From: dwm@csg.uwaterloo.ca (Doug)
Subject: fire building competition
Date: Mon, 16 May 1994 18:38:08 GMT

The other game was one that we used last month for a small troop with several
relatively young Scouts.  Firebuilding was a new thing for them, and we wanted
to see how well they'd caught on to techniques, etc.  Rather than the old
"first to burn through the string" type of contest, we juiced it up a bit and
made it interesting for the older boys with the following twist:  in addition
to getting a fire going, each team should build a launcher to fire water
balloons at the other team's fire.  We didn't have a whole lot of time to let
them work at the launchers, so for us, these were just overturned picnic
tables with rubber slingshots strung between the picnic table legs.  Old
tire innertubes provided the rubber strips.  One of our leaders brought
some old tractor inner tubes from his family's farm, but I think a bicycle
inner tube would have worked even better.

This game actually went rather well - the real objective of getting the
Scouts to do some fire building was met (both teams' fires were easily built
and kept going).  We made up a couple of rules that helped keep some order
in the chaos:  the team fire had to be going before the team was allowed to
launch a balloon;  each team was only given two water balloons to fire at one
time - they had to return the bits of broken balloon to get replacement
balloons.  (When we left the site where we did this game, there was no trace
of any broken balloon bits whatsoever.)

A couple of hints though - we used a collapsible plastic water jug to fill
the balloons - it was kind of tough to do and I fell behind the Scouts as
they were firing - try to have as many as possible filled up before you start
the game.  Water pressure is something one tends to take for granted in the
city, but at a campsite it can be a bit of challenge to get water balloons
filled.  Secondly, have a pretty good idea how your launcher will work;
there are several designs around, if you have time to let the Scouts build
them.  With the rubber slingshot idea, rope that was tied through holes in
the ends of the rubber tended to pull through the ends of the strips.  We'll
have a better design for next time though.  :-)

One great story came out of the game - one team's balloon managed to land
squarely in the middle of the other team's fire.  But they'ld already
discovered that half full balloons flew much better than full ones, so the
darned water balloon didn't burst when it hit the fire!  Better yet, even
though flames were all around the balloon, the water inside kept it cool so
that it didn't burst!  Everybody ran up to see this silly water balloon in the
middle of a roaring fire (very much the boiling water in the paper cup
principle), when suddenly the top of the balloon popped and a little stream
of water spurted out.  The top even started to rotate a little - just like
a miniature lawn sprinkler.  There wasn't enough water to put out the fire,
but it certainly made an impact and got a big cheer!  After that, the game
kind of degenerated into lobbing a few remaining water balloons around but
it was a warm spring day and everybody had a lot of fun.