Doing fun activities with your little ones isn’t just a great bonding experience, it’s also a fantastic way for them to learn and grow. 

Sensory play is one of the most important and useful tools for parents, educators, and caregivers to use when fostering healthy development. It helps kids practice their fine motor skills, work on language development, empower creativity, encourage connection, and SO much more the benefits of sensory play are endless.

Because kids are naturally curious little beings, using natural materials is a great way to keep activities fun and safe. That’s one of the reasons that I love using natural dyes! When your little one sticks something in their mouth or rubs their eyes, you can worry a bit less about any synthetic additives, chemicals, and harmful artificial dyes.

Natural dyes allow you to keep activities colorful and engaging (which is important for sensory play) without worrying about your little one’s sensitive skin or hard to remove staining from food coloring. It’s the best of both worlds.

I have tons of information and activities about the use of natural dyes on The Mothercould in Your Pocket resource, but I’ll give a little sneak peek today at some of my favorite tried-and-true activities.

Dye-namic Fun: 12 Natural Dyeing with Spice Activities for Kids

Colored Dry Pasta

Colored pasta is a great sensory base tool. You don’t even have to cook the pasta, which makes this activity easier and less time consuming. 

As much as I admire those of you who make pasta from scratch, that’s a skill I unfortunately haven’t mastered myself! So on that note, we’re gonna stick to using dry pasta, vinegar, parchment paper, and a baking tray. 

You can use things like paprika, turmeric, and matcha powder to dye the noodles. The more you add, the deeper the color will be! Feel free to play around with measurements for your desired color. 

Colored Bath Water

If your kiddos despise bath time, this part of your nighttime routine can be a huge headache but it doesn’t have to be!

Making bath time a vibrant sensory play experience is the easiest way to turn the night around. Using fruits and veggies for a dye bath is a safe way to make bath time fun again!

I usually use things like beet powder, spirulina powder, or turmeric powder! If you want to get even more creative, you can use plant materials such as roses, dandelions, and even lavender.

Before extracting the natural colors of the product, make sure to thoroughly rinse and wash them so you can keep any pesticides and dirt out of the bath! 

Dyeing Eggs

Of course when we think of dyeing eggs, we think of Easter eggs but this activity can be done at any time for a fun sensory experience!

Just grab a mason jar (or plastic cup, whatever you have on hand!), choose some wet natural dyes, and get ready for your little ones to have a blast! 

You can use brightly colored teas (i.e., passion fruit), beet juice, and maybe my favorite natural dye, boiled purple cabbage. With cabbage, you can add baking soda to turn the color to blue, heat it to make green, or add lemon/lime juice to make it pink! How fun! 

Tea Dyed Play Dough

Fair warning, these colors don’t come out bright. But, the pastel colors create a calming play experience, so it’s okay for them to not be super bright! Plus, this activity smells heavenly, so that makes up for it, adding another level of engaging sensory experience.

You just need some tea bags, flour, salt, cream of tartar, oil, and boiling water. It’s important to add the boiling water to the mixture while it’s hot, so it kills the bacteria in the raw flour and stays taste safe! Wait until the dough is room temperature and you’re good to go! 

Here’s another super useful hack: You can skip cream of tartar and add a teaspoon of alum powder! It helps make the dough softer and longer-lasting. 

Cloud Dough

Another fun DIY natural-dye activity is cloud dough! This one is extra fun because it’s super hands-on and a bit more exploratory for your little one. When naturally dyed, this cloud dough actually looks like sand or dirt! 

All you need is flour, vegetable oil, and the natural dye of your choosing (i.e., matcha, blue spirulina, or cocoa powder). Hide some toy animals into the mix and have your kiddos search for them! You could even add construction vehicles or make it a fun beach scene!

It’s a great sensory base with a lot of potential to be in all sorts of sensory kits and activities!

Taste-Safe Slime

Something I’ve learned is that slime will ALWAYS be a winner with sensory play. To make the slime experience appropriate for littles, I made a taste-safe version! Plus, you’ll probably already have what you need to make this at home, so you can skip a trip to the grocery store!

To make this taste-safe slime, I just use chia seeds, cool water, cornstarch, and some natural dye. White chia seeds really help the color pop, but you can use black chia seeds if that’s what you have on hand.

Fizzy Blocks

Sometimes the best sensory activities are also science experiments! This fizzy block activity is a twist on the classic baking soda and vinegar volcano experiment.

The kids can help you make baking soda blocks with gelatin and natural dye, like beet juice, paprika, or turmeric. Freeze them, and the next day, your kids will have a blast dropping vinegar onto the blocks and watching them fizz and dissolve! 

