How to Make Coloured Porridge Oats…

This is a really simple and easy one to do. You can use your coloured oats as a sensory experience, not to mention as an addition to Small World, Creative play and many, many more areas of provision.

You will need:

Porridge Oats – I have found that the LARGE porridge oats work best.

Measuring cup

Measuring spoons

Small container (like and egg cup)

Zip Lock freezer bags

Water

Food colouring or liquid water colour

What to do:

Put one cup of porridge oats into a Zip Lock freezer bag

Mix 2 tablespoons of water with a few drops of food colouring in your small container.

I used this cake decorators gel colour

• Pour a SMALL amount of the coloured liquid into the bag with the oats

• SHAKE the bag to spread the colour…(it won’t go far!).

• Add more liquid and shake again.

• Repeat until all of the liquid has been used.

IMPORTANT BIT – All of the oats will not be covered. DO NOT be tempted to add a bit more food colouring and water as the oats get VERY wet very quickly and you will end up with lumps of sticky porridge and have to start again!

• Once you have used all of your food colouring, tip the oats out of the bag and spread them out to dry. This will take about an hour.

• If you want a stronger colour then you can repeat the process again once the oats have dried.

As you can see from the picture above, some colours worked better than others. I considered ‘double dying’ the blue batch, but in the end decided to leave them so that you could see the effect.

They look very inviting laid out in stripes – but even better once little hands have got stuck in!

They are great if you use them in a tough spot or a table top – but they can be especially effective if you use them on a mirror, tin foil or a light box.

You can add water to them to make a multicoloured mush, which will also make the children’s hands feel super soft!

Goldilocks didn’t know what she was missing!

Alistair