Red Cup, Blue Cup

Besides being just plain fun, Red Cup, Blue Cup also develops sensory, perceptual, and visual skills. Even older children will find this activity challenging outside of the bathtub when you use the suggestions listed below in “Ways to Make It More Challenging.”

Red Cup, Blue Cup helps your child develop and enhance:

1. Proprioception (for orienting your limbs to get dressed and go dancing)
2. Midline crossing (for playing ping pong and badminton)
3. Motor planning (for getting on and off a horse)
4. Spatial awareness (for judging how much milk will fit in your cup)
5. Visual tracking (for scanning a room to find your back pack and scanning a shelf to find a book)

What You Will Need:

1. A blue and a red plastic cup, or any two different-colored plastic cups
2. A bathtub filled with water.

What to Do:

1. When Thea is in the bathtub, hand her a blue cup and let her play with it, filling it and pouring the water out.
2. Give her the red cup and say, “Show me how you pour the water from the blue cup into the red cup.” (Thea will probably pour at her mid-line.)
3. Hold your hands up in front of you, about one foot apart. Say, “Thea, look at my hands. Now, move your hands apart, just like mine.” You may need to position her hands for her, until she gets the idea.
4. Each time she pours, encourage her to gradually expand the distance between her hands, until her cups are shoulder width apart from each other.
5. As she begins to pour from the blue to the red cup, her instinct may be to bring the red cup in close to her mid-line. Remind her: “Keep the red cup wa-a-a-y near the wall. Keep it very still and bring the blue cup wa-a-a-y over to it.”
6. Have her switch the cups, so she crosses the mid-line with the other hand.

Ways to Make It More Challenging:
(use these variations with older kids, outside the bathtub):

1. Have Thea do Red Cup, Blue Cup at the sink, because standing is harder than sitting.
2. Fill the cups with beans instead of water, and have Thea do the pouring at a table, while seated.
3. Have her stand on a balance board while pouring beans.

What to Look For:

1. Thea pours the water (beans) with minimal spillage.
2. She looks at her hands and watches as she pours.
3. She holds the red cup still and brings the blue cup to it across her mid-line.
4. She holds the waiting cup out to the side of her body, rather than at the midline.