Coloured Sensory Cornmeal Art for Kids

I remember the first time my son played with a sensory bin, when he was not yet one year old. It was a sea-themed tub, and I dyed rice in four shades of blue, from light to dark. Soon, all the colours were blended, but watching him mix the rice was my favourite part!

Since then, we have done a few sensory bins like this, with rice, beans and cornmeal;  mixing different colours of dyed grains never seems to get old. I like to watch how they flow in my son's little hands and fall to the bottom of the bin, creating curvy abstract designs. “If only we could capture one of these compositions!” I thought a few times, and an idea of how I might manage it started forming.

Would you like to try some sensory art as well?

You can use rice, cornmeal, or sand. We went with fine cornmeal, since we had some left from previous sensory play. First, we dyed cornmeal by putting it into little plastic bags with a few drops of gel food colouring and rubbing them vigorously. Gel food colouring is my favourite: I keep it for decorating cakes, and it's so concentrated that only a bit is enough for making very vivid colours. Using liquid food colouring would be fine for dyeing rice, and it should work with cornmeal if you later use a sieve to eliminate lumps.

I made five colours of cornmeal: red, yellow (no dye there!), green, blue and purple. If you want to reduce the preparation time, mix just a couple of colours–it will be just as fun to make some art with them!

Second, I found a few old picture frames and adhered some wide Scotch tape to the back of it, so that the sticky part would show in the frame. If you have some contact paper handy, you can use that instead.

Instead of paintbrushes, I gave my son a little spoon. He found me moving the containers with cornmeal to his little art table. Even before I was finished and could give any explanations, he already figured out what to do and started working on his painting. As he dipped the spoon into cornmeal and then let it flow down onto his sticky canvas, he had a satisfied smile on his face, as if it was just exactly what he had always dreamed of doing.

He poured cornmeal onto the painting with his spoon and helped spread it around with his fingers!

My son couldn't stop until he had finished three paintings, and I joined him as well. Handling the cornmeal was pleasant because of its texture, and the same texture added depth to the composition. We both decided that we'd like to work with it again. We have plenty of cornmeal left – this project only used a fraction of what I mixed!