Learn the books of the Bible with styrofoam cups

Way back in the wild days of Pinterest I pinned a really cool books of the Bible game to my Bible board. Fast forward a few years and I was organizing that board for my Bible lessons and wanted to put together a post on ways to memorize the Books of the Bible. As I did I was reminded of an amazing Books of the Bible cup game that intrigued me, I clicked through the pin, and 404, it didn’t exist anymore.

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I really hated the idea of this game just disappearing from the world. REALLY hate that idea, and I started coming up with ways to try and improve it. So, I stopped by the Dollar Store and the plastic cups they had wouldn’t work. So I went to HEB, and most of the cups that looked like the ones I saw on the pin didn’t work either. Then I saw some styrofoam cups.

They were just what I needed. So, you need some disposable cups that leave a lip of the cup exposed when they are all stacked. See that raised edge, that is what you’re looking for. That is what you’ll need to make this books of the Bible cup game.

First version of the Books of the Bible cup game

Figure out how you are going to divide up the books of the Bible. While you could make a giant stack of 66 cups tall, I thought that could get very messy.

I grabbed my Books of the Bible card game and looked at how they are naturally divided up. I noticed the books of Law, Wisdom, Major Prophets, and Gospels/NT History all had five books. That gave me four groups of five.

Then I counted up the Minor Prophets and OT Histories and found 12 in each of those. I split each of them into 2 groups of six. That made a second group of four sets.

Finally, I looked at the Letters and Prophecy for the New Testament and had 22 books total, so I divided them into two groups of six, and two groups of five.

Playing the first version of this Books of the Bible game

As I said, there are three different parts to this. Each kid gets one of these sets, and they take them apart like this. Then they stack the cups in the right order for one of the colors.

Then to put together the next set, you would unstack them and put them together in the right order for the next color.

Obviously you would need to make more than one set for a Sunday School class, but if you’re using them in your home for homeschool Bible, you can easily get away with one set.

Set 2 of the Books of the Bible cup game

Sooooo….. I was halfway through putting together the first version of this books of the Bible cup game, and then I realized there was another way I could have made it that would make more sense, and I was intrigued by.

Same set up as before, I divided the books of the Bible into the same groupings as before.

Now this step I figured out after making the first part, but divide the cups into four more or less equal parts. This makes what you’re about to do easier.

Write your first set of the books of the Bible on there. Then without taking the cups apart, slide the cups so you’ve got another column of blank spaces to label. I would randomly slide left or right, or over two just to try and mess it up quite a bit.

While doing this I wrote all of them using the same color per stack.

Playing this second set of the Books of the Bible game

With this version, you never unstack the cups. Instead, you just slide the cups around until the books you are working on line up.

As I was working on this, I was pondering how I could work this into a Bible-based Escape Room. Doesn’t it seem like a cool idea? I could see this unlocking a cool key.

Or maybe I just have puzzles on my mind because I’m working on a story campaign for my husband’s birthday.

More Great Books of the Bible Ideas

• 10 Ways to Memorize Books of the Bible
• Books of the Bible Go Fish!
• Books of the Bible Cards
• Know How to Study the Bible with YOUR Kids