This experiment will be just as exciting for your kids as it was for you growing up!

Tubes Of Emotion

This activity is just like the fizzy blocks, but with a little spin to it. It’s also aimed more towards aiding social emotional learning, as your little ones will learn to identify with their feelings. 

Grab some recycled paper towel rolls, draw different expressions on them, and pair them with specific natural dyes. For example, yellow is happy, red is angry, green is silly you can even talk with your little one to see which colors they associate with each emotion! 

Letter Sensory Tray

This taste-safe letter sensory tray is a great way to teach your little ones the alphabet while making it entertaining. It’s super fast and easy to make, too! 

Just grab a tray, salt, a Ziplock bag, letters, and some natural dye, such as turmeric or blue spirulina powder. You can ask your kid to trace each letter in the salt, and just smooth it over after they’re done!

Even though this activity is taste-safe, keep your eyes on them so they don’t consume too much salt. 

Salt Painted Flowers

This activity is the best of the best for hand control and practicing fine motor skills. Plus, it’s a lot of fun. 

Just get watercolor paper, a permanent marker, glue, salt, a dropper, water, and some natural dyes. You’ll use the marker, glue, and salt to make the shape of a flower, then your little one add color to the design using homemade natural paint! 

I recommend boiled purple cabbage for this one since you can easily manipulate the color, and maybe some beet root powder for more flower color variety and matcha powder for the stems!

Putting each color in a different tiny glass jar makes the colors easily accessible to your little ones!

Painting With Beans

For this activity, check out my taste-safe paint recipe beforehand. But, instead of using food coloring, use some of my favorite natural dyes that make this project perfect for little ones! (You can read about natural dye colors below.)

After doing so, we’re gonna use those paints for painting with black beans! You can use a bamboo tray if you want to save this art project for future use, or a recycled cardboard box if you’re gonna toss it out after the activity.

From here, just grab the paint you made, grab some black beans, add your paint in various spots on the tray, drop in your beans, and let your little Picasso do their magic. 

Tie Dye Toilet Paper

Before you say it, I know it seems like you’re wasting a brand new roll of toilet paper—but it’s so worth it for this engaging, fun-filled activity! Plus, you just need a handful of materials.

Using water, white toilet paper, a dropper, and various natural dyes, you have the perfect recipe for a natural tie dyeing activity! If you notice that the water is making the toilet paper fall apart, just use some rubber bands to hold the paper in place.

Brightly colored teas, boiled purple cabbage, and beet juice are great alternatives to synthetic food coloring. There’s no wrong way to do this, your little ones can create any kind of design or pattern that comes to mind!

How To Make Natural Dyes With Kids

• Red: Use beet powder or beet juice for red coloring! You can buy pre-made beet juice, but you can also do it yourself using a blender or juicer. You can even take the skin peeled from red onions and use those! 

• Orange: Use paprika if you need a dry ingredient to make orange. If you need a wet ingredient, carrots create a super rich orange color. 

• Yellow: Turmeric is my go-to for yellow dye. It’s surprisingly super bright! You can also use dandelions, which can actually have added health benefits!

• Green: I stick with matcha typically for green. But, there are tons of other options if you’re not a matcha fan. For dry ingredients, you could use green spirulina or even parsley. If you want a wet ingredient, you can use a blender to mix up some spinach!

• Blue: Cabbage + water + baking soda is a perfect blend for blue. If you’d prefer something a little quicker, you could use blueberries and blend them up. 

• Purple: I do just regular cabbage water. No adding or mixing necessary here. You can also use grapes, plums, or eggplants. Same kind of idea, blend or juice them!

• Pink: We’re gonna do cabbage water + lemon/lime juice. Other options are raspberries, strawberries, or maybe even cherries. 

• Brown: I tend to use coffee and/or cocoa powder. These don’t take much prep especially the cocoa powder so it’s quick and efficient. 

• Black: For black use blackberries! Juice or blend them and you’ll get a super deep purple to light black mixture. 

Swap food coloring for natural dye in your sensory activities!

Sensory play is the best way to entertain your little ones while keeping their growing minds working. If you aren’t a huge fan of food coloring or artificial dyes, you don’t have to miss out on the kaleidoscopic element of many sensory activities! These natural dye alternatives work really well and the dyeing process is super easy!

For ALL kinds of fantastic fun, visit the Mothercould blog! Also, download Mothercould In Your Pocket for lots of activities, crafts, tips, tricks, and more! I want to help you make play time fun, enjoyable, and a learning experience in every way I can!