Cranham Scout Group

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…

The Cranham Scout Group re-started in the middle of winter term last year, so soon we will have been in operation for a whole year!

Sadly, the floods at the start of the Summer have set Skip and Akela back a bit - they had to evacuate to London for the Summer so that Akela could get his work done, and the client liked him so much they keep wanting him back. So now more than ever, we could do with more adults to help out in the Cub and Scout sections (Beavers seem to be doing OK)!

Today, the Cubs looked at water conservation. When we were planning this term’s activities, it hadn’t rained for weeks and the world was looking a rather wilted place - we hadn’t imagined that when we came to do the water conservation day it would be raining so much that houses were flooding…

But, of course, in many countries, there’s not enough water to drink (let alone grow food), so it’s still an applicable concern!

After discussions about the importance of water conservation, we played a game that highlighted some of the issues.

Then the scout plan for the day had to be changed; it was too wet to go outside and complete the Nature badge, so instead, we extended last week’s cub cryptography exercise to Scout level. The discussion afterwards led to the topic of maths education, and the changes to the education system since Skip and Akela were doing GCSEs and A levels!

Today, as the rain looked a bit depressing for the planned activity of outdoor cooking, the cubs instead learnt a bit about the history and practice of communication using secret codes (which, after all, is a local industry with GCHQ just up the road in Cheltenham!)

Then the Scouts were down at the county scout HQ for archery.

This Sunday is the Cranham Village Paper Boat Race!

In particular, members of the Cranham Group are welcome. If you can come, we’d like you to come in your uniforms, because we are having a small recruitment drive to see if we can find some assistant leaders, and would therefore like the Group to make a good impression upon the village!

We have a letter about the event and instructions on how to make a traditional paper boat .

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!