10+ Easy Rice Sensory Bin Ideas for your Little One’s Sensory Play
Rice Sensory Bin Ideas are so popular right now, and with good reason! They are awesome! Rice feels so good to run through your fingers! Seriously, try it! But also, dying rice is super easy and quick to do. It took me less than 5 minutes to dye rice for these sensory bins! So, I thought I’d share with you my favorite 8 sensory rice bin ideas so you can give them a go too!
I’ve got rainbow rice ideas, kitchen play, space theme, ocean ideas, farm play, and some fun seasonal sensory bins for you. If you’re not sure how to dye rice, check out my full guide here!
I plan to keep adding more rice sensory bin ideas to this post as I dream them up, so make sure to pin this post to keep up-to-date with new ideas to try!
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Rainbow Rice Ideas
Rainbow rice is a great activity for toddlers and preschoolers. In fact, my daughter, who is 6, really enjoyed playing with it too! There are lots of different ways you can play with rainbow rice. I’ll list a few of them below for you.
- Spread out your rainbow rice in an actual rainbow shape on a tuff tray or in a big sensory bin as a pretty invitation to play. It will be sure to get their attention.
- Lay out the rainbow rice in strips and add different colored blocks or cars to the sensory bin to be matched up to the right color rice. This is great if your little one’s are learning their colors.
- Encourage them to mix up all the rainbow rice so the colors are all mixed together and provide bottles and spoons to practice fine motor skills. This one is surprisingly popular considering how simple it is. There’s just something little kids like about tipping rice from one container to another.
If you’re not sure how to make Rainbow Rice, check out my full guide here!
Farm Sensory Bin
A fun and easy way to use dyed rice is to create a farm yard! The one I made above has green rice for the field, with some sheep and cows in it. Then I used blue rice for the duck pond, and brown rice for the pig’s mud.
We set up some fences to keep the animals in their correct fields and added in additional characters, like the farmers and sheep dog as we went along.
For more Farm Ideas, take a look at this post with my Farm Sensory Bin Ideas.
Space Sensory Bin
Space is such a fun topic to explore with our little people and these sensory bins are a great place to start.
The first one uses black rice with glow-in-the-dark planets and stars mixed in. A great one if you turn the lights down and hunt through space to find the missing planets!
The second picture shows a space sensory bin with black rice and little star baking decorations mixed in. The idea here is to use tweezers to pull the stars out of space and collect them. This is a great fine motor activity for preschool.
I am in the process of creating a post all about Space Sensory Bin Ideas, so keep an eye out here and I will update this when it’s ready!
Ocean Sensory Bin
Learning about the Ocean with your toddler or Preschooler? This easy rice sensory bin idea is perfect for that! It’s just a spot of blue dyed rice for the ocean and yellow for the sand!
Then I added in a treasure check and gave them a little spoon so they could fill it with ‘sand’. We popped a crab and snail onto the beach and some fish and a sea horse into the sea.
My only regret with this one? That I didn’t use a bigger sensory bin to make it!
I share more Ocean Sensory Bin Ideas here.
Play Cooking with Rainbow Rice
One of the simplest and quickest ideas here, but yet it actually entertained my 6 year old the longest!
Allow your kids to mix the rice together and then add in some items from a kid’s kitchen set. I put in some pots and pans, bowls, mixing spoons, a tea pot, cups, and milk jug.
My daughter has been playing with it off and on for days. She’s been ‘making tea’, ‘cooking dinner’ and ‘making birthdays cakes’ for everyone!
Fall Sensory Bin
If it’s an Autumn / Fall Sensory bin you’re after, this is a great option! We mixed yellow, orange, red and brown rice together to imitate Fall colors. Then I hid Fall leaves, acorns, and various other seasonal items in the rice to be found.
You could also add in some bowls and spoons to this for them to make Fall Stew, or add some bottles to pretend it’s a seasonal drink they’re making. Alternatively, a few trucks could make this a seasonal building site!
If you’re interested in more Autumn / Fall Sensory Play, take a look at this post!
Christmas Tree Farm Sensory Bin
If it’s Christmas ideas you’re looking for, then this Snowy Rice Christmas Tree Farm is probably for you! You don’t even need to dye the rice for this one!
I just sprinkled rice across my tuff tray (but you could also use a builders tray or a sensory bin). Then I added in some little trees, trucks, cars, and people figures. To create the roads, I simply parted a small path through the rice with my hand. Once the little people had chosen their Christmas tree, I used an elastic band to fix it to the top of their car for the drive home!
If you’d like more Christmas ideas, take a look at these posts:
Valentine’s Day Sensory Play
If it’s Valentine’s Day Rice Play Ideas you’re after, this one was popular with little one’s 15 months up to 5 years. It encouraged fine motor skills practice, creativity, and imaginative play.
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