Speed Stacks

My son came downstairs with some cups that were part of a big color and shape sorting work we’ve had around for a number of years.   Typically the piles of rubber bears, llamas, goats and other sundry animals get disbursed around the room by one child and then another child, possibly a neighbor, comes in and decides it would be fun to sort them into the color-matching cups included with the set.

This time though my son had an idea with the cups.  He was stacking them upside down into a pyramid.   My husband and I looked at each other because he and I were remembering Speed Stacks, the competitive cup stacking sport for children.   If you’ve never heard of it look at the video on their main site here: http://www.speedstacks.com  And yes, those videos aren’t being sped up, the participants are really that fast.

My husband and I had fun with the Speed Stacks not that long ago.  On second thought, it was before the children were born.  I swear time speeds up as you get older.   But muscle memory still serves because as soon as we had the mat out and the cups in front of us we remembered most of the sets.

I was hoping my son would be interested in it but I missed something as I was thinking about which child might find it fun.   My son had triggered the idea but my daughter was the one who was interested.    It was tactile and physical and she could do it without having to see.   She loved putting her hands on either side of the timer, releasing her hands to start the clock, stacking a set of three cups, collapsing them back into a single stack and then putting both hands back on the pads to stop the timer.

She did this again and again this afternoon.   I taught her how to do two stacks of three and we were getting into three stacks of three when I asked her if she wanted to do one stack of six.   She was getting the motions down fairly well when my son finally came over and acted interested.

The part she liked the best was the competitive aspect though.   She liked trying to best her own time.   She asked all about the buttons on the pad and understood that after she’d stopped the timer she could either reset the timer and go again or store the time if it was a particularly memorable one (she liked most of hers).

The only thing she couldn’t do was see the time on the timer.   She’d ask me to come over and tell her what her time was.   The made getting anything done by me rather challenging because most of her times were less than thirty seconds.

We’ll see who has more perseverance (or interest) and who will get the fastest score.   Okay, on that second question I already know the answer in advance: dad will.

The Big Boy Tiny Girl Christmas Conversation:   This morning my son told my husband there were three colors of Christmas: white, for snow; green, for the trees; and red, for love.   My daughter chimed in, “and yellow, for the star on the tree”.