Christmas Sensory Rice
This is a visually enticing Christmas Sensory messy play idea which is ideal for babies and toddlers. It is quick and easy to set up using resources in your kitchen cupboard. Messy play is fantastic for a child’s development as it encourages and develops so many important skills; such as imagination, independence, exploration and thinking skills. Read more here
Set Up
For this activity I used one of our big oven trays as the sound of the rice against the metal of the tray added an extra sensory experience for my 2 year old. I used popping corn for the star, dyed salt and rice for the green of the Christmas tree and holly leaf and dyed red rice for the heart. The dyed rice and salt were leftovers from a previous activity. If you need to dye the rice, it is best to this a few hours before you plan to do the activity. I have found that the gel based food colouring work best. I added green and red pom poms to add a different texture to this Christmas messy play idea.
My toddler was immediately drawn to this activity. The first thing he did was lift up all the Christmas cookie cutters to spill the coloured messy play resources into the tray. It was visually very appealing as the red and green riced mixed with the white rice.
My two year old and I spent a long time playing with this Christmas messy play activity. We put the rice back into the cookie cutters so that they could be lifted again.
I have kept this messy play activity out on my son’s table for the week and each day I have added something else for him to scoop and move the rice around with.