Chieftain Scouts

We took this week at Scouts to get everyone on the same page when it comes to Scouting. After fires last week, there were only a few more things we needed to cover about the basics of Scouts.

The evening was divided into 4 stations in which the Scouts moved around. They were divided by age so the Leaders at each station could target skills and ideas specific to the age group.

Jim and I was leading the ‘Youth Shaped Scouting’ part of the evening. We aim to try and have some of the programme ideas come from our young people. For the older Scouts, that meant during their time in my area feeding me ideas of what they want to do in Scouts and if there is anything we could possibly do that we haven’t. The younger Scouts instead got a more formal welcome since we never took them aside properly to say welcome or how has your time been since you joined us. They however also got to throw ideas at me for the future.

Skip and Emily led a section thinking about badges. A lot of our older Scouts now really need to start thinking about pushing for Chief Scout Gold. That means having all the challenge badges and having 6 activity badges. These Scouts were considering the opportunities they may have in the future to achieve this award. Our youngest group of Scouts were learning about how Scout badges work and that they need a little more of independent work than Cubs. Thye also considered the badges they may be able to get with their current hobbies and skills they have.

Bosun and Shaun were upstairs teaching knots, one of the most fundamental skills for any Scout. The younger Scouts were taught some of the basic knots that we use all the time and the difference between a knot and a hitch. The older Scouts were taught some more complex knots like a bow line.

Finally, Orla and Simi were taking a deep dive into trangias and why we use them at Scouts. The Scouts also got to put together and dismantle these piece of equipment and understand why they might be dangerous to cook with if you are not careful.

Next week we are at the hall. See you then!

Ellis

Happy new year everyone! Hope your celebrations over the holiday break were full of joy and you spent time with the people that mean the most to you. We’ve got a whole another year of Scouting to look forward to and that started on Friday.

At Christmas, some people decide to have real Christmas trees in their homes instead of having the synthetic ones that most people have. Now, these real Christmas trees happen to burn well. Really well. So in true to Scout fashion we organised to burn some of these trees.

The Scouts got to scrub up on how to start a fire as well. The troop was split into 6 groups who all tried to light their own smaller fires which were then combined into one larger bonfire. Patrol Leaders and Assistant Patrol Leaders were encouraged to take control of their groups and teach the younger Scouts how to do it.

(Speaking of younger Scouts we had 3 new Scouts join us this week. Huge welcome to Joseph, Finlay, George and Ruby. I hope after your session on Friday you all decide to stay with us.)

Once all the fires were lit and combined on the fire circle, we were able to burn the trees. It went really well. You can see below:

We will be at the hall next week. See you then!

Ellis

I forgot the write the blog last week (oops!) so here is both last week and this week together in one post.

9 – Courage in All Difficulties

I’m of the opinion that one of the most useful skills for anyone to have is First Aid. The times where you use it are so slim but the correct use of it can save lives. This week, we taught the Scouts some of those skills.

We got to work immediately following flag with leaders taking one patrol each to some part of the hall. We had 8 topics to cover between 4 rotations.

Emily and I covered Primary Survey, Recovery Position and CPR. We showed the Scouts the steps they would need to follow if they found someone unconscious. We also had access to the Resusci Annies to we could show and practice CPR.

Ben covered Bleeding and Shock. He showed the Scouts how to deal with a minor bleed, major bleed and shock. We were donated out of date First Aid supplies a long time ago so the Scouts were able to practice.

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Neil covered Choking and Asthma. Asthma may only affect a fraction of people but its a really good topic to practice ‘people skills’ as this may be a topic where you need to be calm as it can catch some by surprise and can be quite stressful.

Outside, Skip spoke about the temperature based parts of the evening, Heat Exhaustion and Hypothermia. Hypothermia is probably one of the things we are at most risk to, considering we can spend time outside in the cold a lot more than most people.

We also had a few badges this evening. Well done to the following:

If you are interested in any of the content we taught the Scouts during the evening, you can download it below:

10 – Peak Performance

This week at Scouts, we put the Scouts through their paces.

We decided to run a Fitness themed evening on Friday. To start with we played a few rounds of Crab Football where all the Scouts have to get down on all 4’s but with their stomachs facing up. Some Scouts tried to bend the rules by shuffling around on their bottoms…

Orla then led some stretches after to get the Scouts prepared and in gear for the next part of the evening.

We had 2 parts to the evening. Inside, I was leading a bleep test where Scouts have to try and beat a continuous bleeps over 20 mins by running between 2 points. We then record the level they drop out at. That then shows who the fittest Scouts are.

Outside, the Scouts did some lighter fitness exercises with Hula Hoops, led by Emily and Skip. They were then take inside by Ben to talk about eating enough before any kind of exercise and what happens if you lack that energy.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

– For the Fallen, Robert Laurence Binyon

We decided to take the Scouts on a Remembrance themed navigation challenge tonight. We gave them a map with point marked on it and it was then their job to the to as many of them within the time limit. Each checkpoint had a hidden poppy poster with a name written on it. These names were what the Scouts needed for points.All the groups made it to the end point at the crossroads in time.

The names were some of the surnames of the many people who are now engraved on the Tilehurst War Memorial. We ran the evening to serve as a reminder that people have died for our freedom and to pay our own respects at this time of year.

