Coloured rice and pasta

You will need:
1 cup of uncooked rice (any type will do)
Food colouring
1 tsp of surgical spirit (optional)
1 tupperware container with lid or zip-lock bag
Disposable latex gloves
A plastic tray and some kitchen roll

Method:
1 Tip one cup of rice into your plastic container or zip-lock bag, and add several drops of food colouring. You could also add the surgical spirit at this point as it helps the colouring to set. Then, secure the lid and give it a good shake. Around five minutes of vigorous shaking should suffice. You could even put some ‘shaking music’ on the iPod and get your kids up and shaking their stuff as well as their rice to get rid of any ‘ants in pants’.

2 Check the colour quality of your rice. If it’s not bright enough, add a few more drops of colour and continue shaking. Once you’ve achieved the desired colour, lay a square of kitchen paper on the plastic tray, and tip the rice on top of it. Spread it out and leave it to dry for around 20 minutes. You can move it to a sunny place to speed up the process.

3 Start all over again – only this time, use a different food colouring – any that takes your fancy. Make as many colours as you like, and once they are all dry, they can be used to decorate collage pictures and craft models of all descriptions. You only need a standard glue stick or glue sponge pen to stick them in place.

Also try: Colouring play sand, small, alphabet pasta pieces – you can use them to make message cards for friends’ birthdays, or larger pieces of pasta. For larger pasta, you will need to shake more to get an even coverage.