With the AGM running concurrently to our Scout meeting, we decided to give the new Scouts a chance to talk about something they were interested in or enjoyed whilst the the older Scouts were assisting with some of the setup and prep for the AGM.
We first let the Scouts outside for a few games run by Emily and a bit later on Tegan, one of our senior Scouts.
Inside we set up a table for Scouts to bring up anything they had brought and then for them to stand behind and speak about it. They could have brought anything to speak about, whether that’s a topic they were interested in or a hobby they do. Here’s all the Scouts that presented and a little detail on what they talked about:
CJ – Spoke about his drumming and his Youtube Channel.
Haris – Spoke about his favourite football team, Manchester United.
Charlie – Spoke about Scouts 🙂
Aaron – Spoke about his time helping at his Church over the summer.
Abigail – Spoke about her art.
Tegan – Spoke about her time playing Dungeons and Dragons
Ruby – Spoke about her art.
Lottie – Spoke about her art.
Maiya – Spoke about her range of baking. She even brought in some tasters.
Lewis – Spoke about collecting Beano magazines.
As you can see there’s a range of different hobbies and topics. Large amount of artists in the troop as well. Well done to everyone that got up and spoke. Its very difficult to get up and speak and everyone did it wonderfully.
We closed off the evening with a game in the dark where blindfolded Scouts had to find everyone else around the room.
Our meeting tommrrow will be Scouting Basics for the benefit of our new members. What are those basics? Promise and Pioneering.
The 19th September every year is a special day. A special day that Chieftain Scouts choose to observe on a yearly basis. That day is ‘Talk like a Pirate Day’ and we choose to dedicate a Scout meeting to it every year by dressing up as pirates and doing pirate themed team building activities. We were planning to the evening on the 20th but it clashed with the Scout AGM.
I was very impressed to only see 1 or 2 Scout uniforms when all the Scouts fell in for flag. It was nice to see everyone taking to the occasion. To start off the evening we had a round of the boat game where the Scouts get to run around the hall and perform actions and I get to have a sore throat the next morning from shouting commands. 🙂
Bosun then divided the now very large troop into 6 teams who all competed in a range of team building activities ranging from a game of naughts and crosses:
And the snake/rock paper scissors game that I don’t think has a name:
As a final part to the evening we also did a ‘Crew Inspection’ where we judged each of the patrols for the best pirate costumes and got the Scouts to give their best ‘ARRRRR!’. This all scored points for patrols and got them off the mark for the year.
On top of the new Scouts from last week we had 2 more Scouts join us this evening, Zac and Alicia. I hope you a fantastic first evening.
We usually also have badges but we still need to order them. However we did have a certificate to give to Seamus for completing his shooting course he has been doing over the last couple of months. Well done!
This Friday coming, the Scout Group AGM will be running parallel to our meeting. We will most likely be having some of the older Scouts help with cooking among other things. The rest of the troop will be in with some of the leaders talking about things they are interested in.
I hope the summer months have created some great memories for both parents and scouts and that the scouts are ready for a great year of Scouting.
This week at Scouts, we decided to have a slightly more informal meeting than usual with some of the leaders still taking a break until we dive into the main programme next week.
A new year meant we had some new Scouts join us. We had 4 out of the possible 9 join us this evening. The new Scouts were Lewis, Lottie, Maiya and Ruby. The leaders thought it would be nice to do a ice-breaker so that everyone could get to know each other a little better. We played a form of ‘Never have I Ever’ where each Scout takes it in turns to say at statement which starts with ‘Never have I Ever…’. If a Scout had done that thing, they then had to run round the circle and if they were the last back to their position in the circle, they were out.
We then took a walk up to the park to play some games. The Leaders got the Scouts playing manhunt before we handed over to Gabriel (our oldest Scout ) to organise some games that took advantage of the dark such as Lighthouse.
Once back at the hall, our Young Leader Emily took over and organised a game of Splat. For our final game we played a game that doesn’t really ahve a name but involves getting over half of a collection of coins on to your teams chair.
