Best play activity for toddlers: rice box

I owed this one to my toddler for a while. Somehow all my boys were always crazy about digging: in a sand, in a baby cereal, on the side of the road. Give them a couple of free minutes and they’ll dig their way to China. With my toddler gaining more and more independence, my favorite plants were no longer safe, neither his cereal bowl, nor my poor head. He wouldn’t go digging in the last one, alas no, but I was busy digging into my activity lists for more ways to channel his passion into a safe and fun outlet. Rice Box was just that.

Setting it up is super easy: the supplies that will come handy are…

• large storage box
• disposable tablecloth
• big bag of cheap rice
• a few toy cars
• a few containers, measuring cups, funnels, spoons
• a few shells, stickers, other little treasures to find there
• a few sand toys, shovels, rakes, brushes and/or cooking utensils

1. Lay a large disposable table cloth on the floor (no matter what you do, the rice will end up on the floor)

2. Set the storage box in the middle, next to the excited toddler, who wouldn’t hesitate for a moment to come and investigate what’s going in

3. Fill the box with rice

4. Hide the special treasures in a box

5. Keep an eye on some fascinated rice splashing!

Tips for Mess Management:

• Disposable tablecloth or an old sheet underneath the box

• Kneeling or sitting next to the box ONLY: no walking around, climbing inside or throwing it

• Sweeper and a dustpan to let kids help clean it up afterwards

Activities:

First of all my kids were always so excited, they didn’t need any coaching on what to do with it! Some things we’ve tried to spice it up:

• Just dipping hands into cool slippery rice… incredibly calming sensory activity. I myself can’t resist submerging my hands for a few seconds…

  

• Pouring rice from one cup to another

• Measuring how many cups/spoons it takes to fill a certain cup

• Shell hide and seek: my little ones close their eyes, the older one hides shells and they use little shovels to dig them back out

• Budding archaeologists: as you dig shells out of the rice, use a painting brush to “clean it from little pieces of rice

• Making soup: add some rice, some shells, stir it with a spoon, pretend to eat it

• Construction site: filling little dump trucks with rice, driving over rice dunes to a rice construction site and using spoons or toy excavator to unload it

I am still searching for ways to contain the happy splashing to the box, but so far, a lot of it end up on the floor too. If it is on the table cloth – no big deal. The rest can be swept away (another activity that is useful to kids), vacuum cleaned, or washed off the deck with a water hose. While this last bit is a bit annoying, the excitement for the rice box runs so high, that I can’t complain – it is all worth it.