Scout Meeting 11th June 2015

We had two new scouts join us for the evening tonight. One is a friend of one of our APLs who is in scouts in Rush and staying with her. The other is a girl who just wanted to join because her friends in school kept telling her how awesome it was. We started with a game of Chairball outside for a bit of Energy Release. It was a bit one-sided with the final score 19-12.

After the game we went back inside to cover off more of the theory for our Paddling Skills badge. Last week we covered off stages 1 & 2 and tonight we reviewed that stuff and moved on to stage 3. This stage covers off some emergencies info like CPR and Safe Airway Position. We demonstrated and practiced the safe airway position again to make sure that we all knew it. Afterwards Dara told us that he had put a friend into the safe air way position in school today when he had collapsed. Dara remembered it from when we had covered it before Christmas. We were very proud of him and he got a BIG HIGH FIVE from Brendan. The scouts also needed to know some knots for their stage 3. a new knot was the round turn and two half hitches.

We spent a bit of time going over the knots again to make sure that everyone could tie them. We also demonstrated how to make a distress signal.

Now we are all set up for our sessions on the water for the next few weeks and for Summer Camp in July.

When we had finished the theory of Paddling, we got all of the scouts to pull their benches in close for review of the camp last weekend. Everyone really enjoyed and and learned something new about themselves and about their skills. Some of the scouts were disappointed that not everyone worked as hard as they should and skived off every chance they got. They made their feelings known and everyone agreed to work harder next time. The leaders had to explain that there are some jobs on camp that just need doing all of the time. Only on or maybe two people can cook and it is up to the rest of the patrol to support them by getting the fire ready and keeping it going and by setting the table and washing up afterwards etc. There is a lot of work to be done on camp and the scouts are only now finding out how much.

We finished off the meeting with a game of Pair Bashing in the yard. They still have not figured out that it is a game of teamwork, cooperation and coordination. If they figured it out, they could have multiple games in the same time that it takes to play one game. Before the scouts were dismissed, they were reminded that we are meeting on Wednesday next week for our Water Activities in Skerries.