Rainy Day Mom + a DIY and Tips

The weather here is very weird lately.  Yesterday it was 60+ and sunny and today it was 39 and freezing rain.  With weather like this, it's very hard to bring little man anywhere.  I hate being cold and the rain is just yuck, so I tend to try to stay in.  It's not very exciting for little man, so I try to do something special for him.  And by special, I usually mean a play with textures.  It can be with the water table, or playing with snow from outside, or yogurt painting. Playing with textures is so important because it's teaching (and letting them) learn with their fingers. 

Today I made a little colored rice and this way was a lot easier than I expected! I had looked up how to do this before, and all the "recipes" I had looked up before took a boatload of time and involved more ingredients/supplies that I didn't really want to do/use.  I played around with this and it still only took about 10 minutes of prep work for at least a half hour of independent play!

Here's how I made our little mixture:

What You Need:

• Rice
• Food Coloring
• A Container to Mix/Microwave
• A Hand Sweeper (for Pick Up/optional)
• A Tablecloth/waterproof blanket (For easier clean up/optional)

What You Do:
1. Pour the amount of rice you'd like in a microwave safe container.
2. Place some drops of food coloring in the rice and swirl (or mix) the food coloring in the rice.  If you aren't satisfied with the color, you can always add more food coloring. 
3. Place the whole cup inside the microwave, and microwave the rice for 5 seconds at a time to dry the coloring to the rice.  It took me about 15 seconds for my rice to feel dry. 
4. Pour into container to cool down/to make more!

It was a big hit with my little guy!   I put our waterproof blanket down and just left the tub there with some trucks in it.  I let him find it himself. It took him about 3 seconds to be into it with his trucks! 

                                  

                               

Letting kids play with messy textures is hard.  I can think of 8973497 reasons not to.  It's messy.  It goes everywhere.  They don't play with it for long.  The list goes on and on... but I do have some things that I keep in mind when I'm thinking of texture play for my little guy. 

• Expect a mess.  It is messy. It's not going to stay in one place or one container (see below). But know it's not a mess to make a mess... they are learning.  Feeling it with their fingers and pushing it and swirling it is actually teaching them.  And really...  I sweep everyday anyway, a little extra rice (or pasta, or whatever) doesn't make that much of a difference.

• Enjoy the mess. Don't you remember playing with rice and such in the table while in preschool or kindergarten?  I do... and it still feels so cool!  Get on the floor and play! Introduce them to things they wouldn't think of.  For J, I would take big handfuls and slowly drop them on his hands.  He laughed and laughed.  If I wasn't playing with him, he wouldn't experience that feeling and I wouldn't hear his silly belly laugh. 

• Let them play. So after about 5 minutes of playing in the container like a good little boy, Jackson decided he needed to dump the container of rice all over himself.  Then he swished it around.  Then he walked all over it.  And then he put it back in the container and sat in there.  Then he grabbed bigger trucks and decided to play with that too.  And it was okay.  Granted I cringed when he poured it all over, but he was having so much fun!  He was being so creative and innovative and was taking initiative to go and get other things to play with... that's not something I can teach him. 

Finally... I'm telling you... a waterproof blanket (I got mine from CVS during the summertime for about $10) and a little hand broom make it a little less of a hit to the mess belly. 

So... those are my little tips on fun indoor play. What are some tips you have?  How about some of your favorite indoor activities?