Parent's Briefing about our Camp

Much more hair but you get the gist!

This could be a short blog entry because all parents came and attended the meeting!

That alone is enough to make anybody in the camp planning team happy.

So how unprepared was I the "leader in charge" when it came to this?

A Lot! Fact is I decided against producing a parent's pack because during the past few months a lot of literature and communication was produced and distributed, so everybody had all the info they needed to know and hold to, right?

Well... Wrong!

Unfortunately there is nothing better than a hard copy of the program (timetable), the menu, the rules and the other areas covered in the presentation.

People receive emails and they do read them but do they keep them? you don't know if they do!

Going paperless is great but when we physically meet, we need physical evidence of our communication too! It's not bad to cover all angles of communication either.

During our scouting year we use many forms of communication:

• email - direct, targeted, informal 
• website - open and accessible 
• newsletter - concise, distributed 
• "next event" letter - by proxy (scout), distributed, short 
• presentation - direct, personal, interactive 
• handout - functional, impersonal, completed 
• a chat - direct, informal, personalised 

I'm sure there is a more scientific list of ways of communication and their attributes somewhere but it makes the point that we use many different ways to talk to the parents, directly, indirectly, by proxy (the scouts) etc.

So to understand the strengths of each and maintain 2 or 3 channels of communication is not wasteful, is necessary and we do it already.

So back to No hand outs for the Parents; at least I had a list of items to cover.
Well, yes but I didn't compile the list for the presentation, I just had the one for my planning, I knew it well, it was ticked, it invoked statements and answers just by looking at it!

It worked out OK but I am also good at ad-libing, most of the times... I should do myself a favour and make a proper outline of my presentation, with points to cover to know I covered them.

I know I covered them but I struggled a bit. What should have been a 15 minute presentation, it was in fact close to 30 minutes of me talking about 4-5 subjects, one or two prompted by my GSL.

It went well, but it could be easier!

Best part was when we presented to the parents the Code of Conduct, the rules discussed and written by our scouts, their sons and daughters.

I read, "Always keep your clothes tidy and folded in tents!" and then I said, "Daniel suggested that, I think...", to which his mother exclaimed, "Really!?"

Yes we were all impressed!

A Hole in the Ground

If you always wanted a foldaway shovel, also known as Entrenching tool but didn't know exactly what to do with it, here are some ideas.

Small holes that can be dug with a trowel or an entrenching tool, they are about 6 to 8 inches deep and not too wide. On grass or turf, cut out a piece, keep it upside down and watered, dig the hole and before you leave site, cover hole with soil and turf.

Dig 6''-8'' Deep

Wet Pit

Dig about 6 inches in the ground, keep the soil on the side. Use this hole to empty waste water. Replace soil and cover.

Grease Pit

A small hole, covered with lots of twigs and grass! Tip waste fat or grease in the hole. The “nest” will hold the fat together and you can then burn it at you camp fire.

Catholes

To dispose of human waste, they must be located at a reasonable distance (at least 60 m) from water sources (rivers, lakes, etc.), to avoid possible bacterial contamination of water via precipitation, as well as away from trails. It is recommended to avoid concentration of catholes around campsites. Filled catholes must be covered with a reasonably thick layer of soil, to prevent access by animals.

Make sure you check restrictions of the area you are using as site may have specific rules and methods of disposing all of the above waste!

Text for catholes, which was added here for completion purposes, is from the wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathole

It Is Rocket Science - A Camping Theme

So what is Rocket Science? A very fine balance between explosion and propulsion? Lots of action under pressure?

During Camping with the Cubs we got 3 type of Rocket activities to play with. The theme of the camp is War of the Worlds, a Martian invasion described only too well by H.G Wells and manipulated so that we can stick in some space stuff and some good old down to Earth science, like good ol' scouts do.

So here are the 3 types of Rockets we have prepared for the young Martians to invade or escape Earth with.

Space Race

This is the activity found in the Instant Scouting magazine (supplement of the scouting magazine) in which balloon rockets are threaded on lines and delivery a payload.

Scouting magazine can be found at http://magazine.scouts.org.uk/ and you can see the relevant issue online here, just pop to page 10!

We will adapt this to have 4 lanes and get some racing competition game going on!

Fizz Rockets

This is the activity we found at the NASA JPL Website [Link to resource]

First I had to find a bunch of old fashioned film canisters. Ask politely at your local independent photographer or developer studio, mention the good cause Scouts use them for and chances are you'll go home with a bag of the stuff.

Then I had a look around our local pharmacy and found some good offers on effervescent Vit-C tubes, orange flavour, each has 20 disks in it! I bough two but one proved to be more than enough!

I made a simple rocket shape as per the instructions, no diagrams, just roll some paper and stick tape to make the fins and the cone nose.

First effort was a comedy flop! Filled up the canister with water and popped a full Vit-C orange drink disk in the canister. A few seconds later it went off with a weak and sad plop. I thought it was funny if not miserable! Then I thought, less water more expansion chamber. So I tried that and it really exploded!

