Category: Cub News

The 2008 District Indoor challenge was an egg race. Each team had to design and build a vehicle to safely transport it’s passenger (the egg). The vehicles had to travel under their own momentum having been launched from a ramp. Teams were additionally marked on teamwork and behaviour.

Our team, which included one Cub Scout from 1st Rydes Hill St Mary’s Cubs were tied for the lead with the team from 5th Guildford, so it came down to a final distance race which we won.

There is not much to report since the last executive meeting, due to the Christmas holidays. We currently have around 19 Cubs in the pack, with 4 moving to Scouts at the end of the month, and another 1-2 at Easter. There are 3 Beavers coming up at the end of the month and around 6 (at the last count) at Easter.

At the last meeting of the term, we had a number of presentations. Firstly the Cubs presented Carole with a large card and two large flower pots (both of which they made themselves) to thank her for her 20 years as Akela. In addition to the winning six getting prizes, the three Cubs who’d done best in the 100 challenge also got prizes – each got a centenary woggle, the third place Cub got a carabina combination torch and compass, the two in joint place got an “adventure” compass. Finally one of the Cubs received their Chief Scouts Silver Award from the ADC. Another Cub has also obtained their Silver Award but they were not present at the meeting.

We also had a very enjoyable visit to see Jack and the Beanstalk at the Yvonne Arnaud. We didn’t get to meet Peter Duncan, despite Chils many efforts – it would have been nice if the Surrey Scouts newsletter had announced the special Scouts days before we booked our tickets! However he did during the show mention all the Scout groups present by name, and also sang Happy Birthday to Akela, alongwith all the other children whose birthday it was!

Onto this year, we’re waiting for the materials for the new programme to become available before planning too much of the years programme, but in the meantime, we’re doing a mix of activities that count towards the altered challenge badges – as Cubs now have to get six (opposed to three) of the seven challenges to get their Chief Scouts Silver award.

In addition to the Be Prepared packs that Chil introduced last term, we’re also going to be having a monthly best Cub award. Each month we’re going to set a challenge based on the programme at the time, which along with behaviour, appearance and attendance will determine who gets the award. As you’ll see on our notice board the Cubs have also drawn up a list of Pack “rules”.

The district handicraft competition this year had the theme of the fair coming to town. The challenge was to design and build a model of a “travelling” fairground.

We entered a team of 4, and an additional 2 of our Cubs formed a team with 1 Cub from 2nd Guildford. The standard of the models was very high, our team of 4 won, and our second team (with the Cub from 2nd Guildford) were runners up.

Carole having taken a break from Scouting in the trinity term, decided that the time was right for her to pass on the leadership of the Cub section. I would like to personally thank her for all her years of running the Cub pack, both recently and when I was a Cub there myself (which is 20 years ago in a month!)

Fortunately we have found another leader to assist in running the pack, Barbara, who was formerly at 2nd Guildford Cubs. Barbara has recently completed her Nights Away course and will be completing the last courses for her Wood Badge early next year. Her pack name is Chil, which if memory serves must be the most popular leaders name in the last 20 years at Normandy!
I should add as it may not have been reported, but I was awarded my Wood Badge at the Centenary Camp in May, and my warrant has been changed to CSL.

David continues to provide valuable assistance every week as a young leader, and hopefully Alan will manage to persuade more Explorers in the future to assist.

As of the start of this term we’ve changed the meeting time to 6:15-7:45 on Mondays.

We currently have about 20 Cubs in the pack, two have recently moved up to Scouts, and I’ve just invested 3 from the Beaver section and 1 from the waiting list. We lost five over the summer, two because of school changes, the others were either because of other activities or a lack of interest in Scouting. Another 4 will be going up to Scouts in the new year and then another 4 at Easter, but I gather we also have quite a lot of Beavers to come up at those two times.

