Rainbow Scented Rice

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My kids adore playing with rice sensory bins. It is by far one of their favorite quiet time activities. I love how simple it is…but I cannot stand the smell of rubbing alcohol or vinegar. The harshness of both give me a headache. I could not even imagine running my hands through it to play. So, a rainbow rice made without vinegar or rubbing alcohol was a must!

This Rainbow Rice doesn't use vinegar or rubbing alcohol -- it smells AMAZING!

We have tried a couple different solutions to be able to dye rice without either vinegar or rubbing alcohol. So far we have made glow in the dark sensory rice and have dyed rice using essential oils. This sensory rice though has by far been a favorite. Kids love the vibrant colors and the playful scents! And making it is ridiculously easy!

Items Needed for Scented Rainbow Rice

  • Kool-Aid Packets in ROYGBIV
  • Water
  • Rice
  • Ziplock bags

This Rainbow Rice doesn't use vinegar or rubbing alcohol -- it smells AMAZING!

Directions

Making this rice will take about a day. You will use one ziplock bag for each color you decide to make. For each bag I used approximately 2 cups of rice. There is no right or wrong here, just remember that it is easier to add more rice than to remove excess rice. Then in each bag dump in the corresponding Kool-Aid color.


We used:

  • Red – Fruit Punch
  • Orange – Orange
  • Yellow – Mango
  • Green – Green Apple
  • Blue – Berry Blue (be careful with blue some blue packages have red Kool-Aid in them)
  • Purple – Grape

This Rainbow Rice doesn't use vinegar or rubbing alcohol -- it smells AMAZING!

Slowly add in water. The same rule used for the rice applies to the water. Add in a little at a time, shake, and add more if need be. I started with 1/4 a cup.

Then set the bags, left open, somewhere safe that they can dry. I put mine on a window sill and then every time I walked past them I gave them a good shake. By the next morning they were ready to play!

This Rainbow Rice doesn't use vinegar or rubbing alcohol -- it smells AMAZING!

We didn’t add any toys to our rainbow rice, although we did eventually pull out our favorite fine motor scoops from Learning Resources.

This was such a fun sensory bin!

This Rainbow Rice doesn't use vinegar or rubbing alcohol -- it smells AMAZING!

If your family plays with this sensory bin we would love to see the fun! Tag us on Facebook with @Parenting Chaos or on Instagram with #ParentingChaos

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