Cranham Scout Group

So many new Cubs have joined, and old ones moved on, since we last did Road Safety that it looked like time to have another go at it, as it’s an important topic.

This time, we had a lovely set of materials delivered to us free from the County Council road safety department, which made things a bit more interesting.

We can only cover half of it in one meeting, so we’ll finish it off again before the end of term, if we can - as we missed the original slot we had scheduled to do the first half of it in, due to a change of plans…

Today we looked at Fair Trade with the cubs. We had a game that modelled the trading activities of sugar cane farmers in poor countries, and sugar beet farmers in rich countries, and the sweet manufacturers who consume their produce.

Needless to say, the sugar cane farmers had a much worse lot in life; so the winners, of course, were the sweet manufacturers - and in the discussion afterwards we considered how the game wasn’t very fair, but that the real-world situation it was based on wasn’t fair either, and what we can do to try and make things fairer for the sugar cane farmers.

Then we had fairtrade chocolate to take home!

As part of the Home Help badge, the Cubs have to wash and iron a scarf, and sew a badge onto some cloth. Some have done this at home, but most have not, so today we showed them all how it’s done.

Which, surprisingly, they seemed to enjoy!

Today the Cubs had a bonfire at HQ. The leaders turned up an hour early to get the thing lit, which we only just managed by the time the Cubs arrived, since it was pretty damp…

But, luckily, we had a reasonable blaze going while we started off with some campfire songs, then when it had burned down a bit to produce some embers, out came the dough and sticks for the Cubs to bake bread twists over the fire, which were then filled with jam when they were done. And, of course, marshmallows for toasting!