Toddler "School"-- homemade colored rice

It seems to be all about keeping little people busy around here, and today was no exception.

I have seen in Montessori catalogs and websites the value of pouring, scooping, dumping, and getting your toddlers hands into things. Things like rice, for instance.

I wrote a recipe down a while ago for homemade colored rice and today to got to making it.

2 cups rice ( I got a 5 cup bag from the dollar store)

2 tsp. food coloring

3 tsp. rubbing alcohol

a container to shake it all up in.

Mix the food coloring and rubbing alcohol together in a container with a secure lid. Add the rice to this. (I was surprised to find that the food coloring DID NOT stain the plastic Gladware container that I used.)

Make sure the lid is on very tight, and shake, shake, shake. Shake until all the rice is colored.

Place the rice on a cookie sheet to dry. This took a couple hours.

We then mixed up some blue. The colors came out more vibrant than I thought they would.

Daddy even took a few minutes before soccer practice to help Kimberly shake, shake, shake.

We had a lesson in patience, and then we all had fun. I was at the thrift store today and bought this little creamer and two little shot glasses for $1.50. Kim, Luke, and suprisingly, Grace enjoyed pouring the little "teapot" (especially after yesterday's teaparty) into the little shot glasses.
It took quite a bit of practice to pour carefully enough to just fill the shotglass without overflowing it. They had to move slowly not to spill the rice. Kim and Luke achieved this more often than Grace, who is 6 years old, compared to the 2 and 3 year old.

Grace has always been, well lets just say, active. Very active. Impulsive and quite excitable. If I was to label her, she would get an ADHD label. But I will not label her. I will work with her, trying to find the best way to help her control her impulsiveness.

Any and all suggestions to do this would be greatly appreciated.

After about 45 minutes, yes, 45 minutes! I got out some little animals and we had fun having adventures with the animals in the rice. Kimberly, being very motherly, lined her animals up and fed them.

Luke on the other hand, played lets kill the animals by burying them in quicksand. He did later save them, which comforted this mother quite a bit.

There you have it.... Toddler School fun....family style!