Cranham Scout Group

Today, we took the Scouts on a night hike in the woods behind Cranham and along a section of the Cotswold Way.

We ran out of time beforehand explaining navigation and route planning, so I ended up doing the navigation – it looks like we’ll need to have some “classroom” sessions explaining all that in more detail before we try it again!

Luckily we had an adult helper who knew the Cotswold Way well, so we weren’t just relying on my map reading to prevent us getting lost, and we managed to all get back on time!

Since we don’t have the use of the village hall, we’re going on a night hike, so meet at the usual time at the Cranham Scout HQ car park rather than at the hall.

Bring sensible outdoor shoes, coats, and torches!

We sent out a consent form last week, but for those who didn’t get it, we’ll have ones that parents can sign on the night.

I’ve heard back from the county council waste management education folks – as predicted, we WILL NOT be able to arrange a visit in the evening next week. As promised, I’m trying to organise something during half term, but it turns out the education person has wisely chosen the Easter holiday to take her annual leave. We’re seeing if one of her colleagues could take us.

Apparently her usual trip is to the Grundon landfill site and the adjacent household recycling centre.

If we can’t get that organised during the Easter holiday, I’ll see if I can arrange something else fun instead… I’m sad that we’ve had to miss two meetings this term due to not having the use of the Village Hall, so am keen to make up for it!

This week we did Recycling with the cubs – this involved a discussion on where the materials come from that produce things like cans, bottles and plastics.

Then we did some actual recycling involving mini trifle pots resting on glass jars, with newspaper to papier mache them with.

This was to demonstrate both re-using and recycling in a very messy hands on way – and then they’ll get to paint them another week!

Pictures and a more in depth discussion on how we did this project will soon be on the [salaric craft blog](http://www.salaric.co.uk/category/paper-craft/).

They also made posters about environmental issues they personally feel deeply about.

Scouts also did papier mache projects although they are doing the slightly more ambitious way of making a pot – where they are only using the pots as moulds, producing a strong papier mache shape over the pot that is then removed. They had a lovely selection of different shaped pots ranging from ‘food trays’ to pot noodle pots, again all reused materials.

They also worked on their designs for the Wacky Races which we are holding on the 4th of April…

Over the weekend, we took the Cubs and Scouts on their first camp in the Herefordshire village of [Moccas](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moccas)!

This was organised by the leaders of Wycliffe Scout Group, since the new Cranham leaders have not yet had Nights Away training, so Cranham and Wycliffe camped together.

The Scouts slept in tents, while the cubs slept in Moccas Village Hall. The theme for the cubs was ‘Space’.

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Today, the Beavers looked at healthy eating, with games and activities based around the theme of selecting balanced diets.

Then the Cubs learnt about the problems caused worldwide by landmines. Even after war has ended, landmines remain in the ground, since records of where they were kept are often missing or were never completed. Removing them is dangerous and expensive and slow, and many communities are blighted by the presence of landmines in the areas they occupy. One third of all landmine injuries are children, since children love to explore…

And then the Scouts started studying for their Emergency Aid 2 badge. One of their parents is a GP, and thankfully she volunteered to come in and lead the training! They didn’t quite finish it within the day, so we’ll have to catch up later.

Today was the Cub and Scout district swimming gala, at the GL1 pool in Gloucester.

Cranham had both a cub team and a scout team. The cub team, alas, came ninth out of nine despite putting in a good effort, while the scout team (with only three members instead of four, one of whom was a cub standing in as a scout!) came second!

We now have two certificates – we just need a Scout noticeboard in the Village Hall to put them on…