Scouts Troop Forum - Code of Conduct

It was great to see so many scouts returning to our regular meetings from their summer holidays. So starts Winter 2014, a new term and it brought us a new scout too who looked happy and active and participating, how great is that!

We started with the flag break, which went weird, it looked like the flag was knotted to a strong hold and didn't want to break away, it was funny!

Some Trust Games
We started the evening with three trust game, aiming to team building, trust and cooperation.
Three small quick games were planned; Toe to Toe fall back, that was done with in very little time, back to back from seated to stand which only a few managed to do so we might try that again soon and last was the Helium Stick, which took awhile to start it up and work it out but they soon got the hang of it...

These three games took a short time to complete, shorter than I thought but they worked out really well for a quick warm up. Scouts had to hold hands, stand close to each-other and cooperate so doing it as a team is was an excellent warm up for the rest of the meeting.

The Troop Forum
By 20:10 we started the main activity, we had 4 stations with a headed flip-charts on each:
Good Stuff
Bad Stuff
What We Want To Do
What We Want From Our Leaders

We split the troop on 4 teams, a marker each team to visit and write what they think on each piece of paper.

A leader was at each station and helped them to decide what to write. We did not control the outcome but we did regulate the quantity and quality of what was written so they don't fill the poster in one go and leave some space and content for the next team.

This took about 30 minutes to complete, the things they came up with were clever and novel, they took the work seriously but also had a lot of fun putting leader's name on the Bad Stuff list, well one leader's name but that was "joking"...

By the end of it we had 4 posters full of statements, wishes, issues and praise! we put them all on a table and we sat around it to go threw them and discuss some more, we explained what was the meaning of this activity and that we will now write a code of conduct per patrol.

The Code of Conduct
We could define it as simple list of positive statements about how we come work play and leave our regular meetings. It should also show us the way to apply the Scout Law in our Troop Meetings. Another way to see it is a manual in which we define how a specific and regular Troop Meeting is attended. Some facts define this, for example our hall is rented, not ours, the time we have together is limited and the evening of the week we meet is set, so we need all of us to think and agree what is the code that will help everybody take the most out of it.

To highlight this, a Code of Conduct for a Camp would be a different one. So would be the Code of Conduct for next year too. What is important is the process of deciding it for the old scouts to figure out what worked last time and the new scouts to understand what we are and what we do and how the law applies. The only thing the adults have to do is ask questions, what about? how is that? where is best? etc.

The fact we all sat and thought it out is enough of an agreement, we will type it out and share it with all but that should be enough. I personally dislike the word "contract" and producing it distributing it for signature etc. no need, not scout like and just plain lame!

The Scout Law is always governing this as it does every scouting activity; it is good to make it clear and reference the law with every opportunity. So if in our code of conduct we state that we need to be punctual and on time for our meetings we can also remind ourselves of the Scout Law where it says:
6. A Scout makes good use of time...

Scout Run Games
One of the points that came up in the troop forum was playing games the scouts like and not the same games over and over again.

So when our senior scouts suggested a couple of games we were quick to give them the initiative and go for it. Both games were excelent and even us the leaders enjoyed playing them.

The first game was "Pink Nickers", a musical chairs type game, run by Lilly.
All the scouts sit on chairs around in a circle facing out, one scout is in the middle and calls out various characteristics that identify our scouts, for example; name starts with S, wears black shoes, has long hair e.t.c. Every scout who posses that characteristic must stand and quickly run around the circle of chairs and sit down again. The last scout is out and turns the chair facing inside the circle and the game continues.
When "Pick Nickers" is called, all scouts must run around the circle. The last scout facing out is the winner.

The second game was "Inky, Pinky, Ponky, Wonky", a Splat type game, run by Jess.
The scouts stand on a circle and with their left hand behind the right hand of the scout on their left.
This way the right hand can slap five to the left hand of their fellow scout to the left.
We start by slapping the phrase "Inky, Pinky, Ponky, Wonky" going around clock wise, and calling a number from 2 to 10, e.g. 5 which continues the slapping to the countdown, 5, 4, 3, 2 and on 1 if we slap the other scouts left hand they are out if they are quick and we slap our own we are out and if we also are quick and avoid our hand we continue in.

Both games were explained well and run well by our young scouts, very impressive as this shows the team has come together!