For our meeting next week (13th September), we will be having our annual pirate night. Please feel free to send the Scouts in pirate costumes as some of the Leaders will also be partaking in this as well.
We think if its possible to get parents involved with the last meeting of term we should totally do it. Last year we were able to do an external event at an archaeological dig but when we don’t have such an option, we usually have a barbecue. That is exactly what we did this year.
We had some of the Scouts down earlier to help us with the setting up of altar fires and cooking of burgers and food. Unfortunately, the weather for the evening wasn’t exactly perfect, however we still persevered. After a small welcome from Skip, everyone was invited to grab a burger from indoors before we had our Group Scout Leaders Martin and Karen come down to invest 2 leaders, Neil and Myself, as we had passed our appointment process (hurrah!).
We also had a Scout that managed to get through their Chief Scout Gold. A huge congratulations to Evan Melleney! We had Martin and Karen present an imaginary award only because we didn’t manage to get hold of the badge and certificate in time. We will make sure we get that to you through Explorers or other means in the future.
Following that, the leaders had organised some games for everyone to participate in. We had a few rounds of tug of war with varying setups including Scout v Scout, Scout v Parents and Scout v Leaders. The adult:scout ratio was about 1:3 to make it a fair fight. The Leaders luckily won their bout against the Scouts otherwise we may have never heard the end of it. 🙂
After that, we had a slightly lower key game in the form of ski racing. This involves teams of 4 working together to walk round a course on a pair of skis.
As the penultimate event of the evening, we had some of our Scouts talk about the year (albeit at very short notice) and Anna to do her Digital Citizen presentation to complete the badge.
The final part of the evening was a celebration. Over the course of the year we have awarded about 201 badges to Scouts for various reasons which we think is amazing. If you want to look at all the badges awarded, please take a look here:
There is also the matter of the badges that we awarded on that evening which you can see here. Congratulations to the following!
Next, we invested Samuel who we should probably of invested a little sooner. This was led by Cobra Patrol Leader Alex as his new patrol leader was non-attending. Welcome to Chieftains!
Lastly, we announced the winner of the patrol competition. The standings were as follows:
1st – Hawks
2nd – Otters
3rd – Wolves
4th – Cobras
Well done Hawks! We will be discussing with you want you want to do for your prize in the coming term! We are back to zero. Remember everything you do at Scouts can have an impact on the standings. Be an awesome person and a top Scout and points will just flow into your patrol and you won’t even know it.
Unfortunately, events like these do mark a sad moment as well because we usually have Scouts that have grown to old for Scouts and their time with us has ended. Unfortunately, we do have to say goodbye to Evan and Alex… You both have been amazing over the years you have been with us and Bosun and Myself look forward to working with you in Explorers for a few more years. 🙂
That’s us done for this school year. We will see everyone back after summer. However, for some of the Scouts, all the Leaders will see you for Summer Camp where I certainly do hope we can give you one of the best but also most challenging experiences of your entire lives. I stress this so much but Brecon is such an amazing trip. Nearly all the Scouts will get to do it before they leave us if they are with us from beginning to end and it encompasses so many aspects of Scouting but most of all the Scouts get to spend a week with their friends that they’ve made here. Even the leaders get to have a great time. We will be hiking, mountain biking, cooking, rafting, kayaking a few more surprises where a few groups of the leaders get to fill some evenings and afternoons.
Scouts: thank you for making the Leaders time some of the most enjoyable of our weeks. We really do appreciate it and glad we can have a good time with you!
See you in a few weeks and to another year of Scouting!
With 32 Scouts in the entire troop, the leaders were very surprised to find only 8 of them turned up this evening for our annual cycle ride. As we soon found out, this smaller group size has its advantages.
This years cycle took us along the river into town and Christchurch meadows identical to the route we did last year. Whereas last year it took us much longer to reach out destination due to the range of cycling ability, the Scouts that turned up this evening were all very strong riders and therefore we were able to reach our destination in record time.
On the way down, we came across a wild Ben along the river without a bike so Skip offered a little bit of a lift:
Upon reaching our destination, the Scouts had the opportunity to play Frisbee. Seamus had also brought some balloons that he promptly filled with water and started throwing at the leaders and scouts alike. Hugely appreciated all round as you can imagine.
