Popping Corn

1. Ask your group to stand in a circle.
2. By way of demonstration, teach your group how to act like popping corn, ie starting from a crouched-down position, teetering on your toes, jump into the air clapping your hands once and yell “POP!”
3. Invite your group to practice popping like corn several times.
4. Challenge your group to complete this task – over the course of the next 60 seconds, every person must pop once only, but not at the same time as another person.
5. No one is permitted to establish a pattern, nor are they allowed to indicate or gesture to another person their intention to pop.
6. When ready, everyone starts in a crouching position.
7. If two (or more) people pop at the same time, re-start the exercise.
8. Continue play until the task is complete, or your group’s energy starts to wane.

Looking to fill a couple of minutes in a fun, nonsensical way. Try this…

Gather your group in front of you, and by way of demonstration, teach your group how to act like popping corn, ie start by crouching down, knees bent, teetering on the balls of your feet, and then jump into the air clapping your hands once and yell “POP!”

Injecting tons of enthusiasm, invite your group to follow your lead and practice their popping corn skills with you. If your group is standing in a circle, there will be ample opportunities for fun and laughter.

After a few moments of practice, announce that you would now like to challenge your group to complete a very difficult task – over the course of the next 60 seconds, every person must pop once only, but not at the same time as another person.

Explain further that, in the true spirit of play, no one is permitted to establish a pattern, nor are they allowed to indicate, gesture or motion to another person their intention to pop. The sequence of pops is purely determined by chance – that’s what makes this game so much fun.

Finally, announce that if two or more people pop at the same time, the group shall be asked to restart the exercise to have another go.

To start, invite everyone to crouch down, and when ready, say “GO.”

Remember, everyone has to pop within 60 seconds, so even those who want to wait until the very end have to pop at some point.

Continue play until the task is complete, or your group’s energy starts to wane.

Naturally, the more enthusiasm and energy you put into your initial demonstrations, the more fun and interest your group will bring to this nonsensical game.

Ideally, it looks great if your feet leave the ground when you jump, but it’s not critical.

You actually don’t need a circle to start, but this formation allows everyone to see each other pop. It’s fun observing the many varied human forms of popping corn.

If necessary, ask everyone to close their eyes until after they have popped. This strategy may reduce the chances of patterns or gestures being used to achieve success.

Most groups prefer you, as the leader, to announce a couple of time calls, such as “THIRTY SECONDS LEFT,” “TEN SECONDS LEFT,” etc.

If you have a group of less than ten people, announce a 20 or 30 second round.

For some groups, you may need to clarify what popping at the ‘same time’ means. I prefer to adopt the honour system, which means that if you think, or someone else may think, that you have popped at the same time as someone else, you are best to call it, and prepare for another round. It is, after all, just a game, it’s not the end of the world if you get this wrong.

To be honest, even if your group adopted some covert system or pattern to ‘complete’ the task, the primary objective of this game is to have fun and generate a little bit of energy. While there is no harm in the group choosing to ‘cheat’ as such, this behaviour may telegraph issues in regards integrity for the group.

You could integrate Popping Corn as part of a well-designed SEL program to develop your group’s abilities to manage their emotions, thoughts and behaviours effectively in different situations and to achieve goals.

Specifically, this activity offers opportunities to explore and practice the following social & interpersonal skills:

Self-Awareness

• Demonstrating Self-Confidence, Honesty & Integrity

Self-Management

• Controlling One’s Emotions
• Demonstrating Self-Discipline & Self-Motivation
• Setting Personal & Group Goals
• Taking Initiative
• Use Planning & Organisational Skills

Relationship Skills

• Communicate & Listen Effectively
• Work Collaboratively
• Showing Leadership

Responsible Decision-Making

• Demonstrating Curiosity & Open-Mindedness
• Making Reasoned Judgements
• Anticipating & Evaluating the Consequences of One’s Actions
• Promoting Personal & Collective Well-Being

You can learn more about SEL and how it can support character education here.

There is no specific health & wellness perspective to this activity other than promoting the benefits to one’s well-being of enjoying a good laugh.

In a small way, you could argue that the focus and effort required to successfully complete the task may speak to the benefits of building the muscles of resilience and accountability. Popping Corn can be a very tricky exercise to complete successfully, so if introduced as a group initiative (to solve,) it will require a lot of focus and patience on the part of your group. To this end, you may wish to discuss and explore a range of strategies that build resilience

If you can think of more explicit ways in which Popping Corn could be purposefully integrated into a health and wellness program, please leave a comment at the base of this page.

• Measuring Time: Do not make any time calls to alert the group as to when the 60 seconds has expired. This introduces another level of challenge, ie estimating the time. That is to say, if one or more people pop after 60 seconds has elapsed, the attempt is recorded as ‘unofficial.’
• Count The Double Pops: Rather than start-over when two (or more people) pop at the same time, simply invite these people to step back from the group to watch the continuing action. Conduct several rounds, aiming to record the best round which eliminates as few people as possible.
• Clapping Corn: Got no room to move? Simply invite members of your group to clap and yell “POP!” as loudly as possible from where they are standing/sitting.
• Counting Laughs: Take a look at Count Off for a similar fun group initiative that will easily fill a couple of minutes with a few laughs.
• Open the Virtual Adaptation tab to learn how to present this activity online.

• While it is difficult to form a circle as such with a virtual gathering, simply ask everyone to switch to Gallery view (as part of their video conferencing software, eg Zoom) to see the video thumbnails of the whole group on one screen. Then, proceed as above. Beware of a slow internet connection, because this may cause some issues with the latency of video displays, ie some people may appear to move slower or faster than in real time.

Have you ever popped corn in a saucepan, or in a bag inside a microwave oven? Typically, there are a couple of early pops, and then slowly the popping builds up to a crescendo before dying down to a couple of late poppers. Does this sound familiar? Well, get ready, because we’re about to imagine that we are a packet of corn…

Have you ever noticed that after a prolonged silence, two or more people in a group simultaneously decide to speak up, and end up talking over each other? It’s as if they were wired together and, when a button was pushed, they spoke at the same time. This next exercise celebrates this fascinating, yet rather common, human experience…

Coupled with one or more reflection strategies, here are some sample questions you could use to process your group’s experience after playing this nonsensical energising game:

• Regardless of your success, was the task fun?
• What other feelings did you experience during the task?
• What did it take for your group to be successful?
• How might you define success in this exercise?
• Are there lessons to be learned from this exercise that may apply to the life of your group?