Cranham Scout Group

Today, the Beavers made musical instruments from recycled rubbish, with Jacqui (Squirrel) taking over from Sarah (Otter) as Beaver Leader so Sarah can focus on the Scouts. Making the instruments will count towards their Creative badge.

Then the Cubs were taught and assessed for their Emergency Aid Stage 1 badges. Having learnt a few lessons about how to plan activities in the past, I carefully planned how I would do this; we started by splitting them into their Sixes (three groups of about five), and each sat with an adult who got them to think of hazards they might encounter in the home and outside; and each Six took a turn visiting the hall kitchen with their adult to point out some potential hazards there. As it happened, the kitchen was being inspected for health and safety at the time! The inspectors were highly amused to find a group of children helping them look for hazards, and told us some interesting facts (for example, the majority of accidents in the home are slips, trips, and falls, and they pointed out that the floor covering in the kitchen was a special material that would not become slippery when wet). Anyway, the “small groups each with an adult” technique worked quite well, but then I had them in a circle while I talked to them about dealing with incidents and demonstrated opening an unconscious person’s airway; they were a bit fidgety then. But when I had them split into pairs, with one member of each pair pretending to be unconscious while the other opened their airway so I could check they were doing it correctly, those that were waiting for us to look at them wouldn’t stay still! I think I should have nabbed more adults to watch over them, so they weren’t waiting so long for me or Sarah to check their technique - or just assigned Sarah to keeping order while I concentrated on assessing. One of the trickiest times to prevent tomfoolery is when I have to concentrate on individuals, so I can’t watch the group as a whole. Anyway, I’m still learning from my mistakes!

However, with a little effort, we calmed things down and everyone fared well in the question-and-answer section I put at the end to see who had been listening, so they’ve all passed the requirements of the badge. And then we finished off by investing a cub who had been ill and missed the mass investiture last year, which was fun!

Then with the Scouts, we continued their attempts at the Challenge 100. They raced balloons along strings (by threading the string through a straw, which was taped to the inflated balloon, then the balloon released), matched up Jamboree badges with the jamborees in question, made paper doves, and underwent gruelling circuit training - and there’s more next week!

This week, we had all three sections focus on Akany Avoko, a children’s home in Madagascar which has been selected as the district’s Good Cause.

For the Beavers, we spoke to them about the flora and fauna of Madagascar, then for the Cubs and Scouts we focussed more on Akany Avoko itself and thinking about the conditions less fortunate children than themselves live in. We then got them thinking of fundraising ideas, for Cranham’s part in the District effort.

And, alas, Sarah had to Have Words with the Scouts about bullying, since rivalry between two particular small groups was starting to take a nasty turn - something we have to nip in the bud. We run the Scout group so that everyone can have fun, so anything that detracts from us all having fun is not welcome!

Today we had archery for the cubs and scouts. It was a bit hectic with 25 or so, requiring splitting into two groups with one group in the kitchen being entertained with various things while the other group had a go.

The kitchen entertainments, naturally, began to wear thin after a while, so keeping them cooped up in the kitchen was an interesting challenge for my developing crowd-control skills…

We won’t be meeting on Wednesday the 17th - instead, we’re meeting at Leonard Stanley Scout HQ on Thursday the 18th at 6:30pm for archery practice!

Beavers, however, will meet at the usual time and place on Wednesday.

2007 marks the one hundredth anniversary (centenary) of Scouting, so it’s going to be a fun-packed year for all the members…

For our first meeting of the new year, we talked to the Beavers about New Year celebrations in different countries by reading them a story, and they played a game (”I Went To the Shop”), where they sit in a circle and each has to list everything the previous player had in their basket, then choose and add a new item of their own - a memory game. Ours was themed along the lines of things one would buy for a New Year party.

Then for the Cubs, we introduced the theme of ‘one hundred years’ by talking about how large a number 100 was (four times my age, twelve or so times theirs…), and then challenging them to do one hundred things within the hour.

The hundred things came from a list I had prepared - all quite simple things, some thought provoking - and we set them all going with their own printed sheet listing the hundred things, while us adults helped when they got stuck and attended to things like reading out questions from the quiz book when required, but this turned out to be a mistake; an increasing number of them started just playing around with the equipment, and I couldn’t keep track of them all while still helping out the ones that were trying. Although I was annoyed at them for ceasing to take the exercise seriously, it’s my job to prevent that from happening; they’d become bored of the exercise and just started messing about.

So I asked the handy nearby District Comissioner for advice, and she pointed out that with her group, they split them into two groups, each with one adult, and the adult had gone through the list with their group, reading out the exercises in turn. That way, since they’d all been doing the same thing together at once, they’d had the full attention of the leader to keep them on track, and they’d felt engaged with it as a group activity. Where I’d gone wrong was setting them all on the challenges themselves, so acting in a group with their friends was competing with the challenges, and they could easily get away with doing their own thing…

Lesson duly noted - I’ll bear that in mind when planning activities in future!

The scouts had their own one hundred challenge (known, confusingly, as ‘Challenge 100′ rather than ‘100 Challenges’ - we didn’t choose the names!) introduced to them. Theirs was more serious, with a published list of challenges, such as circuit training or seeing which team can produce the most bird feeders in ten minutes, with the final results of their live attempt at each challenge sent in, for their chance to win the prize of free entry to the Jamboree later this year. They had a go at a few of the challenges to start practicing, and had a meeting to decide on their own ‘code of conduct’ for the troop.