Next week will be our final meeting of this school year and everyone is invited. Come down and join us for our End of Year BBQ in which we plan to have an evening full of celebrating this year of Scouting with a few other games and things mixed in. Skip will be sending an email soon with all the details.
If you are wondering why we have skipped a few blog posts, that’s because I’m still working on getting everything together for the huge water sports post I plan to do. That post should be with you before Summer Camp.
This week at Scouts, we decided to do a little preparation for the cycle ride we will be doing after our little marathon of water activities over the next few weeks.
Before I go on to talk about Friday, I would like to mention the very successful Frome Expedition we had over the weekend. All the leaders who attended came away very impressed by the attitude of the Scouts. If any of the attendees would like to write a blog post to start their Digital Citizen badge, please do drop me an email!
We invited Scouts to bring their bikes down to get a little TLC. Skip and a few of the other Leaders checked over the brakes and other aspects of the Scouts bike.
Those who did not have a bike were able to help set up a bike course in which the Scouts who did have a bike were able to navigate. I’ll let the below speak for itself.
We gave some patrol points this week those Scouts that could clear the ramp with a decent amount of height.
Scouts is on Thursday this week as we will be doing some Stand Up Paddling. Your Scouts must have already paid for this event. If your Scouts is not going on Thursday there will be no meeting on Friday.
If the hike at the beginning of the term was the ‘lets go somewhere’ hike this would be the map reading challenge equivalent. Following the planning from last week, Skip posed the challenge to the Scouts to see if they could navigate a form of the route.
If you recall to last week, Skip had the Scouts looking at a route in which they had to pinpoint grid references and understand the area around those grid references. Here’s a reminder of what that looked like:
Skip took those maps away over the week and now had marked 5 of them with various variations on that route. The Scouts were split into 5 groups this week with a few leaders and the odd parent accompanying them. The Scouts were mostly of their own accord as long as they were able to justify why they might be there.
The 2 Frome groups were at a further liberty with no help given and they were only corrected if they decided they needed help. Frome is a situation where the leaders are not around to help them so it makes sense they get more practice.
The 5 groups all completed the route well with my group especially doing well by the end. Some of the Scouts and our YL even corrected me in navigating. The leaders were all very impressed with the Scouts on the whole.
There was also some time at the end of the evening to play in the park.
As you will be seeing this the week after as I forgot (oops) there are no notices.
We had some plans for this evening that we were unable to carry out due to the weather. Trust our luck on a week where 70% of it was sunny. We have now moved that back to next week and instead this week we decided to teach the Scouts a bit about predictive power and foresight and understanding that reading a map isn’t only about the path you are walking on.
Before we gave any kind of map to any of the Scouts we had a quick game to burn off some of that Friday energy. However it was not organised by any of the leaders. If you didn’t know our previous young leader Simi turned 18 a few months ago which means shes no longer a young leader and that we had a space to fill. After a small discussion, we decided to invite Emily back to the troop and her official start was today. Welcome back and welcome to the leadership team!
The game was placed in the hands of both Emily and our current SPL, Evan which gave Skip and Neil time to prepare there stations and brief the other leaders with what was going on.
The troop was then divided in half which each life looking at slightly different skills. Upstairs with Neil involved locating points of interest on the map, identifying what the were and their six figure grid reference. I even learned what an arboretum was and its marked on the map with the same symbol as a garden.
Downstairs with Skip involved looking at the route from next week. Scouts were asked to locate the route using some grid reference and then describe the area around each of the grid references. This should give them another tool to think about when walking the route next week and for the future.
Next weeks walk isn’t about distance but instead about the technicality of the walk. If you look at the photos below you’ll see roughly where we are walking and the area surrounding:
As you can see it is really finicky but that careful map reading can make the walk really quick. We will be bringing various things to play in the field if the Scouts use the skills they have learnt this week and finish really quickly.
To think we only have 6 more meetings until summer. Scary isn’t it?
Next week, we will be hiking. Attached to the email I sent out about this blog update is a copy of Skip’s instructions from his email this week if you missed it.
