Summer Palace art activity

The boys have been really enjoying the Bella and Harry book Let’s visit Beijing for our ‘China week’ – see my post on books for China week. Bella and Harry visit the Summer Palace in the book. So I thought I would combine that with the fact that China is famous for its rice paddy fields to create a Summer Palace made from rice!

First I took some coloured rice – see my post on making coloured rice. I drew out an outline of the palace on some paper, and my son covered it in some glue.He then had a fantastic time scooping the rice onto the paper and pressing it down using an ice-cream scoop.

As you can see my toddler got involved too. This didn’t add to the artwork, but it did to the rice content of the floor. Hey ho, we have a cordless vacuum! My preschooler was thrilled with his picture!