STEM CUPS??? YES, INDEED!

Now, who would think to use cups for STEM?  Look at see!

Construction Cups
*Let children be engineers and design structures with plastic cups. How many can they use? How high can they build? What worked? What didn’t work?
                    
*Divide children into groups of two or four. Give each group cups and paper plates and see what they can come up with. Let each group report on what they created. Talk about 21st Century skills! Collaboration, communication, problem solving, and creativity at its finest!
                                               
Touch and Tell

Insert a cup in a sock. Put an unusual item down in the cup. Children reach in the sock and try to identify the object by touch.
                 
*Make several of these and number each one. Have children draw a picture or write a sentence about each object.

Sequence

Sequence pictures of plant growth, life cycle, seasons, and so forth.
            
Hairy Creatures

Let children draw silly faces on small bathroom cups. Fill the cups with soil and sprinkle grass seed on the top. Water, set in the sun, and before long you’ll have a hairy creature!
                                     
Instruments 

Give each child a cup and play some catchy music. Have them gently tap the cup on their desk to the beat of the music.

*Give them two cups that they can tap together to make music. 

*Tap out syllables in words with cups.

Clucker Cup 

Take a nail and poke it through the bottom of a cup. (An adult will need to do this.) Thread a 2’ piece of string through the hole and tie a paper clip to the end in the cup. Hold the cup upside down and dip the string in water. With your index finger and thumb, gently pull down on the string. You can make a long squeaking noise or jerk it to sound like a chicken.
                     
Phone

Punch holes in the bottoms of two cups. Take an 8’ piece of string and thread each end through the bottom of a cup. Tie paper clips to the ends of the strings in the cups. Each friend takes a cup and pulls the string taut. One child talks in a cup while the other child holds the cup to her ear and listens.
                                            
Fence Art 

You’ve all seen this where the children stick cups in a chain link fence to make a design. This is great for holidays and other special celebrations.

*You could also challenge children to make patterns in a fence with cups.

Pop Up Puppet

This is cute for a groundhog or a bunny. Poke a hole in the bottom of a cup. Draw a groundhog, bunny, or other creature that lives underground on a piece of paper. Cut out and attach to a straw. Turn the cup upside down and insert the straw through the hole in the cup. Move the straw up and down so the critter can pop out of the hole.
                        
Is your cup “overflowing” with ideas???

Can’t wait to see you for LIVE AT FIVE this afternoon!