Dear Reader,
I wasn’t fast enough. When you have twins and a busy preschooler, you find yourself saying that a lot. Today’s reason? I left the lid on the rice bucket open too long and my kids got into it. So I had a handful of rice that I didn’t consider safe for human consumption, but it still had some use to it… somehow. So I tried to think of what I could do with the rice. Usually it ends up as heat packs, but I don’t need a heat pack right now (they’re all freshly re-filled) and I DID need an activity for 2 busy toddlers, so when I walked past the teeny tiny containers that always come with storage containers but are hardly useful, I thought about making a few noisemakers for the girls. It took all of 2 seconds (really, grab the stuff and shake) to make and the girls loved them!
When I grabbed the colors I was thinking I was grabbing pink and teal, but honestly the dark blue and purple I ended up getting were pretty. I added 3 drops. It might have been a little overkill if I wanted lighter colors, but I wanted to make sure I had enough to color all the rice, and past experience said that was more than you’d think because the rice just sucks up the color. I didn’t have to add any color, I know; but I figured that a) the rice wasn’t edible anyway, and b) why not? Colors are fun.
I taped them closed. Never trust a toddler to keep a lid on! I was not in the mood to clean up colored rice all day. The colors actually turned out well, although this picture is slightly too exposed to really show it.
I considered making 4 instead of 2 because the girls kept stealing them for each other because the containers are small enough to fit in one hand, so they’d shake each container in one hand but then their sister would steal them back, etc. But they got along well enough passing them back and forth that I didn’t worry about it.
They really liked the cause and effect aspect of shaking the containers; liking that when they shook them something (noise) happened. And adding the colors made it fun, but also meant I could talk about how they were different – one was blue and one was purple. I mean, they really didn’t care, but maybe subconsciously they’re building new synapses. Truth is, I like color.
