We currently have 14 Beavers on Tuesday and 9 on a Wednesday with two more due to join on Wednesday. Over the past few weeks we have successfully moved 6 Beavers up to Cubs with many achieving their Chief Scout’s Bronze award in their time with us.
We began the new year with games and a look at communications and eSafety, especially considering any new presents our young people may have received. We then took over the kitchen for an ambitious and enjoyable cooking night and let the Young Leaders run the show for an experiment night.
Building on some of our longer term themes, we brought our A Million Hands action to a head with an evening learning about the impact plastic pollution and litter can have and decided to make posters about it and share on social media. The following Sunday we followed this up with a litter pick at Goatee Beach that picked up 60kg of litter so successful that a number of our Beavers are looking to get Blue Peter badges for the feat.
After returning from half term, we entered two teams into the district Fawn Trophy with one team coming 4th and only 17 points off the leaders out of a total of 700 – impressive stuff! We also took a look at the Air Activities stage 1 badge and the Sports badge with a team sports night trying some very different games they’re less likely to have tried such as sit down volleyball and handball.
Looking ahead we’ll be revitalising our flower beds to add some taste and colour to the training ground and beginning our Faith badge and linking it with a log chew. A long term ambition to deliver the Digital Citizen staged activity badge, as requested by the Beavers, is hopefully being realised with a night at Hounsdown School hiring out one of their Computing classrooms. Plus we aim to round out the term with a night climbing at Ferny Crofts Scout Activity Centre using Joe’s climbing permit.
We’re slowly continuing to build the team, both in terms of leaders and young people as we have vacancies for Beavers in both colonies now we have seen so many successfully moved up to Cubs. We plan to run bring a friend nights to boost our numbers and are looking into partnerships with local schools to pass on messages and even run sessions where appropriate. We’re always looking for others who can help us on a Tuesday or Wednesday night run some great activities – any skill set is very important so please get in touch if you can help in any way.