Messy Mess

I've seen this little treasure box sensory bin on Pinterest and a few friends blogs and decided it was time to make one for Kennedy. The trip to Target to get supplies took more effort than actually making the thing. So yeah, its pretty easy. I told Kennedy there would be a special surprise waiting when she woke up from her nap. In hindsight that was actually not the best idea. All she did for two hours was sit in her bed and tell every stuffed friend she had a surprise when she woke up.

The official recipe calls for 4 cups of rice, 3 tbsp of rubbing alcohol and 2 tbsp of food coloring. I used a 2lb bag of rice for each color and sort of guessed on the food coloring. Put the mixture on a baking sheet and set out in the sun to dry for about 15 minutes.

Anyway, I had fun getting it all ready for her to explore. I knew it would be a little messy but relative to some other painting and glitter projects we've done recently, this would be fairly low on the messy scale. That was until Kennedy wanted to make it rain. 

She loved her "sprinkle box" (it does look just like cupcake sprinkles) and spent almost an hour digging up treasures and reburying them to find again. Each time she would pick something up she would exclaim, "oh what IS it?! like it was the first time she was seeing it. She brought in her pots and pans to cook and liked picking up handfuls of rice and letting the grains fall between her fingers. Eventually she started intentionally spilling it on the rug because she liked the way it felt on her feet. She loved making a "fun messy mess" and I have a feeling we will be playing with this a lot in the weeks to come. 

 Pink and green rice. 

Trinkets and treasures. 

It looks like an entire container of sprinkles spilled on our floor.