Cranham Scout Group

Today, the plan had been for the Cubs to bring in any collections they’d like a Collector’s Badge for, and for anybody who would like to do the My Faith badge to meet the requirements by telling us about their faith - but nobody had remembered two weeks ago! I’ll have to organise another badge meeting, but keep reminding them about it weeks in advance, I think…

So we finished off the Road Safety badge; if I can get to Scout Shop, we’ll have the badges for that next time we meet, and filled the time out a bit with some games.

Then the Scouts worked on their final boats for the race this Sunday.

Well, the plan for the Cubs today was to go out on the Common for a navigation exercise, but in the afternoon, it rained and rained, so we decided to do something else instead…

Since the Cubs all seemed rather lively (an experienced Leader who was there to assist suggested that on rainy afternoons, they will have missed out on playtime at School and so on, so will often be rather energetic), we played a few popular games to burn energy off, then we talked about the upcoming Boat Race and demonstrated the traditional Origami paper boat (which also makes a good hat when half-made!). Although they were at first skeptical about how interesting making paper boats could be, at the end of the meeting, they groaned in disappointment that we had to stop them!

Then the Scouts worked towards their Naturalist badge by researching native British animal species and producing posters about them, and posters about humanity’s influence upon the local environment. Then the day was finished off with an investiture and the creation of a new Patrol, the Cobras.

Today, the Cubs’ focus was badges. At the start of the term, we’d read out the descriptions of the available activity badges, and taken votes on which ones were popular.

So today we went over the most popular badge that had a chance of getting done in a day - Road Safety - and we handed out worksheets for badges that mainly had to be done at home (the Collector, Animal Carer, and My Faith badges). On the next day we have for badge work (the 20th of June), those with collections or who wish to do My Faith can fulfill the requirements for them by showing us their collections, telling us about their faiths, and so on.

For the interested, the sheets I made can be downloaded: Animal Carer, Collector, and My Faith.

We nearly finished the Road Safety - just one more point remains to be covered; we’ll get that out of the way on the 20th, if all goes well.

Then the Scouts had a crafty meeting. They made Father’s Day cards and experimented with more boat designs for the upcoming Boat Race; and finished the final part of their Emergency Aid 1 badges.

Today, the cubs met at the County Scouting Centre in Cranham for a go on the Challenge Course. This is an assault course set up along the Cranham stream, with plenty of opportunities to get wet and muddy!

Because the site wardens were worried it might be a bit slippery with the recent rains, Akela went first. The narrow balance beam across the stream was the slipperiest riskiest part, but everybody made it across without disaster; the hardest part turned out to be the monkey swing across the stream, which many became stuck half way along! But after everyone had had a trial run, we upped the excitement with a timed trial.

The only person to get really wet was the one who fell from the monkey bars straight into the stream, who was wet from head to toe, but still cheerful and unbruised!

As with everything we do at the County Scouting Centre, it was a great success with all the children!

Then the Scouts did a good turn for the school. The school has kindly let us use their computers on several occasions to work on IT badges, so we were happy to have a chance to repay that kindness by helping to clear the playground. Weeds spring up along the edges of the tarmac and fallen leaves accumulate in odd corners, turning into a thick mess, so an intrepid group set out to help clear it all up. Well done everyone!

Today, the Cubs went into the Cranham woods to collect fallen branches, and then constructed a shelter.

The challenge is to build a structure that will keep the wind and rain out, purely with the materials available, and no tools.

We found a sturdy tree, then leant intertwined forked branches against it to establish a solid anchor for one end of a long branch, the other end of which went into the ground, creating the main beam of the shelter. Other long branches were then laid with one end resting on the beam and the other end on the ground uphill, then less sturdy branches laid crosswise on top, interlocking with the stronger ones, to produce the roof. Weaving the branches amongst each other locks them together, creating a stronger structure.

Alas, there were not many fallen branches with leaves on, so we had to roof it with the plentiful stickweed that was spreading around the area. A dense mat of leaves on top encourages the rain to run off rather than soaking through; the tiny leaves of the stickyweed were not ideal for this, but the way it all stuck together would probably be a lot better than nothing.

Thankfully, it did not rain, so we did not have to find out.

The Scouts were down to be doing camp cooking today, but they were excited by the sound of the Cub’s shelter building, so we took them to the same spot in the woods. One group cooked outside the Cub’s shelter, while the other group used the spare wood left over by the Cubs to start work on a second shelter. It fell slightly afoul of the second system effect; they wanted to make a bigger one than the Cubs made, but with a smaller team (most were cooking) it wasn’t quite finished by the time we had to head back; the structure was all in place, but the stickyweed roofing was only partially done. The pasta dish the others cooked on our Trangia stoves, however, was delicious.

This week, the Cubs tried out the new horizontal traversing wall at Gloucestershire County Scouting Centre, conveniently located in Cranham.

A traversing wall is a good activity, since it builds on the skills of indoor climbing, but since the objective is to get along the wall rather than up the wall, and there is never more than a metre’s drop to the soft ground, there is no need for complex safety ropework, and no fears of heights to overcome.

We started with a practice climb, then split into two groups for a timed competition (well, if you made it all the way along the wall your score was based on your time; otherwise it was based on how far you managed to get!).

After sorting the results by time, then adding those who didn’t get all the way onto the end of the rankings sorted by distance attained, then computing the average ranking position for each Six (thus compensating for the differing numbers of Cubs from each Six present), the overall results were:

1. Blue six
2. Yellow six
3. White six

We awarded a point to Blue and half a point to Yellow, but since one of the Yellows made a stunning performance of confidence and skill by crossing the entire wall in just over thirty seconds (the next best was over a minute), we gave them an extra half point on top.

Then the Scouts, preparing for the upcoming Cranham Paper Boat Race, experimented with some paper catamaran designs, producing several prototypes and testing them.

Today, the Cubs’ focus was fitness. The Fitness Challenge badge requires, amongst other things, that they show an improvement in a fitness activity over a six-week period, so we started with a relay race between the sixes as an opportunity for them to compete in teams, then gave them some practice at twirling hula hoops (borrowed from our kind Beaver leader, Jacqui). When we next have an opportunity to pursue fitness, we will have a competition as to who can twirl for the longest without tiring, which will go on file so we can try again six weeks later and see who has improved…

Then we finished going through the available activity badges, gathering votes on who would like to do what. I will examine these this weekend to decide what we will do in the badge evenings scheduled for later in the term. Some of the badges are mainly “do something at home then bring in evidence and demonstrate in front of the group”, so for the popular ones of those, we will issue take-home sheets detailing the requirements, and we can arrange the demonstrations for the badge evenings. This is good, since it will allow the Cubs to cover a diverse range of badges guided by their own interests.

Then the Scouts discussed and considered renewable energy sources, while pairs of them came out to remove, discuss, and re-attach the battery of our van, towards their Mechanics badges. Thankfully, the van still worked afterwards.

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…

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.

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.

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…