My mom always had one of these in her kindergarten classroom, didn't even put legs on it since the kids would just sit on the ground and play with it. Always a big hit, and super cheap/easy.

This is so much better than a sand box!

We have a rice bin and a bean bin that I rotate for my kids (ages2,4,4,6) and they all love them. It been fun to watch the progression of play from scooping and pouring to truck play in the bins, to my oldest who gets the Playmobil out to set up in the bins. I really love sensory bins.

For those who have tried it, how messy does it get? Is this something that would work in an apartment too? Really like the idea, just wondering how much rice will end up on the floor.

Can you still eat it?

I guess I'm in the minority. I don't care to see food being wasted...
I'd perfer the pebble box instead or even small aquarium rocks..

Lyonstill,

I want to thank you for leaving this very thoughtful comment with a perspective that I think is too often overlooked. I did (and do) struggle with the use of food for non-food purposes (craft, play, etc.) and gave the question a lot of thought before making this project.

At this stage of my son's development (he's now 18 mos.) he still puts things in his mouth and swallows them, even when I'm supervising him very closely. I wanted to give him something very small to play with so that he could develop his fine motor skills, but that would also be safe should he swallow some. For me, dried rice and dried lentils fit the bill. Pebbles will be a wonderful option for when he's older, but for now, I just don't think small ones are safe for this type of play.

-Courtney

Why is this better than a sandbox?

Sand can be molded when wet, in a way that rice can't. It's also non-toxic, unless ingested in huge quantities.

I'm sorry, but despite the justifications, I think it's an awful waste of food.

We did something similar with oatmeal for my daughter, she used it for 3 years - the same oatmeal. When you compare it to a plastic toy that ends up in a landfill, it's a great choice because it can be composted after you are done with it.

The fact of the matter is that in North America we do not have food shortages. If we did have shortages of rice and beans than wasting food would be an ethical dilemma because that food should be going to feed people, but we have an excess of those items here in North America.

It also depends how you define waste. Millions of pounds of food never gets picked from farms -- hence the rise in the gleaning movement to try to make use of that true waste. We throw away tonnes of leftover food in this country, both at home, in restaurants and in grocery stores.

This rice is being put to a good use, just not its traditional use.

Using rice or oatmeal or beans for a sensory table is also cheaper than buying play sand or pea gravel.

Some of you might not see this as a good idea, I will say my daughter got more use and joy from her mixing bowl of oatmeal than she did from half of her electronic plastic toys that will end up in the landfill.

Charlie26,

I don't think it's a question of "better" in regards to which material should or shouldn't be used in a sensory tub. Different materials feel differently in our hands and provide different experiences and teach us different things. As to whether or not this is a "waste" of food, I don't think it is. These two articles about the use of food in early childhood education:
http://www.teachpreschool.org/discussion-on-food-use-in-the-early-childhood-classroom/
and
http://msooey.tumblr.com/post/18191787480/using-food-in-the-classroom
greatly influenced my thinking on this debate and make the point far more eloquently than I can here. All that being said, there is no reason that this rice can't be eaten after your child is done playing with it. We've been playing with ours for over a month and it's still clean enough that I would feel comfortable cooking it and eating it after rinsing it (which you need to do anyway with rice).

-Courtney

Oh how i love it! If I saw one I would play myself!

thank you pinetree, well said.

Oh yay! My daughter is 10.5 months and this is a great idea! I'm going to make her a small one today to play in. Thanks for the idea!

A waste of food? We live in a country where farmers grow corn destined to end up someone's gas tank (ethanol) and where portion sizes and waistlines grow larger every year. A scarcity of food is not a problem in this country. And to me, using 20 or 30 pounds of rice (or beans, or oatmeal) -- a renewable, reusable, edible, and fully compostable resource -- for a children's play area seems infinitely preferable to plastic toys that will forever be part of our ecosystem, or rocks/sand/gravel that cannot be tossed around or swallowed as safely.

Courtney - thanks for the balanced response. The linked articles made good points.

I understand that children need different sensory experiences. I am still not convinced that they need to play with large vats of rice, or cooked spaghetti (as shown in some of the pictures in the linked articles). Little children play with their food whilst eating and older children can also learn about texture etc. by helping cook it.

