All the best things are inflatable

Some things are just better for being inflatable...
(before any of you dirty minded people go there... no I am not talking about dolls!)


Like castles...

... or beds...

... or even a Church...

This church blows... (up)

What has this got to do with scouts I hear you ask, well, I arrived at the hall on Monday to see this:

And what the bejabbers is that I hear you cry?! (you're just full of questions today arn't you)


Well, the explorers asked to do some star gazing while we were program planning with them. Unfortunately, being in the UK, the weather doesn't generally help with the whole scheduling to go out and look at the stars thing. Actually, the weather in the UK has generally been messed up of late (late week the temperatures were about the 20C mark, this week we have snow... go figure). So instead of taking the kids out of the hall to see the stars, we brought the stars into the hall.


That's right, it's an INFLATABLE PLANETARIUM!

How cool is that!

Once everyone had entered through the tunnel, we had a short slide show about the universe. Apparantly there are an extra 4 planets that I didn't even know about, it wasn't that I had forgotten their names... I had never actually heard of them!



Had you heard of Ceres, Haumea, Makemake and Eris?!

 I'll excuse you while you take that in.


Ready to carry on? Good.


After my tiny little mind had popped in the presentation, we moved onto a tour round the stars in the planetarium. The whole of the inside of it was dotted with the stars (and the planets, which were set up as that there were actually outside) and we got to watch as they spun round through a 24hour cycle. It was beautiful, and I wish I would have been able to take a photo or a film without my phone lighting up and screwing with everyones vision.


To make it up to you for not having a video of that... here's a little song that I pops into my head whenever I think about the universe:

Note: Obviously a number of the pictures (and the film) don't belong to me... please don't sue me

THIRTY!

Before you say anything, no I have NOT just turned thirty... I have years between now and becoming old


The biggest change that I have found in moving to the explorers has to be the number of them.


For the past couple of years, while I was with the 9th Lincoln, I was dealing with about 9 kids... the explorer unit has 30. Thirty, three zero, that's a lot of bodies. And it's taking a while to get used to handling that many. I'm seriously having to think more about exactly how everything will run just because of the increase in people.

Suddenly having 30 explorers also means that I have about 30 names to learn, and about 30odd nicknames to boot. Unfortunately I am not one of those people that can just pick up names really easily. Give me at least a year and I may just be able to remember that your name starts with a J... Jim, James, John?... oh sorry Brian!

Regardless of the size (THIRTY!), any new group of scouts will react differently to the same activities. Which has been my next biggest change. I've had to learn how this set of 30 teenagers will react to activities. How would they be with Global issues? Crafts? What sort of games do they like? So, how better to find out than to try some different activities with them.

We've had a variety of different activities over the past couple of months. Everything from disability awareness nights, to market nights (which I have covered on here in the past) to egg drops, cake decorating and even a pub quiz.

They had to ID different muppets in the Pub Quiz picture round... this one is apparently me
... try not to laugh too hard

These, I will admit, had varying degrees of success... the disability night, for example, was a nightmare (but a valuable reminder on practicalities of running activities for 30). So, I'm not going to go into that really, there were plenty of other nights that were a success that I can talk about instead.

We had some interesting methods employed with the egg drop challenge.

We had crumple zones, and parachutes and shear dumb luck in abundance.

 

The drop zone... I was stationed under the stairs, like a egg craving troll

The cake night was, for obvious reasons, one of my favourites. But boy did it require a lot of prep! They all got 2 cupcakes to decorate each, we also did a team challenge where they had half an hour to decorate a 6inch cake, the winning team got to take home all of the 6inch cakes. Which, when you factor in that it is for 30people, makes for a LOT of cake. 60 cupcakes and 6 6inch cakes to be exact, and all home made (by me) to try and keep the costs down. We also got them making hot chocolate spoons and funnel cakes... mmm funnel cakes *drool*....

ahem, excuse me

Don't know what came over me there.

Anyway, here's some of pictures that I managed to grab between being coated in icing sugar!

The Guns n Roses 6inch cake... All the team cakes had to be covered in fondant

The team working on the Field of Sheep/Pandas

A yellow mothers day cake

This team tried to curry favour by making a scotland cake... they didn't realise that the other leaders were being independant judges

Some of the cupcakes

The final cakes, the green one won the challenge

Not that all the nights are messy. This week we had a Skills Night. Each of them had to teach a skill to everyone else.

All I'll say is that the demonstration on how to mow the lawn using another explorer as the lawnmower was PRICELESS!

Obviously, muppets etc don't belong to me... please down sue me!

My money is on Noddy

New year... new house... new scouting role


nothing like jumping in at the deep end!

Sorry while I compose myself, I find that picture hilarious

...


