Speed Stacking Games

Sport Stacking

• Sport stacking requires a great deal of coordination. The game is played by stacking cups from a pile into specific configurations as rapidly as possible. Players are timed on how long they take to stack and unstack a structure. The player with the shortest time wins. Competitive players use plastic cups specifically designed for stacking games. Sport stacking cups feature a special shoulder, reinforced lip and three holes in the bottom. The material that forms the cup is textured on the outside and smooth inside. The World Sport Stacking Association (WSSA), formed in 2001, hosts the World Sport Stacking Championships each spring in Denver, Colorado.

Educational Speed Stacking

• Many educators have turned to using speed stacking games to promote and build mental and physical agility and dexterity through sequencing. Speed stacking helps to develop bilateral proficiency by working both sides of the body equally. Since players must use both hands to stack, the activity has been found to increase hand-eye coordination and reaction time by up to 30 percent, according to a university study by Dr. Brian Udermann. When children practice stacking ambidextrously, they develop a greater percentage of the right side of the brain, which can help build awareness, focus, creativity, and rhythm. Stacking also uses sequencing and patterning, which can improve reading and math skills and are said to be important to improving a child's abilities in sports, computers, and playing musical instruments. Give a child a list of pyramids of different sizes to construct, and time how long it takes the child to go through the list. Make the the list increasingly longer until she can beat her old times.

Text Cup Stacking

• Text Cup Stacking is an online touch-typing game with a cup-stacking theme. The game is played by typing the illuminated letters on a stack of cups to either stack or unstack a tower one letter at a time. Players can only eliminate letters from the bottom or top of the tower when stacking or unstacking to activate the adjacent row. Because cups have to be stacked in sequential order, players have to concentrate not only on specific letters but the sequential order in which the cups are activated. The goal is to stack and unstack towers as quickly as possibly by typing them away one cup at a time. Scores are generated by how quickly players can type their way through a series of stacks, much like speed stacking.