Coloured paper cups

Stacking them, and knocking them down

Each child took the colors they wanted and built upward, holding their fingers steady so the tower would not go over. Once it was high enough they knocked it down, and enjoyed that part. So they made a rule for it: you knock over your own castle, not somebody else's.

One child had a tall one going when another walked past, and it went over.

“No!” — and the child was face down on the floor.

“It's alright. Paper cups are light, so they fall over. Shall we build it again, tall and steady?”

A nod. “I want to build it with you.” And they built it again, the two of them together.

Stacked until there was a gap to peek through

Both hands around one cup, lifting them off the pile one at a time. The child stacked them up, and between two of the cups a gap was left — and a face went right up against it.

On the other side of the gap was another child's face. A sound — “Ah—” — and a wave.

“You can see your friend's face.”

A look up at the adult, then straight back to the gap. The face on the other side went away, and came back. A nod, and a sound.

Then the cups went up again, and the face went away and came back, and again.

Something hidden under a cup

A cup in each hand, held up and turned around. Then one went down on the floor and they tapped it, for the sound, and tipped it back and forth to look inside.

Then one child dropped a small toy into a cup, gave it a shake, and set it back down.

After that the others were lifting cups, one at a time, to find out.

“It's here.”

“Not here.”

Two cups, knocked together

The children put toy food into the cups and stacked them up. Then one child took a cup in each hand, knocked the two together, and listened.

An adult said:

“It makes a knocking sound when you tap them together.”

After that the cup went against the table. Then other toys, against other things.

A face inside the cup

An adult put the cups out on the floor with a photograph of one of the children inside each one.

The children picked them up and looked in — a face brought close to the picture, a finger pointing at it.

“Whose face is this?”

Then one child carried a cup across to the child whose face was in it, and handed it over. That child looked at the photograph, smiled, and looked into the cup again.

After that the cups went back and forth between the two of them, with a look at each other in between.

A house with no way in

One child stacked the cups up and told the child sitting next to them what it was.

“This is the house I made.”

Another had gone up in a ring, and got a question.

“How do you get in there?”

Some of them went on building upward. Others dropped pompoms into the cups and made juice.

Cups all the way around a child lying down

An adult laid the cups all the way around a child who was lying down.

“It's my house!”

“It's like a castle!”

The cups became a lake

An adult laid the cups out on the floor in the shape of a lake, and put fishing rods beside them.

A child took a rod in both hands, looked down into the cup lake, and moved it slowly.

Then something caught. The rod came up, the whole body shook, and out came a sound.

“You caught a fish.”

The child looked at what they had caught, put it back into the lake, and started again.

When another child picked up a rod, they went over to watch, and the two of them looked down into the lake together.