Personally, I'm not down with the concept, but I can see the arguments for the other side. And at least, as you say, you can cook the rice afterwards.

Bad idea. Raw rice ingested can cause digestive problems. Furthermore, nonorganic rice is a pesticide-heavy crop...at least in California. I met the wife of a rice farmer years ago, and she told me she won't eat conventionally grown rice knowing what goes into it. Rice kernels are coated with various substances to make them glossy. Talc, starches, gels -- whatever the manufacturer uses, do you really want your child breathing that in or eating it off his hands? Buy a bag of washed sand at the home store. The stuff is almost sterile.

Wow, I wouldn't have expected such a negative response about sensory play!

@MUESLI, it can get messy, because even with supervision, very little kids can't keep everything contained while they play. I've tried rice, lentils, pinto beans, sand and water in a small plastic container (smaller than the one here), on a tarp in our living room floor (no backyard). All are messy; rice is a little hard to sweep into a dustpan. The larger the particles/pieces, the easier the cleanup. My son has little (plastic! GASP!) construction trucks and loves to push the beans around into piles.

Honestly, each texture is different than any other, and kids can learn and do different things with each.

Oh, and in case anyone uses a table with rice outdoors: rice eaten by birds does NOT make them explode. Somebody just did a study.

As an urban apartment dweller, I like the rice concept. The idea of sand in our apt gives me hives just thinking about trying to clean it up. But rice is more manageable. Thanks for all the thoughtful debate on both sides of the idea too.

Okay, forget the table --- if I let my kid play with a bowl of rice on the kitchen floor, it would be everywhere! Also, what if they drool or spill into it? Wouldn't that produce clumps of sticky, glue-y mess in the bin? That could potentially start to grow mold?

Our daycare does this. They use a variety of bird seed mixes. The textures of the different mixes varies quiet a bit. It goes into the bird feeders afterwards. They also do sand, but some days it is that crinkly paper Easter grass, or lots of long bits of yarn, or balled up tissue paper. Those are not so much for shoveling, but great for hiding little dinosaurs in, or plastic bugs, rubber ducks or of what ever the weeks theme is. What ever they use often shows up the next week in an art project. The kids love it.

Now bird seed, that's brilliant!

We used a giant mixing bowl with DD, and then would store the oatmeal in a ziploc bag. We have a tablecloth from the dollar store that we use as a "playmat". The playmat goes on the floor, and then we put the bowl on top. To deal with spilled oatmeal we just shake the playmat outside.

We used the same oatmeal for three years - no mold, no weird clumps. I think people are over thinking this :)

I use foods in my science classroom sometimes. Pasta (wheels, ziti, etc.) makes a great building material. Beans are idea for experiments in which kids estimate volume or mass.

Another teacher once made a comment to me about "wasting food," as if I were making starving children estimate the volume of beans when they really wanted to be eating them. I understand the notion of not wasting food - but not wasting food is different from using food in an alternative way.

Plant foods are renewable, plentiful, and cheap. When I use pasta wheels instead of, say, K'Nex blocks, I save a ton of money, and I also help the environment. I could buy expensive toys from science catalogs - but that wouldn't feed the children of Africa. Starvation isn't happening because there's a limited supply of rice in the world - it's caused by distribution problems and disastrous political behavior.

I thought sand in sandboxes was a problem...where can you get this safe sand that rural and rueful mentioned?

Most play sand for purchase have health issues associated with it, namely silica that when inhaled can produce a plethora of problems. I imagine that pre-rinsed rice is a much safer alternative. Young House Love made their own sandbox in the backyard for their daughter, and bought play sand and found out it had this problem: http://www.younghouselove.com/2012/04/the-sandbox-chronicles-part-3-the-remix/

As for not using food for educational purposes, Mary B C is spot on. They usually provide a cheap, safe, and environmentally friendly option for LOADS of lessons (we even used a bean-collecting game in college to simulate competition and survival of the most adapted). And using food for this purpose is in no way ethically or philosophically connected to the world hunger problem. If you think it's unethical to use food for anything other than eating, you must think it's unethical to knock out a wall in your house during renovations because there are people out there who need shelter. It must be unethical to use fabric to make yourself a new throw pillow instead of sewing it into a shirt for someone who needs clothing.

