Sensory Play and Fine Motor Skills

We have quite a few bags of homemade colored rice (click for recipe) on hand so I decided to put them in the water table for something different – Sensory Play and Fine Motor Skills.

We ended up mixing the colors, which the kids thought looked really cool!

I took a variety of beads that I had on hand, and then curled some pipe cleaners around a pencil to make a bunch of spring-like coils (these serve as the bracelets).

I buried the beads and pipe cleaner coils under the rice in the table.  Of course, it’s a little tricky to hide all the beads, but it doesn’t matter.

Then I gave the kids instructions to each find a pipe cleaner, and uncoil it. It would become the bracelet that they would string their “treasures” on. They could search through the rice to find beads that they liked to make their own bracelets.

We had 4 kids at the water table at the same time, and it never got too crowded. They were entertained for quite a while!

When they were done making their bracelets, I had them continue to “dig for treasure” so I could retrieve as many beads as possible. Then I let my toddler take a turn. She LOVED it! She played with the rice for days!

Even my older girls loved serving us some rice inspired meals later in the week J. It was such a success, that I can’t wait to do it again!

Written by Anne