For the last week before half term, Bosun had the choice of what we did. He came to the conclusion that all the pioneering we did was very standard. We taught the Scouts very similar skills every time we did pioneering and that’s probably from the inception of the Scout group. So Bosun set out to do an experiment. Can Chieftains raise a few shelters made from pioneering poles, role and tarpaulin whilst teaching the Scouts some new pioneering skills?
For this the Scouts had to be aware of 2 new techniques: The Shear Lashing and Tautline Hitch. The Shear Lashing is used to keep 2 pioneering poles together without completely binding the 2 pole together so they have some movement.
The other technique, the Tautline Hitch, is used to allow a rope to be tightened or slacked off between 2 points. It creates the ability for structures to be held up without the need to keep adjusting peg location. The mechanism is similar to what’s used on the guide ropes of the tents.
The above techniques enabled the whole troop to raise some of these shelters. The troop was divided into 2 groups, about half of each patrol in each group. One half went with Bosun to learn the Tautline Hitch whilst the other half came with me to learn the Shear Lashing. After a given example, each patrol was expected to produce the necessary shelter components with their new knowledge. The components were then combined to create the shelters. Once the main structure was up, Scouts were then able to hoist the tarpaulin up.
At the end of the session, we had a quick reflection on why failure is important. Some of the parts of the shelters didn’t work out as planned, for example some of the shelters were slanted due to different size poles and some were too high. This was a failure. However, these failures are important as whether it was an error from the Leaders or a error from the Scouts there was something to learn and that learning leads to improvement. Failure only enables success.
That is us done for this half term. After half term, we will be outside for nearly the entire term to make use of the good weather. We will be back on the 7th June. We will not be at the Scout Hall so please keep an eye on your emails!
Youth Shaped Scouting is a country wide movement that encourages Scouts to make sure they are getting involved with the way their Scouting is run. This usually has the biggest effect in Explorers in which Explorers are expected to take a frontal role in planning what they want to and occasionally running their own evening.
It usually is up to the choice of the Leadership Team of a Scout troop to decide on how they do it. We do it properly about once a year, with the PL’s and APL’s taking over the main part of the evening to give them a feel for what its like. We also tell them we won’t come planned with anything so its up to them to entertain the Scouts. Tonight was that night.
We took flag as normal and did a quick inspection before we handed over. There is a gap forming between 1st and 2nd place for the patrol point competition. I encourage every Scout to really get their uniform and hygiene in gear to score those, what are essentially, free points. Every point matters!
I was genuinely quite impressed with the overall organisation of the PL’s and APL’s as were the other leaders. Their team was divided into different teams which were responsible for different things. One team was responsible for running the game whilst the other teams got their bases setup for their larger activity. The PL’s and APL’s had organised a form of Scavenger Hunt where the Scouts had to find bases hidden around the grounds. These bases tested different skills such as concentration or Scout knowledge and each rewarded a key. Once a patrol had 3 keys they had to nominate 1 person to go solve a riddle. The riddle led to a prize in the fridge under the guise of something Centurion Scouts ‘stored’. Knowledge of inside jokes ultimately won the day. Sorry CJ you were so close!
It was all very well executed and we discussed everything that was done well and what they could have improved. We also let the Scouts give their feedback as well. The team also discussed how they found the planning process and what they thought they could have done better.
We will be definitely using some of the various ideas you guys had in the future! Well done!
Quick mention to Anna, who has been putting in work to catch up on some of her challenge badges. We most definitely encourage Scouts to do this if they feel like it. It means there’s a good chance we won’t have to chase the Scouts up about badges for their award come the time they leave us. Remember in addition to the challenge badges you need at least 6 activity badges.
Scouts: If you have any hobbies we would love to hear about them because we get to hear how awesome you all are and you may get a badge to boot.
If any parents would like any guidance on what the Scouts may be able to do of their own accord towards their award please ask!
Next week will be the last session this side of half term. We will be tackling some more advanced pioneering so we will be outside. (Weather permitting as always.)
Have a wonderful rest of your week and see you Friday!
