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Campfire Popcorn
Enjoy a tasty treat!
Gather around the campfire and get ready for a tasty adventure! Campfire popcorn is a fun and simple activity where everyone can enjoy the excitement of making their own snack over the flames. Learn fire safety, teamwork, and patience as you watch the kernels pop into fluffy, delicious popcorn.
Before you begin
- All young people and adults involved in the activity need to know how to take part safely. You should give a safety briefing and/or demonstration
- Have appropriate adult supervision for the activity you’re running
- For younger Sections, you may need some parents and carers to help
- Build and light a fire before starting this activity
- You’ll use the hot embers to cook on, so the fire will need enough time to die down before cooking
What you will need
- A wooden pole that’s over one metre in length, such as an old broom handle
- Two metal sieves, both the same size
- Metal wire
- Wire cutters
- Heat-resistant gloves
- Popcorn kernels
- Bowls or plates to serve the popcorn in
- Toppings for the popcorn e.g. salt or sugar
- A bucket of water and/or sand
- Fire blanket
- A first aid kit for burns
Create your popcorn maker
- Take the wooden pole. At one end of the pole, place one of the sieves. The sieve handle needs to be held on the pole, so it’s flat on and perpendicular to it. The broom handle touches the dome of the sieve. The broom is acting like an extension to the handle
- Using the metal wire, secure both sieves onto the pole by wrapping the wire around both
- Cut off any excess wire using the cutters
Pop that corn
- Open the sieves and place a small handful of popcorn kernels in the bottom sieve
- Close the top sieve over the popcorn kernels
- Hold the sieves over the hot embers of the fire, keeping them at arm’s length with the pole
- Remember to keep moving the pole around to stop the kernels from burning while cooking
- After most of the kernels have popped, remove the pole from the fire
- Give the metal sieves a few minutes to cool down
- Using heat-resistant gloves, carefully open up the sieves
- Wait for the popcorn to cool down if needed
- Pour the popcorn into the bowls or plates. You could add a topping if you’d like to
- Repeat steps one to eight until everyone has had a chance to cook and eat some popcorn
Change the challenge level
Decrease the challenge
- Have the sieves created already for younger Sections
- You can still go through the steps on how to create them
Increase the challenge
- Create your own sieve and see if it holds the popcorn over the fire
Reflection
This activity needed you to try new things by creating campfire popcorn makers.
- How did it make you feel to build and cook your own popcorn over a fire?
- How did the popcorn compare to the ones you can buy at the cinema or make in a microwave?
- Would you have the popcorn again?
- Building these popcorn makers was something different, had you built one before?
- Were they easy to make?
- You could use these skills to help create one at home. Do you think you could remember how to make one again?