I lost the rocket as it flew somewhere up on the roof, it might be in the chimney! What remained on the floor was the rest of the Vit-C pill still fizzing. So I made another one this time using 1/4 of the pill and it still worked just like the second attempt.

I think a tube of 20 orange effervescent disks should give us 80 goes! What I will prepare is a rocket kit, printed on not too heavy card! Cubs can decorate that before they cut it and make their own rockets.

The rocket engine (film canister), the fuel (fizz disk) and the propellent (water) will be given to them with instructions, see what they make of it!

Water Rocket

I followed one of the many instructions available on the internet but mainly i adapted them to my resources and material. There are literally dozens of instructions out there, but I will describe the one I put together.

The full assembly

I used only 1 length (about 1 meter) of PVC pipe tubing, heated up to make a bulge where the bottle needs to sit water-sealed on the pipe.

The lock and release mechanism

Launch mechanism is based on an arrangement of zip lock ties.

Pump valve from an old bicycle tyre, threaded through a cork at the end of the PVC Pipe.

I added a water stop valve at the top of the tube to stop water entering the system.

This single pipe of a launcher is mounted on a wooden frame for vertical launches.

Lift Off

I tested the launcher many times and it works. I don't have a pump with a pressure gauge on so I went by guess.

For the program, all we need are a few 2lt bottles and some sturdy light material for the fins, I used the polystyrene round base Tesco Pizza comes with, good packaging material excellent fin making material... We also have some old plastic boards that are light, sturdy and easy to cut.

I got a video of the launch and it looks great but I lost the rocket at school next door, I have put an "If Found" note on it I hope they return it.

This is not a problem during Camp as we have a huge field to land on!

Meeting Report: Hobbies Night

Hobbies was the theme of the night. And with mother's day just next Sunday we were also going to decorate a tea candle holder only to realize last minute that we couldn't find the glass paint in the stores! No Panic, there is no activity that can't be stretched to fill a 15 minute gap!

So sat in a circle we went through every single cub's hobbies and we have 12 of them! We had a few questions prepared as well to help us focus on some facts about what they enjoy doing.

So in our pack we have a swimmer who take swimming very seriously and wants to be an Olympian.
4 footballers, one of them a goalkeeper with trophies and medals. I have to say having more than 100 of these awards at such a young age was not an uncommon occurrence amongst our sport personalities!

We have an author, with a book already in a competition aspiring to be Roald Dahl.

We have collectors of teddy bears, toy cars, fighter planes, and rubber erasers... we have gamers, spending hours in league online games.

I have to make a foot note here; We need to be aware that some online games are not suitable for our young ones, I would like to make this clear that parents need to be aware of the ratings and that we as scouters need to play our role safeguarding the children.

Footnote aside, we have a pack that is interested in a variety of things and we can integrate this to our program.

For Mother's day we had an activity that didn't run but we also had an invitation for our local church with a lovely message about how mother's day began in the Church of England.

So Next Sunday our group will parade at our local church or st Agnes and have breakfast with mum before the service.

Cubs Space Camp - Part 2

Our Camp Badge

Months ago I started planning the end of May camp for my cubs.

I am using the first person here because is my blog and I log my personal account of it. The truth is that it was a team work and I am just the Leader In Charge of this residential experience.

In Fact if I act my role correctly I will have to do nothing more than the rest of my team, however as I want to gain my nights away permit I can not resist to be involved with everything, just this once, to get a good feel of the width and breadth of things.

Planning was helped by getting my bearings right (thanks scoutsmastercg) and cutting it down to addressing "What will happen When and by Whom", a simple list of Task, names and Dates should be enough to mark this down. An hour's meeting, 10 minutes if you have an experienced team, should do it.

The "How" that concerns method, tools, equipment and resources is Preparation, easy to do once it's split among the team members, once you got the planning out of the way!

Another big help came from a scout leader from 2nd Bracknell, who answered to my forum post and emailed me Excel sheets used from previous camps. Browsing through the excels gave me a good idea of how little I needed to sort out. What made me very happy is that a good 75% of what was needed to be marked and checked, I've already had completed! I was more ahead of the game than I thought I was and I had a good guideline of what to deal with next.

Some items regarding the planning are decided between us leaders, now it was time to involve the Cubs. We have the Camp Site we have a time table, mostly about the Breakfast Lunch Dinner slots and some scouting stuff in between, now we need the flesh, the activities and games.

With the theme decided by the planning team as the "War of the Worlds!" we can focus on the activities and more to the point, ask our Cubs what they want to get out of the 3 days camping.

We are at this point now that every decision is about the fun stuff we will do, it is a happy place to be and we also have managed to raise some extra cash from a special fund raising activity to buy ourselves the bespoke camp Badges, a picture of which you can see at the top of this blog, to get some equipment and material to play a few games when there and to cover contingencies.

Oh yeah, and Food!

We are not out of pocket! We are not out of steam! We are not out of time!

DON'T PANIC!