*bites fist*


... sorry, I got to look at that picture again....


Right, what was I talking about... ah yes, me starting explorers. And what a way to start, before I had even been down to a normal meeting night I was away camping with them at Gilwell Winter Camp. I've been to Gilwell a couple of times now, but this was the first time I was at Winter Camp.


The weekend wasn't exactly wintery, but it was a grand opportunity to get to know some of the explorers. Like how they had a competition to see who could pull using the line "Do you like apples?"

Who would have thought that they would be Good Will Hunting fans?

And being mildly disturbed when one of them actually succeeded!

Or how one of them had a random dream, an extremely random dream, it was about a fight to the death between the Hulk and Noddy... he subsequently ended up with the nick-name of Noddy.

Personally, my money is on Noddy

Winter camp also gave me the opportunity to catch up with some mates from previous events. In some cases instead of 'catch up' read 'bother'... as in the potter puppet pals.

I literally bothered one of them like this. The other I joined on the leaders pub quiz and we came joint 7th out of 39. I think I know who got off lightly.

The day after the camp I got to actually start explorers officially, with my first meeting at the hall. It wasn't much to write about as it was program planning... so I'll skip a week, to when we did the life auction.

I did it a while back with the scouts, but as there are more explorers I added some more lots to the auction: like a house of your dreams, being a trend setter and travelling. The explorers seamed to really get into it and there was even some fights for some items.

All in all, a good start I think!

Times they are a changing

Well... just about everything has changed over the past month. I think if any more was to change then I could seriously rival this guy



And no comments about me being two faced.... okay?

The biggest change has to be that I have FINALLY moved house!

HUZZAH- *villagers rejoicing*

And what is more I actually now have internet in said house. I have got an app for blog posting from my phone, but I hate using it as it isn't really user friendly, especially for adding photos/videos etc.

While I was moving I was also finished up with the scout section. We had finally managed to get a hold of the Lincoln Mountain Activity Team to run a session for us at a climbing wall. The sprogs absolutely loved it, some of them were up there like a shot, as spry as monkeys they were... and about as loud

... SCOTLAND LOOK AT ME!!!

Yes that's nice, now get out of the way of that other line...

... I'M AT THE TOP!!!

I can see that, now be careful when you set off as you'll swing into that overhang...

... *THUD* ...

... *sigh*

I got to have a couple of goes myself, just to remind myself how long it has been since I climbed, and they had this automatic belay device which frankly scared the bejabbers out of me. Normally you have a person at the other end of the rope that would control your decent should you fall, decide you can't go further or even reach the top. Which is comforting cause they can talk away to you and they support you the entire time. This thing doesn't kick in until you reach a certain falling speed... and it's useless at conversation.

But generally a night that ends with the sprogs asking if they can do that activity again is always a winner.

My last week with the scouts was another Cinema night, like last year. We got a projector and screen and a choice of DVDs and they got to pick a film to watch... and periodically someone would pry the pringles away from my hands to pass them round the sprogs.

They have a good taste in films those sprogs, we watched How To Train Your Dragon... but this was partly because Jo (one of the leaders) vetoed all the Muppet movies. Apparently they scare her for some bizzare unknown reason. I mean seriously, how can you be scared of the muppets?!

Rizzo is, of course, my favourite.

I mean, if it was something like Mimic with mutant cockroaches start attacking people just for the fun of it then I could totally understand (ok, I'll admit that I only got about 5minutes into that film before giving up), but this is the Muppets! Well, I suppose that we'll accept all sorts to be scout leaders.

But Muppet-haters is getting close to the line...

And that was my last night with the 9th Lincoln Scouts!

*sniff*

I've had a brilliant time with the sprogs of the 9th Lincoln Scouts. They are a fantastic set of kids and I wish that I could take them with me... and I've told them all that I expect to see them at future explorer events.

I was going to put in about me starting with Dodgers Explorers, but quite a lot happened and this post is already rather long so I am going to be kind at cover that later.

And given that I didn't put up a festive message, please accept this little video (except if you're weird like Jo... )

... Don't say I'm not good to you!

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.

I did warn you they would get messy...

Recently (well, recent enough...) it was halloween!


You know, that time of year when sprogs dress up, asks for sweets and the challenge for scout leaders everywhere is to throw a party. My rule of thumb with this: the messier they leave the better.


But before I share with you my recipe for a messy child, I'll share with you some photos of the pumpkins that we got them to carve.

