Being positive!

[wealdbrook]

I would hate for escouts to descend into a miserable place full of grumpy ex (or nearly ex) leaders.

So something positive!

On Tuesday we had a Group, all sections pancake evening. Beavers, Cubs and Scouts made pancakes in their own kitchens including tossing them. There was a great variety of toppings with marshmallows, cream, sauces, sugar, lemon juice and a certain chocolate nut spread. There was a lot of imaginative combination of toppings and everyone had a great time. We had to kick them off Zoom after an hour so although not everyone made it, it was great!

[nele]

We just started face to face scouting again, with rules as allowed in Belgium, which means outdoors and a max of 10 YP at a time. Great fun being out in the park and woods despite the cold and just playing games.
Week before we were on zoom and everyone had fun carving soap turtles. The things they enjoy most are cooking, building things or carving etc- not so much different from normal really.

[big chris]

I have booked something a bit special for our group in March and am very excited:

COMEDY CLUB OASSG.jpg

[Simon11]

Totally agree with you wealdbrook!

Lots of positives for our group, we did a fantastic group online session with a drumming event and had all our youth members (plus leaders!) drum together!

Moving onto other positives: I have just been busy working to prepare our groups for reopening and have done lots of gardening with a group of volunteers to expand the open space- we now have room for two clearly separate open air grounds for split meetings. All systems ready here!


Plus, I am running the scout section and with the potential that schools could return on 8th March, there is a small chance this could apply to scouting. This leaves me with a dilemma as I have lots of fab zoom sessions planned, so I've rearranged these to have the best two after half term. We have a session on mine craft/ coding which the scouts are looking forward to and in the following week have a guest speaker discussing space & satellites. Two very simple evenings and I just need to come with up a fun game!

A positive of having everyone move to zoom sessions, is that it opens up a new form of delivering scouting. We meet on Friday evenings and with my other commitments or wishes to see more of the UK, I have always found it a struggle to commit to weekend events/ trips with a burden of who will run Friday scouts. Now I have the option to deliver the session remotely via zoom and enjoy other things outside of scouting!

- - - Updated - - -

I have booked something a bit special for our group in March and am very excited:

COMEDY CLUB OASSG.jpg

First I have heard of someone giving comedy a go within scouting online!

Would be interesting to hear your reviews on how it went. Comedy is challenging to deliver on zoom and the comedians won't get that instant understanding if the audience are enjoying it. Last weekend, I watched The Play That Goes Wrong actors do improv online- it was really poor and nothing like their live theatre shows or BBC shows.

[big chris]

I have seen some comedians absolutely thrive... Or at least make the best of it and then some. I recommend Just The Tonic on a Friday evening. Big name comics for £6. The thrill of the chance of seeing something that will never be seen by anybody ever again that comes with standup.

We have not held back here. They are making good money from us but I feel a sense of duty to put some money back into society as we had a good fundraiser and 2 government cheques.

I have also booked this guy http://www.joeseager.com/ to do 2 hours with the scouts. He was recommended on 1st virtual on Facebook. He is a teacher and d of e leader. He will do a gig mixed with chat with the scouts about lockdown plus a music quiz. Again, we are paying a fair amount but I'm done with kahoot and cooking for a while!

We have enough of a leadership team to be back with 1x beavers, cubs and scouts when this is over. We have cash in the bank. We have scoutcraft skills. We have mix of abilities so the WRAs will get done. We have a good GSL.

I also have a feeling that we will be able to keep our old scouts closed involved in the future.



Sent from my SM-G986B using Tapatalk

[SteveF]

I would hate for escouts to descend into a miserable place full of grumpy ex (or nearly ex) leaders.

So something positive!

I think you are right.

I am a bit out of things as a Local Training Manager and was worrying about some of our new Groups. I have been in contact with one of the Leaders and she has been sending me loads of stuff that she has been doing on space and the Digital Citizen badge. It really cheered me up as I was so into the Apollo moon shots as a kid. She told mre that her Dad was too - which made me feel a bit old!

She has been doing games and all sorts via Zoom and has nearly finished her Woodbadge.

There is certainly positive stuff going on.

