If I had to advise parents,
I should tell them to take
great care about the people
with whom their children associate.
— St. Elizabeth Ann Seton
Mrs. H. was the crabbiest teacher I had. She taught at the old East Kermit Elementary School in West Texas. I tried to find it recently, but discovered the Google Maps Street View Car never photographed it because it was demolished around 2006.
Why do towns tear down their treasures? One of the great things about this dusty oil-boom-and-bust town was that blonde brick school. It had a fabulous auditorium among other things, but I digress.
Mrs. Henry taught us to make rice mosaics, which we displayed during the annual open house. We all drew flowers and then filled in the petals and leaves with different colors of rice we dyed with food coloring. We used the same old McCormick’s Food Coloring we all still use today!
Making rice mosaics with colored rice has become one of my favorite things to do with my kids. They love to mix in the food coloring and make different designs with all the little grains. We’ve had a lot of flooding in Oklahoma this weekend, and this made for a perfect rainy day activity.
How To Make Colored Rice
Making colored rice is super easy. I put about a 1/4 cup of rice in each cup and added 2-4 drops of food coloring and mixed it in. You can add a teaspoon of vinegar to aid with mixing if you like. It helps the dye stick to the grains.
There are about 100 mommy bloggers who do the colored rice thing better than me including Powerful Mommy. She’s even written a book called Rice Play that you can buy and download for just $4.99. Check it out.
I think you did pretty well with the rice! 😀
And thanks for mentioning my rice book! <3
I remember those little glass bottles of food colouring. They were like bottled jewels, but so messy! The plastic ones remind me of little garden gnomes.
Fabulous idea. We used to do something similar when I was a kid.
And, every single school that I went to before college, three elementary schools and two high schools are now gone.