Rice Play Tray

This is a great activity for a rainy day, or for when you want to make dinner without a couple of tired kids under your feet. Just get a baking tray, pour on a cup of uncooked rice, and find all your small diggers and tip trucks, tractors and animals. It usually ends up with a bit of a rice on the floor, but that's very easily swept up. And definitely worth it if it keeps the kids happily playing quietly.

Coloured Sand

This is one we made for a birthday present for a little boy who loves craft (although I made sure there would be some leftovers for us to play with).

We got some sand from the sandpit, and sifted out anything large. We divided it into five approximately equal amounts and put it in large freezer bags. We then added food colouring and shook the bags until everything was bright. We poured them into dishes to dry. Finally we bought some cheap salt and pepper shakers and added the sand, ready for making sand pictures.

We also did some coloured rice at the same time, using the same method.

As you can just see at the top of the photo, the kids had a very hard time keeping theirs hands away from it.