Cub Scouts Fun: Popcorn Bag Tower Competition

I have been in scouts for a long time.  Those years have included my time as a cubscout, a boyscout, a parent, an assistant den leadear, and a den leader.    My time in scouts has inspired me to teach kids along with my own two boys what scouts taught me.  There are so many great ideals embedded within this program as well as the fact it gets my kids outdoors to take in the beauty of our Earth.  The one things that remains constant is that scouts relies on volunteers and when needs arise I have been happy to help where I can.  So this was the first year I have put on the Cubmaster hat.

Now if there are other Cubmasters out there, I am guessing you felt as lost as I did when trying to understand what we are supposed to do.   Yeah the 3 hours!! of online training might have helped a tiny bit (at least for my style of learning) and the retiring scoutmaster was and still is an unbelievable mentor.  So once I jumped in and also learned more from the den leaders, the assistant cubmaster, and others who have been in scouts the role started to become a little more comfortable.

One of the roles of the Cubmaster is to lead the Pack meeting.  The Pack meeting is where everyone from the entire pack gets together once a month.   During this meeting, our Pack 200 of 40-60 boys, their parents and all the scout leaders get together in the gymnasium of the First United Methodist Church in Cary, NC.   Here is where we celebrates achievements together across our dens which have boys in the age range of 1st to 5th grade.

I think the Pack meeting is one of the biggest challenges of being a Cubmaster because it is not always easy to hold the attention of this many boys across that age gap.   I have to say the scouting program is full of resources and they even have plans for each pack meeting of the year.  I personally do not always find every plans to fit my personal style, but there are definately pieces of them that I find useful. 

This link is a library of all the plans.  Even if you are not into scouts, but work with kids then you may find some nuggets here:  https://www.scouting.org/programs/cub-scouts/pack-meeting-resources/pack-meeting-plans/

There are also lots of resources on the web from other packs since these meetings have been going on for years and years across the country.  Since I am grabbing information from so many people and resources, I wanted to give back a little and share too.

The last pack meeting I ran was the kickoff meeting for the year.  It is also a tough one because it is a time we share information for our one and only fundraiser of popcorn sales.  So how do you couple popcorn selling information with some fun for the boys?  The answer was having a compitition between the dens to see who could build the tallest tower out of theater popcorn bags.  For this activity you only needed two supplies

1.  Popcorn bags - 25 per den of 5-8 boys
2.  One roll of  yellow masking tape for each den - Represents the butter for your popcorn


I found the popcorn bags on amazon:   https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01I0A9GV0/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o09_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

The objective is to use the bags and tape in anyway you want to build a self standing tower.  The only rule was the tower had to start on the ground, had to be stand by itself, and only the bags and tape could be used.  We gave the dens 15 minutes to work on the activity before seeing which den had the highest tower.

This activity turned out pretty well.  I was not sure how it would turn out but the kids, the den leaders and some of the parents really got into it.  If you ever need a popcorn theme activity or if you just need to have a fun teambuilding activity try this one out.

Enjoy!