Recipe for a Messy Child


Ingredients:
Sprog                                   x many
Costume                              x one per Sprog
Apples                                 x numerous
Water                                   x bucket loads
Marshmallows                    x more than a mouth full
Flour                                    x a bouquet
Doughnuts                          x enough to choke a giant
Treacle/Golden Syrup      x enough to grease a small monkey



Method:

• Inspect sprog in costume, it may be necessary to remove articles for movement/breathing proposes
• Float apples in buckets of water
• Insert sprogs head
• String up doughnuts on a rope so they all dangle freely. Coat doughnuts in treacle/syrup
• Hang doughnuts above sprogs heads and let them apply treacle and syrup to face/hair/body/costume as they attempt to consume them.
• Once all sprogs are damp and coated in treacle/syrup, bring out marshmallows on a plate covered in a large heaped pile of flour.
• Insert sprogs head, flour should stick rather successfully to water and treacle mixture

We finished off the night with a game of Fluffy Bunnies. If you don't know what that is, you take turns putting a marshmallow in your mouth and saying 'fluffy bunnies'. You are not allowed to chew or swallow at any point or you're out. Needless to say, this was played round a bin for them to eventually throw up into.


What's a halloween party without a game that includes vomiting?


They all loved it really, chasing each other round and putting treacle and flour in each others faces, drooling down their tops while trying not to spit up marshmallows. Of course when their parents showed up and saw how messy they were it was 'horrible'...


I've since learned (from one of the parents) that it took one of the sprogs several days to remove all the treacle/flour.... SUCCESS!!

Lest We Forget

Today is the 11th day of the 11th month and at the 11th hour we will pause to remember.

Usually scouts will attend church this Sunday, in full uniform and in parade to mark the occasion. My scouts wont. Not because we don't remember, but because the Salvation Army church we are linked to goes elsewhere to help others mark the occasion. So we usually have our own form of remembrance.

The past couple of years I have dedicated a whole scout evening to remembrance, and one of the things that I have always struggled to get my head round... and something that I am sure that the scouts have struggled to grasp... is the shear numbers involved.

When told about the numbers that died, the numbers are so huge that my brain just can't imagine anything that size. So a while back I worked out a way to highlight it, a way to make the numbers real. I think I have talked about it in the past, but never actually posted up the numbers and the process, so here it goes.

I found out, from the internet, how many grains of sugar are in a gram (15.432 on average) and then figured out how many grains were in a 1kg bag of sugar. Then equating 1 grain of sugar to 1 soul I worked out how many bags of sugar were needed to illustrate the numbers.

The numbers were still huge.

So I took along one bag of sugar, and emptied it out across the floor. Getting the kids to see just how many grains were in that one bag... and then went through how many bags were needed for each war and other events to help put things into perspective.

And here are those numbers:

World War 1                      15000000-20000000 dead             972-1296 bags
World War 2                      40000000-72000000 dead             2592-4666 bags

Genocides of Nazi Germany     4871000-11000000 dead          316-713 bags
Auschwitz-Birkenau                  800000-1500000 dead             52-97 bags

Indian Ocean (boxing day) Tsunami         230210 dead              15 bags
Haiti Earthquake                                      222000 dead              14 bags

9/11 Attacks (excluding hijackers)           2977 dead                   0.19 bags
7/7 Bombings                                          52 dead                       0.003 bags
War on Terror                              at least 47183 dead                3 bags


These numbers always humble me, and remind me of how privilaged I am.

Thank you, for all that you gave, I will try to live my life to the fullest and remember.

As Clear as Crystal?

As I've mentioned in the past, we are trying to include some of the Join In Jamboree activities into our weekly program. This month was all about water.

To highlight some of the problems with the supply of water we didn't just want to talk at the sprogs about them, we wanted them to experience them.


So, first challenge was to actually collect the water. Not from the tap like the sprogs wanted to, but from the  a local waterway. The walk was supposed to be 20mins if you follow the program idea, as that can be the normal length of walk for some people in the World to get their water, but the sprogs were rather quick at walking!


The water was obviously not safe to drink as it was, just as it isn't in many parts of the World. So the next challenge was to go through the process of purifying the water so that we could make a drink. And let's just say, we were leaving nothing to chance.


The water was put through colanders and sieves to get rid of the big bits...


... then passed through coffee filters to get rid of smaller stuff.


... then they used water purifying chemicals


... and then it was boiled... twice... just to make sure.


And for their efforts they were rewarded with some hot chocolate, with water they had purified themselves.


The sprogs were having a good laugh with the water and were surprised at how much the water needs to go through before it was safe to drink. Hopefully it will help them appreciate the water that we have so readily available from our taps, and to think of those that don't have the equipment to properly purify their water.


Ok, so I know this one is way late... but I've been a busy boy ok! Unfortunately it means that I forget the little jokes and stuff that the sprogs did... d'oh. But it was a good night.

Bomb Disposal (again)

Just who is leaving all these bombs laying all over the place??


It's careless is what it is... some would even go as far as saying dangerous.