Personally, I think the bird seed idea is fantastic, especially if the play only happens outside, where fallen seeds would not be wasted or drive me crazy with clean up. I don't have kids but I do have two cats, and the litter tracking drives me bonkers. I wouldn't touch an indoor project like this with a 10 foot pole unless it was over carpet and could be vacuumed easily.

Eh, to each their own- I think its a great idea and would have loved it when I was little.

My church used to keep a huge play table of this when I was young - some 30 odd years ago. Nobody died. Nobody starved. ;) Haha. Point being it's not a new concept, and I remember even back then loving the feeling of the rice pouring through my hands. And it was great for the parents, who didn't show up after church to scoop up their kids with muddy fingers, as the rice was fairly mess-free. I do remember volunteering as a teenager, and HATING sweeping up the rice at the end of the day, though. =P

We use oats for our sensory box, and we do a small Tupperware container on the floor. My toddlers love it.

The birdseed idea is genius though, I think we will do that next.

Never did understand why parents would intentionally put their kids in a box of sand. My kids are messy enough without giving them sand or rice to play in. There are plenty of things in the world to entice their senses; no sense in giving them something that's sure to be a big clean-up project.

PLEASE PLEASE supervise your kids very closely. I looked away for a second and my son sneezed and rubbed his nose while playing with his bin of raw rice. We had to go to the ER because he was having trouble breathing. It turned out that some rice went up his nose and traveled through his lungs settling there (and carrying bacteria from his nasal cavity) causing him to develop aspiration pneumonia. we were in the hospital for three days while he had cameras put up his nose and into his lungs, and countless other things It was so sad, stupid and shouldn't have happened. If you let your kids play in rice, watch them closely EVERY second...

I cannot believe some of the posts here! Crazy town!!!!

Cool idea, love it, will use it.

Jeez.

For everyone that's so concerned about those that unfortunately go without food, when's the last time you volunteered at a soup kitchen or donated some cash to the cause? It's easy to judge other people for using $3 worth of dried rice but I wanna know what YOU are doing to help feed the hungry.

Long time reader, first time to comment. A rice table is a great sensory activity for children, in the US or outside of it (where children routinely sort beans, corn, and rice as part of their daily living). We've had a birdseed bin for our kid over the past year now and it is one of her favorite activities; the birds don't seem to mind either. As a person who has spent the past fifteen years working on development issues (including food security and early childhood education) throughout the world I find the comments here enormously uninformed. If you are interested in the challenges facing many US families (which I believe is the primary audience for this site) check out the newest study by Ochs http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/trouble-in-paradise-new-ucla-book.aspx

In light of this, some sensory play for our children seems like something that should be encouraged, not chastised.

The changes to this site in the past few months are disheartening, at best.

If the rice gets wet, is there any health risk from Bacillus cereus?

I am sure there is a way to compost the rice after using it for play time.

At my son's preschool they have a rice box like this. He absolutely loves it. So after reading this post and seeing him at school, I decided to go for it! We bought rice a few days ago and plan to dye it. At school they've used food coloring to make rainbow rice, and the kids think it's so cool. We'll see how it goes! (And I'm not concerned about wasting the rice, but if it makes you feel better I do buy goats for families in third world countries through Heifer International, which is probably more helpful than rice.)

What a great (and cheap!) idea! Thanks!

Great idea.

For those that are worried about wasting food I see no reason why you can't eat the rice after your child is done playing with it. I rinse all rice before cooking it anyway, so just give it an extra rinse. Seems like you could easily rotate play rice/cooking rice every few months this way if you wanted to.

Like the bird seed box idea too though.

Another way to use the rice is to feed it to your dog if you have one...homemade food for dogs is economical and healthy.

I know this is a older post, but I just came across this while google rice and water table! I could remember playing in one as a child in kindergarten. This is a neat and cheap way for kids to learn and as a mother now I want my kids to experience this fun while learning along the way! Thanks for this post and I really don't understand the bashing on how you choose to teach your child! It's not a waste when your child is learning something along the way! Grocery stores waste more food than this that's can actually feed the homeless! Thanks again for this post it brought back pure nostalgia!