Rice Mosaic

You can always tell when I'm getting to the end of a unit- that's when we start most of the projects. By this time, Casia already has a strong foundation of Roman history and culture, so we can put that knowledge to use in some fun art projects. Casia made an aqueduct last week and this week she's been working on a mosaic made of rice. 

Casia loves art, and a mosaic was an obvious choice while studying the Romans, I just had to figure out what she could use to make one. I wanted something cheap, easy to get, not too complicated and something she could do mostly on her own.  I ran across the idea to use rice on this Yahoo site. It requires rice (check!), food coloring (check!), rubbing alcohol (check!), glue (check!), tweezers (check!) and something to glue the rice onto. That I actually purchased at a craft store for $1.20. It was this flat, two-sided cardboard-ornament type thing that measures about 4" in diameter. The perfect size.

The first step for Casia, was to put about a quarter cup of rice into a glass bowl (she used four because she wanted four colors) and then she added a teaspoon of rubbing alcohol.

Next she added some food coloring. She wanted to get a dark orange so she used two drops of yellow and one drop of red.

Casia stirred the bowl until the color was consistent all the way through.

She then poured it into a pie plate.

Casia spread the rice around to give it plenty of breathing room to dry.

Casia repeated these steps for the three other colors she wanted to use in her mosaic. She let them sit over night to dry and the next day, I poured them back into the small bowls.

She drew a picture of a sun on the cardboard and then painted on the glue and laid down each piece of rice. She used just a small amount of glue at a time so it didn't dry before she stuck the rice on it.

Here is Casia's finished mosaic. A sun with a blue sky. I think she did a great job. It took her about an hour to  set the rice. Overall, I think this was an inexpensive and easy craft project. Casia and I highly recommend it.