We held a Sixers and Seconders camp on the last weekend of September, which was attended by all but one Seconder. The weekend involved them cooking their lunch both days on the altar fire, on the Saturday they cooked trout (which they prepared themselves) in newspaper with potatoes and vegetables, followed by baked apples. On the Sunday they cooked baked potatoes and chocolate/jam bananas. The weekends activities included, bivouac making, tracking, backwoods cooking, new wide games and indoor games, a campfire, learning lots of knots, and learning to put up (and take down) their hike tents! Additionally each sixer and seconder was set the task of concocting a ten minute activity for another sixer and seconder. They all rose to the challenge, and came up with an interesting mix of activities and were all far too complimentary about each other!

We’re working towards a number of badges this term, namely the Local Knowledge and Scientists. Two of the older Cubs are also working towards their Chief Scouts Silver award. We visited Guildford Fire Station with Rydes Hill Cubs and will at the end of term be going to the Pantomime with them, in which Peter Duncan is starring.

Before the summer holidays we entered 2 and a “bit” teams into the District Sports Challenge. We didn’t win the competition, but one team were the Hockey champions for the day and the “bit” team (with members from other packs) were the Football champions for the day. This month we’ll be entering two teams into the handicraft competition and hope to retain the shield.
Next year we’re planning to camp somewhere other than the Scout Hut, and possibly in the summer holidays, opposed to the May Half Term weekend.

We’ve put on a varied programme of activities over the last year, including: a walk (and a very well fought game of Capture the Flag) on Puttenham common, tracking, pancake making, blindfold trails, tent pitching, fire lighting (and cooking).

To celebrate 100 years of Scouting we’ve been running a 100 challenge throughout the year, with 10 challenges being given out each month. 15 of the Cubs went to the District Centenary Camp in May at Henley Fort.

We’ve won both the District events held this year, first we were joint winners (with a team from 1st Stoughton) of the Handicraft Competition at the end of last year. One of the facts that has come to light to celebrate 100 years of Scouting is that the majority of the men who have walked on the moon were in their youth Scouts. To celebrate this, the challenge was to design and build a model of a rocket capable of flying to the moon.

The second District event we won was the Indoor Challenge. To celebrate 100 years of Scouting it had an international theme. On the day each of the 10 teams picked an envelope containing the name of a country. Their challenge for the competition was to figure out which photo on the wall was the landmark from their country, based on a description and to build a model of it. In addition they had to make the flag of the country, write out the Cub Scout law and promise 3 traditional dishes for the country, and to guess which country 11 different pieces of music came from. Our two teams respectively drew Malaysia and Italy. They built models of the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur and the Leaning Tower of Pisa. The competition was very tight, and it came down to a tie breaker between three teams. After many tie-breaker questions one of our teams triumphed by the narrowest of margins.

Last year also saw our first Sixers and Seconders camp at the start of October. All 8 Sixers and Seconders attended and thoroughly enjoyed the weekend, learning not only new skills, but also trying out lots of new games and cooking their lunch on altar fires on both days.

We’re currently in the middle of doing the Athletes badge (when the weather is nice), the Home Safety badge (when the weather isn’t) and also working towards the Fitness Challenge.

In the next couple of weeks we’ll be taking part in the District Sports Challenge, and will be holding another Sixers and Seconders camp after the summer holidays.

As always we could do with more help at meetings, we’re very grateful to the parents, in particular, who’ve given up their time to help this term.

The 2007 District Indoor challenge had an international theme to celebrate 100 years of scouting. On the day each of the 10 teams picked an envelope containing the name of a country. Their challenge for the competition was to figure out which photo on the wall was the landmark from their country, based on a description and to build a model of it. In addition they had to make the flag of the country, write out the cub scout law and promise and 3 traditional dishes for the country.

The final challenge during the afternoon was a music challenge where music from the 11 countries that had been chosen for the challenge (should another team have turned up on the day) was played and the cubs had to figure out which piece of music was for which country.

Our two teams respectively drew Malaysia and Italy. They build models of the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur and the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Both, like all other teams models were excellent, although extra credit does have to be given for the fact that they actually got the Leaning Tower of Pisa to lean and not fall over!

The competition was very tight, and it came down to a tie breaker between three teams. Initially it was attempted to resolve this by asking all teams to guess how many scouts were in a particular country – unfortunately every time a team other than the three tied for the lead got closest.

