Make Cackling Monster Cups

This Halloween monster craft for kids turns a plastic cup, string, and a paperclip into a cup noisemaker that cackles every time you tug the string.

 

Materials you’ll need

• plastic cup
• sharp pin or needle (ask a grown-up to handle this)
• piece of string
• paperclip
• paint
• googly eyes or pearl stickers
• construction paper
• pipe cleaners
• tissue paper
• glue
• scissors
• paper towel
• water

⚠️ Warning: Grown-ups only on the pin or needle. Hold the cup by its sides, with fingers clear of the spot where the pin will come through. Push the pin slowly and straight into the center of the cup’s bottom. Never point the pin toward your hand. Put the pin away as soon as the hole is made.

Step-by-step tutorial

Step 1: Have a grown-up poke a small hole in the center of the bottom of a plastic cup with a pin or needle.

Step 2: Thread a piece of string through the hole, leaving a short tail on the outside of the cup’s bottom. The rest of the string hangs down through the inside of the cup and out the open end.

Step 3: Tie the short tail to a paperclip. The paperclip sits across the hole and keeps the string from pulling through when you tug.

Step 4: Give your cup a monster makeover! Paint it, then add eyes, paper teeth or a tongue, pipe cleaner arms or antennae, and tissue paper hair. A pile of hair on top covers the paperclip nicely.

Step 5: Wet the string by pinching it with a damp paper towel and sliding the towel down its length.

Step 6: Hold the cup upside down in one hand. With the other hand, pinch the string just below the cup and tug down in short, quick jerks to make your monster cackle!

Learn more

This sound vibration experiment works because of something called stick-slip friction. When you pinch the damp string and tug, it grabs your fingers, slips, and grabs again over and over, super fast, and every grab and slip makes the string vibrate. A string by itself pushes so little air that you’d barely hear it. Tied to the cup, those vibrations travel into the plastic, and the cup’s wide surface pushes much more air, turning a faint buzz into a loud cackle. Violinists use the same grab-and-slip trick every time they pull a bow across a string.

Hooked on turning vibrations into sound? Slime-Powered Sound Machine lets kids pump air to make their own vibrations and sound waves, with every part sized and ready.