Scout Meeting 3rd December

It was a very busy night in the hall. The beavers and some cubs were practicing their Christmas Carols because they were going to be singing them in Millfield SC on Saturday while the scouts were bag packing as a fund raiser. Their practice session ran until 8:15pm. Some of the scouts joined in when they arrived for the meeting, but most of them were far too cool for school. They were “politely” asked to either join in or be quiet.

The weather was miserable outside. Storm Desmond was just getting going. The leaders had planned an activity outside where the scouts would use their compasses to follow a course along set bearings. Ciaran and Alan were setting this up outside while the singing was finishing up.

As it was the first meeting of the month, we had a full uniform inspection. It’s great to see most of the scouts making the effort. There is always one or two who “forgot” about it even though they are reminded the week before. Inspection is also a good way to see how the scouts are getting on in general. The leaders can have a quick chat and and a bit of banter with them too, just to make sure that they are ok.

Each patrol was given a map and asked to find a number of items (10 to be exact) using grid references. So while some were nice and warm inside doing this, others were outside trying to remember how to take a bearing from a compass. A course was laid out on the ground with letters at each point. The scouts were asked to move from one letter to another in a certain order and then asked to note the bearings.

When we tried to give the results, the scouts kept talking and were not listening at all. It gets very frustrating when we have some skill work to go through or even games to explain and it takes a lot longer than it should because the scouts simply don’t listen. Ciaran tried to explain this to the troop and eventually got his message across. It is something that we definitely need to work on. Apparently grid references and bearings are something else we need to work on, because some of the patrols did not do as well as we would have hoped. This is down to the leaders now showing them correctly or giving them enough time to practice. Rather than looking on it as a negative, it was taken as an action point for the leaders to work on. Always the Silver Lining.

The meeting finished with some more scouts being volunteered for bag packing sessions on Saturday to help out the group, and them all being reminded to get the Tiqbiz App and to read the messages that were sent to them.