Golden moments

One of my scouts has managed to gain her Chief Scout Gold Award!


*does a little dance*


For those of you outside of the UK, or just outside of scouting. The award is the highest award that a member of the scout section can get. Out of the 9 possible challenge badges available in the scout section, they have to complete 8 of them. And those challenge badges ain't exactly easy... they take months to complete.


So I will happily admit that I am rather proud at the moment.

Lincoln District held an award ceremony at RAF Waddington this week for all those that gained the award, and I got to tag along as her leader. We had a tour and got to see some parts of the base that aren't open to the public before the Station Commander presented the awards.

Unfortunately the spot lighting kinda caused a bit of a glare on the award itself! Hopefully the professional photos that they took turned out better than my iphone ones.

I did collar her before leaving the hall tho to get another photo.

Congratulations Jess!

Note: before any of you say anything about my 'no photos of the sprogs' rule... I asked for specific permission from her and her parents if it would be ok to post a photo here to mark the occasion.

Twister + Record Cards + Investiture = An Impossible To Title Blog Post

Tonight was a bit of a mash up for the scouts as the radio station we were planning to visit never got back in contact with us. M'eh, it happens... you plan things, you try to arrange them and for some reason the planets don't align and it doesn't go ahead.


This is why we have back up plans.


I will admit that it was Mim that came up with this particular back up plan. (Yeah, buying a house really takes up a lot of your time... they should come with a health warning or something)

Also... be careful of giants

After a quick game and introducing a newbie (a cub moving up- huzzah!) we got on with one of our activities for the night. OS Symbol Twister! We taped 16 OS symbols in a 4x4 grid on the floor, one grid for each patrol.... and then we randomly shouted out hand/foot and symbol combinations.

Sprogs should not be that flexible.

Both hilarious and disturbing at the same time, arms and legs all over the place.... one tiny little scout cowering completely underneath her PL. Slightly more disturbing when one of the sprogs asked "where's my left foot...?" *facepalm*

Once they had finally all fallen over Niall and Jason went on to do 4 and 6 figure grid references with them, while I pulled one of them aside and went through their Record Card, and it was a good thing that we went through it, as we had found that she had completed a couple of challenge badges.

The end of the night came along and I got to present a whole host of badges, most of them challenge badges.

And what's more I got to invest a PL.

Yes, I invest my PLs. It isn't normal practice, but I've found that it helps give them some confidence in taking on the role and it helps the others recognise the authority that they have. The investiture runs like any other investiture, but with a modified promise that I came up with.

Patrol Leaders Promise

On my honour I promise, 

That I shall lead my patrol to the best of my abilities,

And that I shall remain worthy of the position of Patrol Leader,

For the sake of my Patrol, my Troop and the Scout Movement.

It doesn't seam like much, but my scouts have taken it all to heart. You should have seen the beaming smile he had when I told him that I was going to invest him as a PL.

Caching In

It's about time that I introduced you to some new members of my scouting family...

This is Albert, he lives with Mim (the GSL) and likes to get out and about with her family. He's sociable like that, altho you will find him at some family gathering sitting in the corner munching on some boiled sweets.

<>

Betty here has been living with me (oh the scandal). She likes visiting places and sometimes accompanies me to work. She likes cake and her favourite colour is blue.

 

Cyril can be a bit tempremental at times. Jo, his carer, has being having some problems with him. He has occasional dizzy spells and gets slightly disorientated.



And not to forget Doris, our shrinking voilet. She's rather quiet, keeps herself to herself and doesn't get out as much as the others. She can usually be found round the drinks table at the party tho.

Yup, these are our new GPSs. Instead of numbering or lettering them we decided to name them... because it's more fun that way! The worrying part about it was the number of emails that flew between Mim and myself as we were trying to come up with the names.

It was like we were naming children.

We delibrately went for more old fashioned names so that it would be less likely that we would get sprogs with the same names.

Now, what have we got planned for them? GEOCACHING! Geocaching is like a giant treasure hunt. People hide containers of varying shapes and sizes all over the world and register it online, anyone else can then look up the co-ordinates and the clues and then go hunting for them. Usually there is a log, a strip of paper, for you to sign.

This video should help explain it:

Now, Mim is pretty nifty at this whole geocaching malarky (as of writing this she has found 250 of them... and that is bound to go up... oh and she only started 9 months ago!). So she hid a series of caches just for the scouts to find, some of which would be made public later.

We split the sprogs into two teams and got them to go hunting, as subtly as they could manage (which wasn't that subtle if I am honest). They had varying degrees of success, but they all seamed to enjoy it... which is handy as it all goes towards their Navigator badge

Jamboree Badges

Well, I promised that I would post this when I had images ready for the Jamboree Unit Badges...

You'll remember that it the design drawn out by one of the members was this:

well... after lengthy discussion with the badge company (believe me, it was a LOT of emails and I may have made the poor man develop a tick) this is what they produced

  This is the Unit Member version

and this is the public version that we'll be selling as part of our fundraising!

I will, of course, be letting you know when they are available for you to buy... you will buy one won't you?!

Jamboree Meeting

A couple of weekends ago there was a Unit Leader weekend for the next World Scout Jamboree. Unfortunately we didn't have enough spaces for all of us to go... so I wasn't able to attend and get all the buzz about the Jamboree first hand.

Last night the Lincolnshire Unit leaders all met up so that we could all be briefed on what happened during the weekend, also so that we could sort out some of the details for the next training camp in October.

I don't want to give anything away just now... we want to make sure that some of it is a surprise to the sproggage. So you guys will just have to wait a little longer for some of those details!

Wha ha ha ha <= that's an evil laugh by the way!