My parties for younger children are taking a different turn, as I have found that 3 and 4 year olds don't always want to join in party games. Some are too shy, some don't have the maturity to persevere for the whole game, some just don't want to! It's important to me that all children have activities to keep them busy, so I have started to take along alternative activities for them to access independently.
The 2 favourites of these seem to be my big box of coloured rice, and my homemade playdough.
Quite a few parents have asked how these are made, so I thought I would share my tips with you.
Coloured Rice
Coloured rice is basically rice that has been coloured. It is really tactile, and children (and adults) love to let it run through their fingers, and have even been known to sit in it!
You need;
4 bags of rice. (I buy mine from Lidl for 40p a bag)
4 different food colours - I use red, blue, yellow and green.
Baking Tray
Parchment / Greaseproof paper.
Mixing Bowl
Empty 1 bag of rice into the mixing bowl. Add a couple of capfuls of food colouring. (You may not need that much, depends on the intensity of colour you'd like.) Mix the colour until all the rice is coated.
Put the baking parchment on the baking tray. Spread the coloured rice on the tray.
Cook in oven (temperature approx 160C for 15-20 minutes, until the colour is set.
You may want to stir it around once or twice.
Allow to cool. (This can take a while - if you want to make more than one colour =, transfer the warm rice -which feels amaaaaaazing - into another container to cool. )
Repeat with another colour.
Playdough
I love playdough! I like to roll it as thinly as I can, then cut it into thin lines. I'm not sure what that says about me, but it's very therapeutic! My favourite recipe comes from Activity Village . It hasn't failed me yet...
You need;
1 cup of plain flour
1/2 cup of salt
2 tbsp vegetable oil
2 tbsp cream of tarter. (I can only find decent sized pots of this in Waitrose!)
1 cup of water
food colouring. (I like to use Sugar Flair as it gives a better depth of colour. Which you can buy in Hobbycraft etc)
Vanilla Essence. (Just to make it smell nice!)
Put the flour, salt, oil, cream of tarter and vanilla essence in a saucepan.
Dissolve the food colouring in the water. (if you use Sugarflair, you only need to put a little on the tip of a teaspoon handle to get a good colour.)
Add the water to the other ingredients.
Heat the ingredients, stirring all the time with a wooden spoon, until they come together to form a dough. Do not let the dough over-cook, otherwise it becomes too dry.
Tip out onto a work top, and knead with a little extra flour to finish.
Store in an air-tight container, or wrapped in cling film. It will keep for a couple of months if you look after it.
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