[shiftypete]

We had a fun session with Explorers on Friday making pizzas from scratch (well apart from the one Explorer that cheated and bought ready made pizza bases whom I gently teased was doing a Beaver activity). Had a good variety of pizzas made, most of which looked edible and some looked very tasty and it got them up and doing something not just sitting at the screen and they had a good chat and a laugh as they went along and whilst they waited for their pizzas to cook.

It does help with cooking sessions that I happen to have a place in my kitchen which is perfect to place my laptop so the camera gets both me and the counter top in shot so i can demo what to do as well as screen sharing the recipe. We had everyone show their pizzas before and after they went in in the oven as well.

[SteveF]

Another positive thing that I discovered yesterday was that one of our Groups started a Beaver Colony in 2020 despite all the problems. The Leader has completed quite a bit of his training as well.

[dralphs]

Ok not Scouting but productive day building a stand for my shrinker/stretcher and convert it from hand to foot operation

Nice for it to be warm enough to get into workshop and hammer some metal

152744529_4051296451548291_8689730589192467585_o.jpg

[revoda]

We haven't had any F2F since last March and I have been amazed at how many cubs have stuck with us. The enthusiasm at our weekly zoom is a delight. And the real positive is a "mute" button. Hope to keep that when we're back.

[pa_broon74]

Bogs.

There are big jobs you do that don't make much of a visible difference, but small jobs which do.

It's fair dragging on, but it's been fine. This weekend, I sorted out the replacement storage. New racking built, innovative storage paradigm installed for unihoc sticks, (used left over 110mm waste pipe and brackets, bolted horizontally to the back of the racking) Bought a load of new plastic boxes - we have loads but they're all mismatched so don't really fit. We'd like to not do jumble sales when things get back to normal, and replace that income with hall hires - which means it needs to be tidy.

Big jobs today were fitting the extraction ducting - rubbish job because it was in the attic. And, we fitted splash panels around the sink units, silicon'd in the sinks themselves and sealed it all... Well, mostly...

Looking at it today, I'm relieved to say, we're nearly there. I've also done 99% of it myself. Wait. 90% of it. A local plasterer donated his time, the electrician is still working (needs a shivvy along a bit...) All the lights in the hall are now LED, our new sign is lit, as are (or will be) the surrounding grounds and paths... And it'll be up to code in terms of emergency lighting, exit signs and smoke and heat detectors.

[shiftypete]

Bogs.

There are big jobs you do that don't make much of a visible difference, but small jobs which do..

Hehe (sorry the inner child couldnt resist)

[pa_broon74]

Hehe (sorry the inner child couldnt resist)

Heh!

The kids always say they never go for a sit down in the scout hall. No if's, no buts, (not even in an emergency - they'd rather run home apparently). But I've told them, we're getting our money's worth - they WILL use these toilets, regardless of the magnitude of the job involved.




PS: Even if I do say so myself, they are a lot more pleasant than the original iteration. If nothing else, they have heaters now.

[SteveF]

Heh!

The kids always say they never go for a sit down in the scout hall. No if's, no buts, (not even in an emergency - they'd rather run home apparently). But I've told them, we're getting our money's worth - they WILL use these toilets, regardless of the magnitude of the job involved.

.

We had a similar situation with the female staff toilets at the day centre that I used to work at. There was an agreement that nobody would produce a bowel motion.

One day someone did and I could not believe the fuss!

[campwarden]

We had a similar situation with the female staff toilets at the day centre that I used to work at. There was an agreement that nobody would produce a bowel motion.

One day someone did and I could not believe the fuss!

Haha surely a toilet is there to be used as required? No?

Im actually browsing portable toilet blocks at the moment. Looking to see if we can increase toilet provision at the archery range assuming we can reopen from the 29th March.... and then use those facilities for camping in the summer.

Feeling very positive about our archery youth provision hopefully returning before too long - I (like many on here I suspect) have missed the fun and, shall we say "positive challenges" of working with kids (which is probably why so much negativity and the need for this thread in the first place!). It may not be through scouting but the thought of once again spending my Sunday mornings helping young people to achieve.... that's a very positive thought indeed