Rainbow Rice

I made some RAINBOW RICE for the kiddo's today.

Since I have 2 boys though I just made GREEN and BLUE!

I did this by trial and error and when I found what really worked I decided I would share it here. I am a big fan of pictures so that you can SEE what's going on.

What you need: rice, food coloring, vinegar, paper towels, trash bags, fine strainer, plastic bowls, cups, straws or spoons, a big container.

Set-up: Put the trash bags flat on the table and on the floor to protect them from the food coloring. Lay down paper towels in long strips on the trash bags on the floor (this is for drying the rice). Set out plastic bowl and cup on trash bag on table. Have an extra paper towel handy for spills!

Side note: I'm not a fan of measuring things I just eye-ball it!

What you do:

step 1~ pour the vinegar in a cup

step 2~ add food coloring (you want the vinegar/food color mix to be concentrated)

step 3~ pour the rice in the bowl (I started with 2/3 cups, you can always add more later)


step 4~ add food color/ vinegar mix, stir to make sure rice is evenly coated


step 5~ add more rice if needed, stirring again to coat it evenly

This is what it should look like

let it set for 5-10 minutes

step 6~ after the color has soaked in you need to drain it (don't rinse it though or the color won't be as strong)

step 7~ remember those paper towel strips? Now you pour the rice onto them and spread it out evenly so it can dry.

once it's dried, 2-3 hours later, pick up the paper towel carefully and pour it into a big container

the finished product....the only downside to this is that it smells really bad!

I am going to be making eye-spy bottles out of some of this for a road trip we are taking this summer. I got the idea for that here. The rest of this is going to house different objects. The kids will have to try to find out what they are using only their hands.