Cranham Scout Group

Today was the first day of the new Scout term.

With the Cubs, it being the first meeting no parent helpers had been arranged, so the day began with a refresher on the flower recognition part of the Nature Badge in the hall, but since one of the parents stayed on anyway (and all the cubs in high spirits!), we were able to quickly drop this for a walk up onto Cranham’s lovely common, where we went through the options for badges. This term, we have allocated a few meetings for “badge work”; the children will vote for which badges they would like to pursue, and we will come up with a plan.

Then the Scouts worked towards their Mechanic’s badges, by working on the theory of the combustion engine inside while groups of three came outside and checked the water levels and tyres of Akela and Skip’s van. In coming weeks, they will also change the battery and swap a tyre, which will be rather more challenging…

Beavers, Cubs, and Scouts all commence next Wednesday (the 25th of April). We have lots of fun outdoors events planned across the group, to take advantage of the summery weather! As the name suggests, Scouting is traditionally a very outdoor activity, which we have hardly been able to give a representative sample of since starting due to dark evenings and cold weather, but we hope to make up for it now!

Today, we had a special event for the Cubs, due to our attempts at organising a visit to the recycling centre falling through. Luckily, the excellent facilities of the Gloucestershire County Scout Centre are conveniently located in the village!

Nine cubs and one Scout (an honorary Cub for the day) came to the event. The weather was lovely, with warm sunshine.

We started with outdoor archery, then headed out into the woods for orienteering. The cubs took turns to navigate to each point, to allow them to develop navigational skills. Disaster struck when one of the markers went missing; we found the tree it had been tied to, but there was no sign of it… However, we quickly made up for it by using a protruding branch on the tree it had been tied to to mark our sheets instead. We stopped in a pleasant clearing for lunch, before continuing to the final marker, then back to the car park for pickup.

Everybody seemed to have a good time! And our thanks go out to the parents who stayed to help.

Today, with Spring now firmly in the air, the Cubs went for a nature walk in the Cranham Woods to identify the flowers which are beginning to bloom. This will go towards their Nature badges, and sets the scene for next term, which we plan to spend outside wherever possible.

They then made Akela very happy with a stirling rendition of Happy Birthday!

Then the Scouts had a light evening of games and discussions about what they would like to do next term.