SEPTEMBER 17th & 18th

Six of the 3rd Gidea park Scouts and a young leader spent Saturday at Crow Camp building obstacles for the districts Beavers. Sunday morning they completed a safety inspection (test ride) before over 100 Beavers arrived, including our own.

The Scouts operated the aerial runway for the Beavers. The Beavers got to ride the runway, cross the bridges, climb the scramble net, scoot the scooters and eat the fresh pop corn!

SEPTEMBER

The Scouts started the term with a little cooking practice ahead of the district cooking competition.

As defending champions they also got to see the upgraded district trophy first. The old wooden spoon has been looking a little fragile the last few years so Richard our assistant cub leader was given the challenge of reconditioning it. The only trouble is it no longer fits into our trophy cabinet.

AUGUST

The Scouts have returned from Summer Camp in Ennerdale.

The sunny views above right and left were taken while having lunch next to lake Windermere. This was during a two day expedition around the lake.

The picture above left was taken during a hike up Heycock. On the summit the weather was foggy and cold but back in valley it was hot and sunny.

JUNE 30th

One of our Explorer Scout Young Leaders has completed all her training modules and missions and so was presented with her badges and the Young Leader Belt Buckle by our District Young leader Trainer.

JUNE 9th

The 3rd Gidea Park Scouts were out helping the local food bank stock take the contents of their store.

JUNE 2nd

The Scouts were out at Tyler's Wood to play a wide game. Naturally with a couple of square miles of space the flock to the one and only muddy patch. This was only going to end one way.

By the end of the evening, leaders had been up to their elbows attempting to retrieve lost shoes and some Scouts appeared to end up going for a mud swim!

Meanwhile one of our more sensible Patrol Leaders managed to keep their team away from the distractions offered by the mud and concentrated on winning the game. The white team won by miles!

MAY

The beavers were in collier row for the District Sports day.

At the Franklin Shield we discovered that the 3rd Gidea Park Scouts were particularly bad at knots. Our solution to this problem was to try to find a way to make knot tying a little more exciting for both the Scouts and Leaders.

Stage 1, each Scout needed to tie a boring knot correctly three times in a row.

Stage 2, each Scout needed to tie a loop correctly three times in a row before being allowed to swing from a tree on it.

Stage 3, Scouts that got this far had to tie into a climbing harness before climbing a rope up a tree. Knowing that getting the knot wrong could result in a fall focused the minds somewhat!

MAY 20th - 22nd

We had one team of Scouts take part in the District camping and Scouting Skills Competition, the Franklin Shield

MAY

The beavers were at Thriftwood for a sleep over with the rest of the district.

MAY

During the District Beaver Sleep over two of our beaver leaders were presented with long service awards by the District Commissioner. Nicole was presented with a five year award and Lisa with a 15 year award.

MAY 19th

The Scouts have been out and about brushing up on Navigation Skills.

APRIL 15th -17th

The Scouts were at Thriftwood brushing up on Scouting Skills for the camping season. See how they got on in the video below.

MARCH 5th

The Scouts were at South Weald Park for the district Orienteering Competition. It looks like our practicing paid off as our teams came 11th, 8th and 1st.

FEBRUARY

The Penguin beavers have been working on their skills challenge and experiment activity badges.

The Beavers got creative with Salt dough, some Beavers painted their items at home and brought back the following week to share with rest of group.

FEB 27th

The Cubs and Scouts were at Harrow Lodge Pool for the swimming gala. Our Tiger Cubs came 3rd in the Cub cup and our Leopard Cubs won with one of them winning the Goody Cup too.

The Scouts came second in the troop competition losing to our near neighbours the 3rd Squirrels Heath. Once the Leopard cub scores were added to the troop scores we won the overall group trophy.

The Beavers all took lots of pictures and learnt about why we take pictures, what pictures are used for and how to take good pictures.

The picture on the left was taken using a ten second exposure. The ghost Beavers stood still for the first five seconds before running off.

One of our leaders was lucky enough to sleep at home where his eight month old daughter kept him up most of the night. Saturday morning he was still a lot more awake than our sugar fuelled Scouts who had slept for about an hour and were barely able to hold a map let alone read it.

We may not have found many checkpoints but we did find a lot of wildlife as can be seen in the picture below.

The new term began with some team building ice breakers. Each team had to chose someone to be an artist and someone to be a canvas! The rest of the team were messengers.

The messengers were taken into a separate room, one at a time for 30 seconds to look at the design that needed to be painted. They then had two minutes to explain to the artist what it was they had to paint. Then the next messenger got to take a look at the original design and advise the artist.

The results were mixed but it certainly forced the Scouts to talk to each other and really think about how they describe things.

The Friday Beavers spent an evening practicing their DIY skills putting together bird boxes. Several kits of parts had been prepared for them and they were given screwdrivers screws and a lot of adult advice and supervision.

By the end of the evening our Beavers had successfully built ten bird boxes, most of which were later installed at one of our local Scout Campsites.

Badges aren't just for the children. Some of our adult leaders are still young enough to be working towards badges themselves.

The bird box making was devised by one of our Scout Leaders who is working towards his Queen's Scout Award. He has been looking to run environment themed activities across our sections.