Campfire toasting sticks
FireCookingBushcraftKS1 (5–7)KS2 (7–11)11+ConfidenceResilience
Whittle a green-wood toasting stick with a potato peeler, then use it the same session — marshmallows or bread twists over the embers. Tool work with an immediate, delicious purpose.
How it goes
- Harvest or hand out green hazel sticks; strip the last 10 cm of bark with a potato peeler (peel AWAY from the body, seated, outside knee-to-knee distance).
- Check each stick: point blunt enough not to spear, long enough to keep hands out of the heat.
- Light the fire in the fire circle; wait for embers, not flames.
- Toast in pairs: one toasts, one watches the toaster's step-back zone.
- Eat. Repeat.
Kit
- Hazel sticks
- Potato peelers
- Fire kit + water bucket
- Marshmallows or dough
Risk-benefit starting point
Shared by the author as a starting point — planning this idea imports it into your own risk-assessment library to review and make your own before use.
Why it's worth it- Fire respect learned by doing, inside clear boundaries.
- The full make-then-use loop: my stick, my snack.
- Open fire — Burns to hands/face; clothing catch residual: Low
- Potato peeler — Shallow cuts to hands residual: Low
- Hot food — Scalds to mouth residual: Low
- Fire circle with seating ring and 1 m no-go zone; step-over never step-in; water bucket and burns kit in reach.
- Peeling seated, away from the body, knee-to-knee spacing, tools counted out and in.
- Cook over embers not flame; blow-on-it-first rule before eating.