One set of inexpensive plastic cups can keep kids busy for hours. I’m sharing two fun games to play using a stack of plastic cups.
Just regular old Solo (or in our case, off-brand) cups.
We’re nearly halfway through Week 6 of being quarantined at home and have really been settling into this new normal pretty well now.
Since we won’t be having people over or going to parties for a while, I figured, why bother saving these party cups when we could play one of these two games together.
Two Plastic Cup Games for Kids
Both of these active games will help fulfill that need to move and work.
Kids will be working on hand-eye coordination and reasoning skills.
Oh, and they’ll also be having fun.
Just to warn you, when a huge stack of cups falls over, it does get pretty loud. Especially on hardwood floors. So these are not really quiet activities.
But they sure are entertaining!
Cup Tower
For this game, you really just need plastic cups.
Build towers and pyramids out of plastic cups. How high can kids go?
This activity is perfect for little builders and wreckers.
I will say having two kids wanting different things out of this activity is difficult to manage. My oldest wanted to build, and the youngest wanted to tear down.
If we’d had two colors of cups, I would’ve been able to separate them (Big Sis gets blue, Little Sis gets red) more easily.
In reality, I had to ply Little Sis with Cheez-Its and Doc McStuffins to keep her away from Big Sis’s building escapades.
Tips for success
- Give kids an objective. For example, can you build a castle for your stuffed animals to live in? Can you build a tower that’s as tall as you?
- Add paper plates or pieces of cardboard into the mix. These can be used for bridges, ramps, archways, etc.
- Build against a wall for some stability.
- Sit back and let kids discover how to build on their own. Once we grown-ups start playing, the whole dynamic changes and I find that my kids rely on my help and input more when they had previously been doing fine on their own.
Bowling for cups
Build a pyramid of plastic cups and use balls, cars, or even wadded up socks to knock them down.
I think the wind-up car was the favorite this time around.
Tips for success
- Play in a hallway to keep cups and balls from flying everywhere.
- Make bumpers using blankets or pillows.
- Stop cups and balls from flying at the end with a blanket or box.
- Place lines of tape on the floor to mark where kids should bowl from and where to stack the cups.
Which Game Will You Try at Home?
Building cup towers and bowling with cups are both so easy to set up and do and guaranteed to be a hit with any kid who likes knocking things down and building them back up again.
Make sure to save these plastic cups to try these games again another time.
Let me know which one you’ll try!
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