The concept: A memory game in which players attempt to remember which two items make the same sound by picking up two cups and shaking each one. If a match is suspected, the player can turn the cups over to see if the images on the bottom match.

The inspiration: This is not our idea. In fact, it's an idea we got from a beautifully-constructed wooden toy by Guidecraft called Sound Cubes that performed very poorly. The blocks contained a number of beans, rocks or small bells and were intended to operate as described above, but four of the pairs were virtually indistinguishable - the sounds simply were not different enough for children to tell them apart, and we tested them on several adults too, all of whom failed to identify the "correct" pairs. Talk about a fun killer.

Time required: An hour with a toddler, or a little less without.


What you need: Twelve paper cups, construction paper (several pieces each of one or two colors), 6 pairs of matching stickers, tape, scissors, a bowl or cup a couple inches larger in diameter than the opening of the cups (for tracing the lids), and six different kinds of shakeable objects. We were pretty picky in selecting the objects to use based on our experience with the Sound Cubes game, and settled on six distinct sounds:

Pair 1: Jingle bells (one in each cup)
Pair 2: Paper clips (4-5 in each cup)
Pair 3: Barley (a small handful in each cup)
Pair 4: Dried garbanzo beans (any small beans will do)
Pair 5: A string of three linked plastic Mardi Gras beads (okay, you're on your own for that one)
Pair 6: Pennies (two in each cup)

We thought about lining the messy tape-construction paper seam with ribbon. We ended up going for the quick and dirty version in pretty much all respects.

Very simple instructions:


Divide each set of items in half, and make sure you like the sound they make in the cups. Use the larger bowl to trace circles on the construction paper and cut them out. Then trace the inner circle on each of them with the mouth of a cup, like this:


Cut notches around the outside of the circle, ending each cut at the inner circle:


Tape these covers over the cups and add paired stickers for each pair. We used dinosaurs - it was that or fluorescent happy faces.


Flip them over, shuffle them around, and play!


After we first published this tutorial in January 2007, anna kiss at sugar boot and weasel modified this task to use cups that come with lids. We've said it before, but it bears repeating: That woman is a genius.