comparing relationships e.g. more, less, bigger, smaller. Experimenting with scoops, funnels ect helps develops early science skills.
Molly loves a good chat, and wasn’t shy about narrating everything she was doing to me. “scoop, pour, mess mama”. telling me the colours of the pompoms as she picked them up one by one and placed them into my hands. I’d then as her to find things. I’d give instructions like “where’s Santa?” ” Can you find a green pompom” and she would hand me what I’d asked her to find. Tasks like this help towards building language skills, but in a fun and playful way.
This was such a fun activity and Molly loved it. Highly recommend rice play for toddlers! As always, keep an eye on your child at all times,. Just in cease they start to put things in their mouths!
