Announcing... K-Cup Crafts!

I love coffee. More than the average person, I think. It all started about a year ago when Hubs came home with a Keurig. Since then I've been known to describe my day by how many cups; e.g. "Oh god, it's definitely gonna be a three-cupper." Life for me is all around better when there is coffee to be had, yet every time I pop a K-cup in the machine I feel a pang of guilt at how wasteful they are! I feel like the convenience of them isn't worth the damage and waste.

For months now I've been trying to think of ways to re-use them. I even googled "K-cup crafts" and found like 10 blogs dedicated to saving and reusing K-cups in a crafty way, but ALL of them had only one blog post saying something along the lines of "I hate the waste of K-cups and decided to start a blog showing all the crafts you can do with them." and then NOTHING! So I dug deep into my {mommy mush} brain and found quite a few ideas. The first one I did was a SMASH! The kids absolutely love it!

Sound Memory Game!

This is just like "Concentration" or "Memory" except instead of your kiddos matching images, they shake the cups and try to match the sounds. Kids are typically good at remembering where images are, but the sounds are a little bit tricky. In order for them to remember where the sound is, they have to recognize it, or at least "name" the sound. So if there are pennies in the cup and they're unable to identify the sound, they need to at least be able to catalog the sound mentally by coming up with a word to describe it. You can help them with suggestions like "Hmmm... that one sounds kind of twangy... maybe it's something metal hitting something metal." or "Ok, that one sounds smooth and soft and it sounds kind of sprinkly... maybe it's sand?" If you are going to use sand or something similar, you'll need to cover up the hole at the bottom of the K-cup before you fill it. If the sound is going to be items that won't slip through the hole, leave it! What's so cool about using the K-cups is that the hole on the bottom where the coffee filters through provides the perfect peep hole if you're not sure you have a match! If you reallllly look in there, you can see the buttons, pennies, rice, etc!

You'll Need:

8-24 used K-Cups

scissors

thin cardboard (cereal box)

paper to decorate

1. Empty the K-Cup

K-Cups can either be emptied and cleaned as you go, or saved and emptied all at once. The old coffee grounds don't usually smell too bad so waiting isn't a big deal (plus it give the grounds a chance to dry out a bit)

Note: this part is a little messy. Use your thumb nail to poke through the foil top of the K-cup. Gently peel it to the side and remove it all the way around the top.

It's ok if some foil stays on the edges.

Dump the grounds (makes a great addition to compost!)

Use one blade of your scissors to scrape out the filter. It's fused to the cup near the top so once you scrape that off the filter comes right out.

Rinse out the cup to remove any grounds and to remove the rest of the filter.

2. Pick Your Items

Since the sound pairs should match as closely as possible, make sure you make two identical piles of your sound items.

Some Sound Suggestions:

rice

sand

pennies

buttons

marbles

tooth picks

mini craft pom poms

beads (all shapes and sizes make different sounds!)

3. Close The Cups

Use the top of a K-cup to trace the tops out of cardboard. Since cardboard isn't exactly fancy, trace out some circles in some paper too. I'd use a solid color or a pattern that you can easily cut to make identical circles.