Rainbow Rice Addition Sensory Bin

Get hands on with our St Patrick’s Day themed Rainbow Rice Sensory Bin to work on addition equations with your child! This activity works great with small groups of children or for a child to work on individually.

Preparing the Rainbow Rice

Materials needed:

• Rice
• Food coloring
• Zip-loc bags
• White vinegar
• Trays

Add a cup of rice to a zip-loc bag along with a few drops of food coloring and ¼ teaspoon of vinegar.

Give the bag a vigorous shake until all of the rice is coated in the coloring.

Spread the rice out over a tray and leave to dry for a couple of hours.

Repeat for each of the colors you wish to use in your math addition sensory bin.

Setting up the Addition Sensory Bin

Materials needed:

• Rainbow rice
• Golden coins
• Cotton balls
• Giant tweezers
• Dice
• White board and dry erase pen

Once dry, pour all of the different colored rice into a deep dish or tray and mix it altogether. Add in at least 6 golden coins and 6 cotton balls, lay out the dice, tweezers, white board and dry eraser pen, and you are ready to play!

How to Play

I set up this sensory bin at home for my son to play with after school. I often include a sensory element to our after school activities. This  gives my kids chance to relax and unwind after a busy day and they don’t even notice that they are learning!

I try to include all of my children in as many of our activities as I can, and sensory play is a great way to achieve this. During this activity I was able to set up a smaller bin with the same elements, plus cups and spoons for my youngest to play with, while I helped her big brother with the math element of his sensory bin.

Once Bella was busy giving her fine motor skills a good workout with lots of scooping and pouring in her sensory bin, Freddie began his game with a roll of the dice.

He recorded the number that he had rolled onto his whiteboard (his teacher has asked us to do lots of practice writing out numbers to reinforce what they have been doing in school) and then he took the giant tweezers and removed the corresponding number of golden coins.

He rolled the dice again, and after writing down this number, he used the tweezers to remove the corresponding number of cotton balls.

He now had two sets of items ready to add together.

To work out the sum of the two sets, Freddie lined them all up and moved each item to one side as he counted them all to see how many he had.

He then wrote down the answer to the math equation on his whiteboard ready for me to check.

This sensory addition game is super fun and one your kids are sure to love! To differentiate for your preschooler, have them roll the dice and count out that many objects. For 1st graders, try adding 3 sets of numbers together!

Looking for more addition fun? Grab our popular (and free!) counting bear addition cards or play with blocks with building block addition towers! 

St. Patrick’s Day Resources

Looking for more learning ideas for March? Grab our March printables pack for quick prep, fun activities to have on hand all month long!

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