I’ve been planning on starting a few sensory bins for my preschooler and have a long list of favorites that we are going to try. The other night, we made rainbow rice. This was a fun activity for my little to help make, and she is really enjoying the finished product. We looked at a few different suggestions, but here is the technique we used.

We added 1 cup of white rice each to six Ziploc baggies. To each baggie we added a different color of Wilton Icing Colors. Then we added 3 to 4 squirts of hand sanitizer to each bag. We sealed the bags and shook and squished them until the colors were mixed through. We poured the rice into a glass pyrex dish and let it sit out overnight to dry. Some of my icing color was chunky so I removed the chunks that didn’t dissolve. The next day we had beautifully colored rice that was ready to dig in. We got a little bit of color on our hands, but not much. And now that it has dried completely, it doesn’t transfer to our hands at all.

Last year we made “snow”. You can find that recipe here. Here are a few of the favorites from my list that we will be trying soon:

• Borax-free flubber. We’ll be using this recipe from Little Bins for Little Hands.
• Here is the Rainbow Slime recipe we are going to try.
• Super cool glowing sensory bottle from kids activities blog!
• No-cook play dough recipe from The Imagination Tree.

What are your favorite sensory bins or activities? We love trying suggestions from friends!