Happy New Year Everyone! I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and New Years hopefully spending time with your family and friends or whatever you decided to do to make the most of it. All the leaders are looking forward to delivering another year of Scouting with the big event this year being Summer Camp in Brecon.
We will be having some new Scouts come in over the next few weeks and we have lost a lot of our PL’s so last week the Leaders had a bit of a debate over a plate of curry to try and work out what the best new setup for patrols would be. It’s mostly the same but I would like to mention our new Patrol Leaders and Assistant Patrol Leaders who were decided over most of the deliberation:
Cobras are now led by Alex Reed with his second in command being Arran Lister.
Hawks continues to be led by Evan Melleney with his second in command now being Billy Baker.
Otters are now led by Gabriel Armstrong with his second in command being George Hurneyman.
And finally, Wolves is now led by Seamus Tobin with Tegan Scott now as APL.
Congratulations to everybody in their new role!
We have also changed how we track patrol membership. It is an absolute nightmare to sew and unpick badges and since we change patrols around so much it no longer makes sense to use Patrol Badges. Instead, we are now moving to a system of patrol woggles in which it is the Scout’s responsibility to look after it until you leave your patrol or Chieftains.
We are also bringing Patrol Points back with a few changes. Scouting and society is always evolving and some of the factors we used to award points on no longer make sense. So the patrol points will now work on a system along these lines starting in a few weeks time:
- Every week each Patrol is entitled to a set amount of points.
- Each Patrol will be expected to follow a set criterion which includes:
- Being on time to Scouts unless we know that you are going to be late.
- Having the correct uniform every week.
- Each Scout having good personal hygiene.
- Falling in in a quick and orderly fashion with Patrol Leadership being a guide for the patrol to follow.
- Any time the above criteria is breached we will deduct points off the relevant patrol for that week.
- All Leaders, Young Leaders, and Senior Patrol Leaders have the right to add additional points for Scouts that follow the Scouting Values, Promise and Law with prime examples or if we just generally appreciate something a Scout has done. We are also allowed to deduct points for various reasons such as poor behavior.
Last time this system existed, there was never a real reason to be the best patrol. However, the winner from now on will be awarded a prize. The winning patrol will be treated to a meal out of the winning patrols choice, courtesy of the Leaders. I hope this new system encourages some friendly competition between all the patrols.
The activity of the night was a Fire Crash Course. Ben went through all the ways we may possibly use fire on camps including trangias, gas fires. Skip then gave a run through on how to light a fire, with how to set up a good starting structure and a look over the fire triangle. We usually just assume the Scouts know the basics of fire so hopefully this was a good lesson and/or refresher on how to do it.
Of course, this knowledge was then put to the test by making some fire outside. Whilst this was going on Skip and Myself took the oldest Scouts who are approaching the end of their time with us to discuss with what they all need to do to get Chief Scout Gold. That criteria you can find here.
A quick reminder that My.Scout allows you to track all your child’s badge progress, view the programme (which you can also see on the blog homepage here) and see and amend the personal details we hold on your Scout among other things. If you don’t have access to it, please email one of the Leaders so we can help you as we are slowly going to be using it more and more to organize what’s going on.
Next week, we will be doing a hike around Reading. Details to follow soon. Please keep an eye out for that email because we will not be meeting at the Scout Hall.
Have a lovely week,
Ellis