After 5 or so rounds the three teams who were drawn were called forward and asked to guess in which year scouting began in a particular country. One of these teams was our team who’d picked Malaysia. Again no one was exactly right (or within 2 years), so it was declared that the winner would be the team in the next round that picked the closest year. The answers were very close, but by a margin of 1 year, our team won, so we keep the indoor challenge shield for another year.

The district handicraft competition this year had the theme of travelling to the moon. It is the 100th anniversary of Scouting next year, and a large number of the men who have walked on the moon were themselves Scouts in their childhood. The challenge was to design and build a model of a rocket that could travel to the moon along with a launchpad.

We entered two teams of 4, and an additional 3 of our cubs on the day, to their credit, joined another Groups team where only one Cub had turned up.

The standard of the models was very high, and as such there were two winners, one of our teams and the team from 1st Stoughton.

We held our first sixers and seconders camp on the weekend of the 7th and 8th of October 2006 at the Scout Hut. All 8 sixers and seconders attended and thoroughly enjoyed the weekend, learning not only new skills, but also trying out lots of new games and cooking their lunch on altar fires on both days.

Saturday

The first challenge after arriving on the Saturday morning was putting up their hike tents to sleep in – something they’d never done before (and in the case of a couple of the tents, neither had the leaders!) Once everything was pitched it was time for the mornings activities to begin. We had four activity bases: Bivoauc/Basher building, backwoods fire lighting, pioneering/camp gadgets and map reading. Each lasted about 45 minutes with the sixers and seconders going in pairs to each in turn.

After two sessions, it was time to start lunch. Half were responsible for cooking on the Saturday, the other half for tending to the fire/fetching wood. With some help from the leaders, and their “magical” skills in rescuing fires the fire was ready to cook on. Lunch was Sausage, mashed potato, peas and carrots, followed by baked apples.

After clearing up lunch, it was time for each pair to do their remaining two bases. This was followed by an hour trying out new wide games. Some invariably worked better than others, and there were certainly a couple the Cubs are looking forward to playing again in the summer next year. Before dinner each six was a set a challenge to prepare and run a 5-10 minute activity for all the other sixes for the next day. In addition they were asked to prepare a short Scouts Own for Sunday morning.

Dinner was a chicken pasta bake with salad and french bread, followed by fruit pie and custard. After dinner an hour was spent going over various ceremonies and tasks that sixers and seconders are expected to perform – such as what they should teach new cubs, what’s expected in weekly inspections and camp kit inspections etc.

As the weather had been so bad the week before, and the ground so muddy we decided not to have a campfire and instead spent the evening trying out a lot of new indoor games. Despite the cubs protests about not being tired, they were all straight off to sleep after lights out – which must be a first!

Sunday

Sunday morning began at 7am with a loud wake up call for the Cubs to wash and dress. At 7:30 we did some exercises before eating breakfast at 8. We then had flag break and scouts own, before a kit inspection.

Following the kit inspection the cubs had a short tour of the stores and learnt what some of the camping equipment in there was for, as well as how to look after it.

For the next two hours the Cubs split into two groups of 4, and whilst one group learnt about how to tie various knots the second group learnt about axe/saw safety and how to identify different trees around the grounds – and which of those trees were good for fires.

Lunch on Sunday was again cooked on the altar fire, it was a slightly simpler meal to prepare and cook being baked potatoes with various fillings and salad. It was followed by hot bananas with a (melted) chocolate button filling.

After lunch it was time for the cubs to run their challenges – one six ran a quiz, two had the same idea about crossing the field without touching the ground using milk crates, and one was a very elaborate treasure hunt that could have taken up a whole evening – let alone the 10 minutes they had!

Then it was time to strike camp (which proved slightly less taxing than putting the tents up!) and for the cubs to head home for what was probably an early night!

Pictures

A team of 4 Cubs from 1st Normandy won the District Cub Indoor Challenge. The challenge was to prepare and serve a two course meal with ingredients provided on the day. Our team chose to make a lamb bolognese (and a vegetarian alternative) followed by fruit pancakes.