Egg-ceptional towers
You’ll need
- Bamboo canes
- Elastic bands
- Eggs
Before you begin
- Use the safety checklist to help you plan and risk assess your activity. Additional help to carry out your risk assessment, including examples can be found here. Don’t forget to make sure all young people and adults involved in the activity know how to take part safely.
- Make sure you’ll have enough adult helpers. You may need some parents and carers to help if you’re short on helpers.
Setting up this activity
- Set up piles of bamboo canes and rubber bands for people to use.
- If you don’t have plenty of bamboo canes, use pens or pencils instead.
- You could hard boil the eggs before the activity to reduce mess.
- You could use fake rubber eggs to avoid food waste or use something else, such as a cup of water or marshmallows
Reach for the skies
- People can work individually, in pairs or in small groups.
- Everyone should sit by their own pile of bamboo canes and rubber bands.
- The person leading the activity should set a time limit of 10 minutes. Everyone should try to build the tallest tower they can. The tower must stand up on its own and be able to hold a raw egg.
- After 10 minutes, everyone should take a step back from their tower.
- An adult volunteer or young leader should go around and carefully place a raw egg on each person’s tower.
- If a tower successfully holds an egg, the person leading the activity should add more weight, such as by adding another egg, a marshmallow or a cup of water.
Reflection
This activity needed everyone to problem-solve. How did people find out which sorts of shapes worked well in a tower? Perhaps some people had knowledge from building other towers, while others had to test out a few ideas. Did anyone find it tricky to use the elastic bands? It can be difficult to make them secure without snapping them. Who made the tallest tower? Who made the most secure tower? Did they approach the challenge differently?
Safety
All activities must be safely managed. You must complete a thorough risk assessment and take appropriate steps to reduce risk. Use the safety checklist to help you plan and risk assess your activity. Always get approval for the activity, and have suitable supervision and an InTouch process.
You could use marshmallows instead of eggs to put less strain on the towers. How many marshmallows can each tower hold?
If towers are a bit simple, ask people to build bridges between tables or chairs. How well can their bridges hold weight?
If anyone’s allergic to eggs, use something else to test the towers.
It’s up to you what you use to build the towers. You could use interlocking toys or building bricks, such as Lego or wooden building blocks, to make it less fiddly than tying knots.
All Scout activities should be inclusive and accessible.
