Cranham Scout Group

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, the Beavers worked on their Experimentor badges – so they planted cress seeds to see how they grow. They they had a magnetic treasure hunt with little frog and duck magnets, going around the room and making a list of everything they could find that was ferromagnetic. Then they had a closer look at magnetism with a little show of magnetic magic.

Then the Cubs and Scouts had similar programmes – celebrating [Founder's Day](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scouts%27_Day#Founders.27_Days), the birthday of [Robert Baden-Powell](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Baden-Powell%2C_1st_Baron_Baden-Powell), the founder of Scouting. So we had various party games and party food, and ‘birthday cake’ in the form of cup cakes (each with a candle in). We had them each *light* a candle while thinking about something they care about, then as a group, blow them all out again. And we enlisted the District Commissioner to talk a bit about Founder’s Day and the life of Baden-Powell, which also helps the new cub towards the requirements of her Investiture.

The theme for Beavers and Cubs this week was the upcoming Chinese New Year. The Beavers made paper lanterns and decorated their dragons, and had a lantern-lit closing ceremony; then the Cubs had stories about the Chinese New Year (the story of the monster Nian, which New Year commemorates, and the story of how the years gained their Chinese animal names), and made some rather excellent paper dragons.

Then the Scouts started on a long-term project to organise a play, with Sarah teaching them some drama skills from her Musical Theatre days; projecting the voice, expressing emotion with body language, improvisation, and so on. They took to this with surprising ingenuity, so we have high hopes for their final production…

Today, the beavers made Centenary Trees. This involved them drawing around their hands on paper, cutting them out, and then writing about people they care and think about in the hands. These were then attached to a paper tree trunk, forming the leaves of a tree. This is a nice craft project for them, and encourages them to think of the people they care about!

For the cubs we had hoped to have instructors come from a folk dancing club, but they couldn’t make it. However, the ever-resourceful Jacqui produced music and moves, and taught the cubs line dancing. They enjoyed this greatly!

The scouts finished off their Challenge 100 things, with a mapreading challenge and the creation of as many birdfeeders (lard, nuts, and seeds melted together and poured into a cub with a hanging string) as they could – which we’ll be selling for Akany Avoko!

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](http://www.cranham-scouts.org.uk/2007/01/10/the-start-of-the-centenary-year/), 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](http://www.akanyavoko.com/), a children’s home in Madagascar which has been selected as the [district](http://www.stroudandtetburydistrict.org.uk/)’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…

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](http://www.cranham-scouts.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2007/01/100-challenges.txt) – 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.

The plan for today *was* to have the Beavers in the hall for a Christmas party then the cubs and scouts running around in a field playing a Christmassy game, but due to waterlogging of said field, this was not to be… so we had them all the hall for general Christmas party games, mince pies, and so on.

Also, for the cubs and scouts, we had the “Peace Light” passing through to show them. This is a lantern, lit in Bethlehem, which then travels around (with the candle in it being replenished, always lit from the old candle before it goes out, so the same flame is carried on from the source). We brought this out and had the children think about those less fortunate than themselves about the world who will not be having Christmasses quite as pleasant as their own…

We gave them all Christmas cards, and were pleasantly surprised to find that two of the cubs had brought in a card and a present, respectively, for us! This was very touching.

That’s our last meeting for this term – we start again on the tenth of January. Which will hopefully be enough time for me to properly copy all of our records into my master database…

Today, we had all three sections doing some Christmas crafts. The Beavers coloured in pictures and made cards, the Cubs made bracelets then used nice paper and loo roll middles to make them into the presents inside Christmas Crackers, and the scouts decorated glasses with modelling clay (which we baked in the oven) to make vases.

Instructions for the craft projects can be found on the [Salaric Craft Blog](http://www.salaric.org.uk).