Edible Rainbow Tuff Spot

Adam is a fussy eater and is reluctant to try new foods. For the sense of taste week, as part of our Five Senses Play Challenge, I opted to make an edible sensory bin instead of exploring different tastes. I created an edible rainbow tuff spot.

Our rainbow was created with just two ingredients – bread and food colouring. It was straight forward to set up. I slightly toasted 6 slices of bread and then placed them in a food processor. Once I had bread crumbs I added 15ml of water and a very small amount of Wilton Food Colouring. The food processor combined the colouring and the bread crumbs. I poured the dyed bread crumbs onto a baking tray and left them to dry for a while. I repeated the process until I ended up with 6 colours.

Once the bread crumbs had dried I made an outline of a rainbow on our Tuff Spot Tray. Now came the tricky part – placing the dyed bread crumbs onto the tuff spot. This was only tricky because Adam was desperate to play immediately with it. I would advise you to set up the activity when your child isn’t in the room! To complete our rainbow I cut out two clouds from white paper.

The dyed bread felt wonderful and smelt amazing. Our house smelt of toast!

I gave Adam a variety of tools, scoops, coloured bowls and a black pot for the gold at the end of the rainbow. Adam loved the activity immediately. He thoroughly enjoyed scooping up handfuls of the rainbow bread and placing it into the pot.

Adam managed to place the coloured bread into the correct coloured bowl. He discovered that if he got a handful of the breadcrumbs and squeezed the bread crumbs stayed together. He could then crumble the bread into the pot.

Adam then discovered he could make his own rainbow shape with his hand. I was extremely surprised when Adam started to walk over the bread crumbs and spent ages trying to bury his feet in the bread. Our edible rainbow tuff spot was certainly a big hit!