On the Sunday, some of the troop attended the annual Remembrance Parade ran by the Royal British Legion. Thank you to all the Scouts that attended and came out to show their respects. Below are a few photos from the event:

Tomorrow, please bring warm clothing as we may be outside again.

Have a fab week!

Ellis

This week at Scouts, there were no Scouts……………………………..wait what?

This week for the blog we are not talking about what the Scouts did, we are going to talk about what the Leaders did over half term with the normal Scout evening. First however, we are going to touch on our last meeting before half term.

Our last meeting of last term was actually swimming and all the Leaders got to take part as well :). We took a trip to Coral Reef as a treat for the end of term. There were multiple slides and chances for all kinds of fun in the water!

Now as for this week, the Leaders got together to deal with one of the biggest thorns in our side: the cupboard. If you didn’t know, our cupboard was a tip. It had little to no organisation and we just had to take a guess where things were. Last Friday, we decided to change that. All the Leaders got together for pizza and then got to work on clearing the cupboard out in full.

As you can see above there is a lot of stuff, most of which, was just garbage like cardboard we were not using. First thing we did was work out what we needed to keep (stationary, sports equipment, airfix kits) and what we wanted to bin. Next we wanted to re-purpose the coffin that used to store camp gear but was never full. That now stores all our gear for games and sport. We then decided to give it a label so we can easily locate things.

We took the same approach for most of the cupboard. Find a group of items that fit an activity or need and put them all in a box or a specific place. I can now exactly tell you where all the stationary is. Its the best! You can see our efforts below:

This is only the start of what we want to do with the cupboard and will require multiple sessions but hopefully this will allow us all (Scouts included) to find stuff easier.

As for this week, one of the Leaders will be in touch with what we are doing.

See you soon!

Ellis

I missed the blog last week. Oops! So here is both last weeks shorter entry and this weeks entry to make up for it. Enjoy!

5 – Gather Round

Last week, we had a huge practice of fire skills. As Skip had to talk to you all about WINGS, we thought we could practice getting fires up and running to make a Bonfire and cook some food on Altar Fires.

We split each patrol by age. Some of the Leaders took the younger Scouts to make lots of individual fires to then merge into a larger fire. I was very impressed with my groups prior knowledge of how to make a fire which was great.

The older Scouts were then in charge of the fires that we cooked the food on.

We also showed some of the Scouts how to use an axe to cut wood with the correct safety procedure e.g. going down on one knee, everyone stands back.

6 – Trial by Fire

This week at Scouts, the Leaders handed the power over to the youngest member of the Leadership Team. Even though Emily has only been helping us as a Young Leader since just before Summer so, naturally, we decided to throw her a trial by fire. We gave her an ENTIRE EVENING to plan and do whatever she wanted with as long as she could justify her decisions to me after.

I was handed a list with some stuff on it with only a rough idea of what she wanted to do. I think all the Leaders will agree with me she did a fantastic job. Emily decided to run an evening based on the Teamwork Challenge Badge.

The troop was divided into six groups and they were set various challenges.

The first challenge she set the Scouts was to build the tallest tower they could out of dowels and marshmallows in 20 mins. We had various strategy’s from breaking up marshmallows into smaller pieces to using the whole marshmellows.

The second challenge was to create a contraption that could protect an egg. We hard boiled the eggs to make it easier (and leave a rancid stench everywhere). To acquire tape Scouts had to give Emily or me a Scout Value, a Scout Law or answer a random trivia question once they had done the rest.

We had paper grids and balls. Even a basket. Only one team managed to defend the egg.

We had A LOT of badges to give out this evening. So much so it would take me a very, very, very long time to organise them by person. Therefore I’m just going to post the badge reports below:

Next week, we will be visiting Coral Reef swimming pool. Keep an eye out for details.

See you Friday,

Ellis

After a chaotic first few weeks at Scouts, whether it be Pirates or the AGM running concurrent to our meeting, we finally were able to have a standard Scout meeting.

With such a large influx of new Scouts we thought this would be the perfect opportunity to give the Scouts a taste of 2 fundamentals of Scouting: The Promise and Pioneering.

Now the older Scouts have already done this multiple times over, therefore we set them with an advanced pioneering project to get up in the evening which was then able to be used by one of the Beaver Sections that were having a sleepover that evening.

Upstairs in the Venture Den, Orla and I discussed with the newer Scouts some of the fundamentals of the Promise. The Scout Promise is the thing that every Scout has to state when getting invested. There are multiple forms of the promise but the most common one is below:

On my honour, I promise that I will do my best, to do my duty, to God and to the queen, to help others people and to keep the Scout Law.

The wider promise topic also covers these laws. We discussed with the Scouts what certain parts meant and what laws were most important to them.

Out in the back hall, Bosun and Emily were teaching the new Scouts some of the basic knots and lashings that a Scout may need to know. These can include the reef knot, clove hitch and square lashing. These usually make the basis for all structures that we do in pioneering.

By the time the activities above were finished, Skip, Neil and the older Scouts were finished with their project: The Slippery Pole.

The Slippery Pole has one rule: knock the other Scout off with a pillow. The Beavers has a few goes before the Scouts had a crack at it. We left it up for the Beavers to use into the night.

Tomorrow, we will be having a Bonfire. We would like to speak to all the parents at 9pm to discuss next years summer camp. Please join us at this time if you can.

There will also be an opportunity to fulfil the volunteering aspect of your World Challenge bulb planting. Please see below:

See you tommrrow!

Ellis