The Stick Meeting

Tonight we had the start of Term 5 with a meeting themed around Stick. We had matchstick puzzles, pioneering and teamwork, all that in under an hour and a half including a fire drill so in detail this is how it worked out!

Tonight was mainly about team building and we also covered these areas and badges:

1. Creative - A: Problem solving
2. Creative - A: Pioneering

So first we had a matchstick puzzle welcome game, which remarkably all leaders and cubs got engaged to try and solve 5 match stick problems.

We originally got this idea from an OSM Activity but we prepared our own puzzle and solution sheet based on fun shapes and quirkiness.
We took our puzzles from Learning Tree, visit [http://www.learning-tree.org.uk]

• Tip: Use matchsticks, the difference between having a handful of matchsticks to not is enormous. Before that we had cubs that just didn't get what to do, leaders also expected to see matchsticks and rightly so. Thank goodness we have a bag full of them at the back (headless matchsticks to be on the safe side!)

Then we played a game called  The Helium Stick, that's a name you can google and find exactly what's all about but suffice to say that it's a team building exercise used even by corporate team-building events! That was good fun; we used a long bamboo stick, the longest we could find about 2m long and it worked a treat for 12 cubs, 6 on the left and 6 on the right.

• Tip: give out the instructions on how it's played; emphasize on the team work, that they will feel the stick lifting by itself and that yes it's very easy, only it isn't if you don't think as a team! Once all the instructions are given do not try to achieve a start position where all fingers touch the stick, just slip the stick on any fingers stretched and let them get on with it, spotting the occasional wrong finger!

The main activity of the meeting was building the New-market Ballista, so while everybody was trying to put the helium stick on the floor, we prepared 2 sets of bamboo sticks and red elastic bands. We also had the long 170mm by 50mm blue elastic parcel bands and some pots to act like the ballista launchers.
It took awhile to work it out but with a simple printout schematic at hand and with the advice to split the design in two teams, one do the triangle the other the V shape, soon we had 2 ballistas.

The Finished Ballista

Then we gave them light balls (the ones you see in ball pits) each team had different colors and the task was to aim and fill the bucket. It is hard to aim and figure out the ballistic target! so a leader was employed to hold the bucket and collect flying balls, the first to deplete the ammo in the bucket won! Blue balls won!

• Tip: Show the two different lashings they can use with the rubber bands is easy but not irrelevant with lashings, sheer and square lashing is demonstrated quite easily.

Last we had 5 minutes to fill and we did the Thurman Throw. This is the best way to throw a stick to a team mate without spearing them through!
An illustration is available at the scoutmasterscg blog, visit [http://www.scoutmastercg.com/thurman-throw/]

• Tip: Adapt it for Cubs with the thinest bamboo sticks found in your bunch of pioneering bamboo sticks. The strongest cub at the back and the weakest at the front. Make it a race between two lines of Cubs.

This meeting worked out pretty well, it was all indoors and everybody got involved. Building a team is very important as each Cub needs to develop trust to it's fellow scout and seek the benefits of working as a team.