Before I get to that ticking time bomb, we actually did another activity with the sprogs first (it helped give us some time to set up the detonators and rig the motion sensors). As you all know it is the Jamboree this summer, so the UK Scout Association has some Join In Jamboree activities... so that everyone can experience a bit of the Jamboree.


(by the way, free pdf downloads of the booklets are here... if any of you are looking for program ideas).- actually, do any other countries have something like this in place? Would be interesting to have a look at it, if you can then leave a link in the comments.


We chose the New Planet one, were they were to pair up and come up with a new planet and they were given a list of things that they had to come up with to help describe life on that planet.

1. Name the planet and explain why it is called that
2. Draw the flag for the planet, explain the design
3. 10 laws
4. Motto for the planet
5. How will the planet make money?
6. List 5 things that are banned on your planet
7. Design your planets formal costume
8. Draw and name the money used on the planet
9. Write and perform a planetery song, at least 6 lines long (can be to a tune they already know)
10. List 6 items you will take from Earth with you.

And all I gave them to do all that in was half an hour!


...cause those bombs are ticking you know.


Like the last time, they would have to use water to float the trigger out of the bomb. But this one is a different model.

See all those extra obstacles? They are the bomb-o-matics new 'features'... now with extra deadly. (and a free carrage clock with your first order)

With these Proximity Prevention Poles (PPP for short) water will need to be dropped from a height.

Infact, the pioneering project they had to build was a chariot, an A-frame. One of the patrol would have to ride the chariot, carrying the cup of water, while the rest of the patrol carried the chariot. Of course, you get more than one cup in a bottle... so they had to go back and forth a number of times to fill it.

They're getting so close!

Surprisingly, we managed all of this... designing a new planet, deactivating a bomb and clearing up... and we still had time to spare! So we played human checkers, Sprogs v Leaders (we had cones as our pieces as there were only 3 leaders).

The sprogs lost.... mah ha ha ha

Mothering Sunday

This week I had a bit of a problem.

Initially this week, the program had us down to get ready for camp, but camp has been delayed until the end of the month. Normally we would have simply have moved the program for that week forward to this week. But given that that week is connected to a certain wedding, we couldn't exactly move.

I mean, I could try asking Will and Kate to move it... but somehow I doubt they would go for it.

How selfish of them!

So their rudeness left me in a bit of a problem, what to do with the scouts on Friday. Luckily it would be Mothering Sunday that very weekend... the challenge with that being coming up with something different from all the other youth clubs and schools etc.

Here mummy, I made this card for you at school and these paper flowers at sunday school and this other card at science club and this....

So I got to thinking, and I remembered this post from a food blog that I kinda follow and I'll admit I have made some yummy things from it in the past. And then I remembered this post from a blog I used to follow. And I had a brain-wave. It's traditional to give your mum flowers and chocolates on Mothers Day right... I mean, that's what all the shops keep telling me (and why would they lie?)... so let's give them flowers and chocolates, but in cake form!

Yes, I am obsessed by cake recently!

So first off was cake balls, to look like chocolates. I missed some pictures of the process, but it is very easy. You get them to rip up some cake, I used cheap cupcakes, they have to turn it into crumbs.

Then you add some frosting, just a little bit mind, and get your hands stuck in to stick all the crumbs back together. With this you can grab a lump and shape it however you like.

You can see some of them just behind the bowl of melted chocolate... that's the next stange.

We got them to shape them like chocolates and then coat them in melted chocolate. It's best to use a fork to move them round in the chocolate as when you lift them out you can tap off the excess chocolate and it falls nicely between the forks teeth.

like this

The process was slightly messy

Once dropped in the petite four cases the sugar glitter was unleashed.

how pretty

And that's the chocolates done! We just needed to leave them out to dry. Now for those flower pots. Obviously the first thing to do was to thoroughly wash them. Well, hopefully that would be obvious. What I failed to photograph is that you need to get a small square of greaseproof paper and put it over the hole in the bottom of the pot.

Then cut up some swiss roll, and stuff it in the pot



Then top that with some frosting (i used ready-made Betty Crocker stuff.... *drool... I could (and have) eat that stuff with a spoon).



You can even mix up the types of cake... and stuff in some marshmallows if there are any gaps. Keep going like that til you're nearer the top.

Now get a whole load of Oreos, about 5 for each pot) and crush them with the end of a rolling pin, until they are crumbs. This is going to be the soil. It's rather convincing too, some of the sprogs thought i was eating soil initially.

Grab some flowers of your choice, cut them to length and strip some of the thorns and leave off the stems. Now, you don't put it straight in the cake, rather you insert some straws into the cake... and put the flowers in the straws!

The results, I think, are pretty cool.

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