Cranham Scout Group

Since we won’t meet next week as it’s half term, the cubs celebrated halloween today with a light-hearted evening of fun and games.

Then a lot of badges were presented at the end!

Sadly, the village hall has been double-booked, so we’re having to cancel next week (the 15th of October).

However, we’ll be back on the 22nd as usual!

Our apologies for the short notice.

Today we did some more badges; this time Sports Enthusiast and Physical Recreation. Basically, the cubs took turns to tell the others about a sport they follow (for Sports Enthusiast) or partake in themselves (for Physical Recreation). Once again, it’s a badge they get for something they already do for fun, so is rather rewarding.

Today we did two things: completing the navigator’s badge, and painting flower pots for a longer-term project we’re working on.

The flower pots went well, but the navigator’s badge didn’t - the level of spatial awareness amongst the cubs when it came to drawing a map of the village was surprisingly low!

We’ll need to try again later, after some exercises to sort that out.

The Family Fun Evening went well; the kids had a good time on the climbing walls and the blind trail, and everyone got to mingle and eat and catch up on news. Then we had a campfire with songs, and finally, the announcements, reports, and getting the formalities of an AGM out of the way.

Today we had the Cubs bring in their hobbies and collections, and talk to us about them, for their Hobbies and Collectors badges.

These are nice badges - the children can earn recognition for something they do themselves in their own time, so it’s a quick and easy badge for them as they’ve already done the work - and, therefore, we get to give out a lot of badges in one session, to the delight of all

We’re back!

The first meeting went well, welcoming two new Cubs, and one Beaver who is swimming up to join the Cubs.

Accounts of the Beaver and Scout meetings aren’t available as I go to press, but we took the Cubs outside (while the weather’s still good and before the evenings get dark) for a run around on Cranham Common for a wide game, which seemed to go down well!

Well, we’re all getting ready to start again next Wednesday, the 10th of September - the usual time and place!

The family fun day at the County Scouting Centre has been postponed to the 24th, so go to the hall as usual.

Some more leaders have joined us in the Cub section, so we are looking forward to a good year!

Akela was away in London for this meeting, so Skip kindly took over, helped by her father Len (a scout leader from Rainham, Essex)…

Two of the cubs had brought in their collections to show us, which will go towards their Collectors badges! And they also brought a friend each, entitling them to the Bring A Friend centenary badge.

We had planned to finish the previous term by having a barbecue with the Cubs and Scouts to discuss plans for this term, but the flooding interrupted that. So we started the new term by discussing this with the Cubs; having only just returned from London and having missed the chance to discuss it with the children, we had not yet planned the programme for the term!

So we now have a list of ideas to try and incorporate as the evenings grow darker and we can’t be outdoors as much as we were during the summer…