Rachel Sumner - Recipes for Play: Creative Activities for Small Hands and Big Imaginations

It is possible to buy natural food coloring, but you can also make your own. It does require setting aside some time that many would probably rather use tackling Mount Washmore or, smarter still, sitting down for a cup of tea.

But it can also be really satisfying knowing that your kids are playing with 100 percent natural products, made from scratch by you. Homemade colors will never work quite the same as their chemical cousins because they arent as concentrated, so they create soft pastels rather than big bold hues.

Using homemade colors can be a more delicate equation than the store-bought versions because it takes a larger volume of color to have the same effect as just a couple of drops of artificial color. This means an increase in drying time, or using less water and more coloring when following recipes.

It is possible you will feel like a magazine-perfect homemaker, preparing a bounty of wholesome color to freeze in ice trays and pop out when needed. If youre not freezing the color, then it will need to be used within two weeks or discarded. It wont keep indefinitely like artificial color will.

Roughly chop the leaves of half a red cabbage, place them in a pot and almost cover them with water, then boil for 15 minutes. Strain the water into a bowl using a colander and marvel at the beauty of the color you have just created.

Frozen blueberries seem to yield the most color; however, fresh are packed with a punch, too. Either machine-juice a handful of berries or do it the old-fashioned way and squeeze the splendor out of them through a cheesecloth.

Either juice the beets or utilize the same boil method used to make purple.

If a liquid is required, mix two teaspoons of powder with a cup of water in a small pot. Simmer for five minutes or so. Strain through a cheesecloth and cool.

Either throw them through the juicer (which will yield a more intense color) or use the same boil method as purple. It is possible to get a bit clever when making the color green by gathering up all the wilting leafy greens in the back of the fridge to juice or simmer, and feel smug with your thriftiness.

This is the hardest color to reproduce naturally in your kitchen, but possibly also the most fun. Boil chopped red cabbage following the purple recipe, then add baking soda to the juice, a little at a time, to turn the liquid blue. As cool as this chemical reaction is to watch, it does create a volatile color that is sensitive to heat and will react with vinegar.

Waiting for a meal at a restaurant? Got a stash of coins in your wallet? Not sure how many there are? Get the kids to count them out for you! Kids cant count yet? This matching game makes it easy for those who havent yet figured numbers out.

thin card or paper

scissors

a soft pencil (e.g. 2B3B)

coins (one of each of your currency)

Cut the card or paper into a credit-card size (this way it will slip easily into your wallet). Then either trace around your coins one at a time and write the denominations inside, or create a rubbing of each coin by placing it head-side up under the card or paper and rubbing the pencil over the grooves and indents. The face of the currency should appear in a perfect likeness.

Tip out the contents of your coin purse and ask your child to match each coin to its image.

RECIPES FOR PLAY: Creative Activities for Small Hands and Big Imaginations

Copyright 2013, 2014 Rachel Sumner and Ruth Mitchener

First published in New Zealand in 2013 by Penguin Books, an imprint of Penguin Group (NZ).

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