* Patriotic Rice Sensory Box

To celebrate the 4th of July

and 

Week 2 of the 

Smart Summer Challenge: Government Week 

we made Red, White and Blue rice 

for a sensory box and our own Patriotic Eye Spy bottle. 

We added sparkly pom-poms, buttons, 

play money (we talked about who the guys on there are!)

tooth pick flags, coins, and beads to our box. 

I also added some patriotic rubber duckies but they're not in this photo. 

For the colored Red and Blue Rice

we dyed some rice in two batches with red and blue liquid food coloring,

separated into ziplock bags,

with a few pumps of alcohol-based hand sanitizer massaged in 

to cure the color. 

I had to use quite a bit of food coloring the get the colors so bright.

Then, we let it dry on a paper towel on a shallow dish.

(Helpful Hint: Gel food coloring will give you brighter colors)

For the "White" rice we just left the rice plain. 

Happy Playing!

This post is part of the Smart Summer Challenge.

Fondly,

pink and green mama

MaryLea