Taste Safe Rainbow Sensory Play

I think we have a slight rainbow obsession. Over the past three years we have created over 20 rainbow inspired activities including:

: Alphabet Pasta Rainbow Tuff Spot

: Clothespin Rainbow Busy Bag

: Edible Rainbow Tuff Spot

: Rainbow Loom Band Busy Bag

: Stack-A-Stone Rainbow

: Rainbow Shaving Foam Bath Painting

(This post may contain affiliate links)

You can view all of our rainbow play activities here.

We couldn’t wait to get stuck into this weeks Virtual Book Club story – Rainbow of My Own by Freeman Don. Unfortunately we couldn’t get a copy from our local library but enjoyed watching this version several times:

Rainbow of My Own is a beautiful story about a boy who imagines what it would be like to have his own rainbow to play with. I wanted to create a rainbow that Adam could play with. Recently we wrote a post for Twinkl about how to colour mix with mashed potato. At the time we only used three colours. I wanted to extend the fun to include seven colours and make a Taste Safe Rainbow Sensory Play activity.

You can find a handy Mashed Potato Colour Mixing EYFS Plan with links to the curriculum from Twinkl.

Resources needed to make Taste Safe Rainbow Sensory Play

* White potatoes – we used a 2.5KG bag to make two activities

* Food colouring – we used Wilton Food Colouring – Christmas Red, Pink, Orange, Lemon Yellow, Leaf Green, Sky Blue and Violet.

* Saucepans, hob, water and colander

* Storage box – we used a white one from Ikea

* Potato Masher

How to make Taste Safe Rainbow Sensory Play

1. Pour water into a saucepan and place on a hob. Dip the end of a spoon into the Wilton Food Colouring and stir the food colouring into the water. Bring to the boil.

2. Meanwhile peel the potatoes and cut them into small cubes. Add the potatoes to the boiling water and cook.

3. Repeat the process for as many colours as you wish. We could only cook four colours in four saucepans at one time.

4. Drain the colour water and place the coloured potatoes on a plate in order to cool.

5. Position the coloured potatoes in a rainbow formation inside a large tray or box.

Ways to play with Taste Safe Rainbow Sensory Play

We were at Nanas house celebrating Grandad’s birthday so I left the Rainbow sensory bin out for Adam, my niece and nephew to play as and when they wanted to. I left out a potato masher for them to explore the rainbow with, along with kitchen paper for them to wipe their hands on if needed.

My niece liked to squish the potato between her fingers. She couldn’t believe that it was potato without having a taste. We certainly love taste safe sensory activities!

Squishing the potatoes with the masher proved to be a great activity for developing both fine and gross motor skills. Pushing, twisting and pressing the masher worked on fine motor development whereas moving the masher up and down strengthened hand and arm muscles needed for gross motor development.

Eventually after using the potato masher for some time the potato rainbow turned into a playdough like substance. This was great for manipulating into sculptures, moulding and shaping. The colours looked incredible.

Take a look at the Taste Safe Rainbow Sensory Play activity in action:

As I had used a 2.5KG bag of white potatoes I knew I had enough to make two sensory play activities. Take a look at our Sparkly Unicorn Play Dough (coming soon).