More Tent Pitching Practice

Tonight’s meeting was going to be challenge for the scouts, but they didn’t know it. We have been preparing for our first group camp in June for the past few weeks and tonight they were going to be tested. We were missing a good few scouts tonight though, which always makes it more difficult to run activities fairly.

We had tried to give out various Skills badges for the past few weeks, but had always ran out of time so this week we elected to do it at the start of the meeting. Most of the scouts got badges for Pionnering, Backwoods, Air, Hiking, & Emergencies. It’s great to be able to reward the scouts for all of their hard work at their meetings and at activities.

When the badges were given out, we headed outside for a game similar to Duck Duck Goose. The scouts stood in a large circle facing inwards with their eyes closed. Brendan tapped one of them on the shoulder once and another on the shoulder twice who would be the chaser. On the word go, they had to run around and try to get back to their original spot without being caught by the chaser. We had a few rounds and then to end off, everyone got a tap for the same round, but they didn’t know that everyone had been tapped too. It was great to see the confusion on their faces when all of the scouts started running.

Next we went inside and sat down to go through what to pack for a weekend camp. Ciaran had brought his rucksack and some of the gear he would bring. Alan took the Raven Patrol outside and gave them their challenge. They had 15 mins to get an Icelandic tent pitched as best they could. It was a bit of a panic and in the end they had the tent inside out and took too long discussing what was wrong with it rather than actually doing something about it so they didn’t even get the poles in to it.

OOPS!!

Meanwhile inside, the packing of the Rucksack was going very well. Ciaran showed them a few tricks on how to pack clothes and what type of equipment to bring – No Sunday Best China. The scouts might even have managed to come up with the bones of a new campfire song. We’ll have to develop this, but it was a moment of inspiration.

Soon, it was the Jaguar Patrol’s turn to pitch the tent. They only had 4 members tonight so Alan acted as a spare set of hands, but only did what he was told to do. They managed to get the tent up and standing. Not bad considering that one of the patrol members had not pitched the tent before.

Finally, it was the turn of the Cobra Patrol. Their PL had missed the tent pitching last week, so one of the other partol members, Ciara, took charge. It started off well, but it was a case of too many chiefs and not enough Indians. It was the opposite to the Raven Patrol who talked about it too much, the Cobra patrol just didn’t listen to each other and soo it took them a long time to figure out how the poles fitted together. They did get the tent up and were starting to peg out the sides when they ran out of time.

Tent Up

We got it all packed away again and headed back inside. We went over the information again about the camp in June and made sure that everyone was aware of it. We told the scouts that they would be organising their own menu at next weeks meeting so that they would have time to get everything they needed.

During the meeting tonight all of the scouts and leaders signed a get well soon card for the Chief Scout who is battling cancer at the moment. The Chief Scout attended our Group Investiture last November and we wanted to wish him all our best wishes for a speedy recovery.