Z's been a whole lot luckier than her sisters in her early exposure to rice and beans – not to eat but to play with. (There was the sand table that BB still loves to spend time at, but that didn't come until BB was two.) The first time was last month when our Parents as Teachers instructor brought a rice bin; then the Parents as Teacher messy play night* earlier this month when we couldn't tear her away from one of the bean tables. So one evening, when I needed her out of the way and occupied, I gave her a cup of beans, a narrow-necked bottle, and voila! Just her kind of activity: she loaded beans one by one into the bottle and poured them out for more than thirty minutes.
*Messy play night, offered once in the fall and once in the spring, is all the hard to clean up and downright messy activities that parents are usually reluctant to let kids play with at home: shaving cream, shaving cream and glue puffy paint, goop/slime, bubbles (outdoors), painting with sponge shapes, bean/rice/noodle tables, and the kiddie pools of shredded paper, G's favorite. I wish I'd gotten some pictures, but I forgot to bring my camera.