That was the end of our evening with a flag down ceremony, which went as funny as the flag break! what was wrong with our flag? maybe it wanted to be on a few more weeks of summer holidays...

1st Scout Camp

Camping is the most essential scouting activity and last week we had our first camp of our new scout section for the 1st Jennett's Park group. It was only for 2 nights, the 21st to the 23rd of March, two cold nights but packed out activity days.

It was in part a group camp, with the distinction that the scouts would camp a bit further away from Cubs and Beavers and mostly run their own program.

Camping at Earleywood was always going to be a muddy/wet affair but the weather was not too mad. Cold nights, yes, a fair bit of rain, hail and small wind storm but most of the day time and Saturday was dry and we even had sunny spells.

Most of the kit and equipment, mainly for the kitchen mess, was borrowed from 2nd Crowthorne and the Explorers. Leaders then filled in the gaps of essential kit we needed. All in all we had everything we needed for a weekend camp!

This was the camp that we all got invested into our new group, raising the demographic up by 1400% being the newest invested scout section for 25 years in the District! We now all wear the red and yellow neckers and soon the group name and other badges will be stitched on our uniform.

Our main activity was planned to be a pioneering project but we did not have time to do this because we got involved with backwards cooking, fire-lighting and an impromptu wood chopping frenzy!

We were lucky to have a friend in scouting, our DC who goes by the name of Hagrid and knows a thing or two about fires, got us to prepare our ember fire grills and the grand fire for the Saturday night group event around the fire circle.

Picking sticks of all shapes and sizes, getting the fire-lighters, kindle and wood to cook, preparing the food and cooking it for lunch does take a lot of time and group work. We also set alight a tilley lamp, but with the vapolux working we managed without the tilley.

Dinner was Leader's special spag bog, very good indeed! none of it would be possible without the amazing impromptu cardboard box cooker screen (patent pending). Who would have thought that the gas rings, as heavy and pro looking as they are, they would struggle to boil a pan of water!!! We knew this because breakfast took a bit too long to prepare that morning.

Saturday night was all about the camp fire circle. What Song? if you prepare only 5 6 songs you will ask this question about 10 times. As a new group with lack of older scouts who "know about these things" we have quite a restrictive repertoire but this is something we can easy fix. Did anyone notice? Nah! Beavers and Cubs had their songs, we scouts had ours, the night went just fine, with loud voices and good fun around the very hot fire, in contrast to the very cold night.

We went to bed with our pink hot-bean teddies straight from the microwave oven and a cola bottle full of hot water... at least I did... Thanks Cubs!

Sunday looked dry so we did run both wide games we had planned for. A Scavenger hunt, with a cryptic message attached to it and the very successful rope trail, where the scouts in pairs, one blind the other guiding, had to negotiate a route marked with string through a small copse of woods.

Lunch time was catered by our amazing Cub Leaders, who invited us to join them for a sandwich and hot drinks. Then it was time to strike the tents and pack it up before the rain comes back again. No such luck. I must've rained for 5 minutes and made a wet mess of all tents and tarps. Drying them up was an electric affair...

Parents came and scouts went and the campsite empty of scouts but with still some tents unpacked and drying. Two nights away is a squeeze to run with inexperienced scouts, some of them knew how to strike a tent but some didn't manage to focus on the job and with time ticking away you have to work hard to get everything packed away, especially when the tents must return to their owners that night.

Leaders worked from pick-up time, that's 14:30 till 17:30 on site to pack up and clean up, leaving it better than they found it. It was past 19:00 at night when the kits were returned and with tents still drying in a living room.

We did sleep well that night!!!

P.S. A big "Thank You" to the scout groups who helped us make this camp happen so early in our scouting experience. without your kit and support it wouldn't be possible! Thank you.

1st JP Scout Group - Troop Meeting number One!

It is very exciting when you are witnessing the beginning of something good.

JP Community Centre

Indeed on the 28th of February 2014 we saw the start of the 1st Jennett's Park Scouts Troop.

We met at the Jennett's Park Community Centre at around 20:00 on the night of that Friday, right after the end of the Cub's meeting.

All the members, including Leaders and young alike are still to be invested and make the promise. We started with the flag break and a couple of active games, table football, pass the ball and out main activity was Pioneering a bridge with bread-sticks and strawberry laces and also erecting a free standing tower with newspaper and tape.

Bread-stick pioneering is a delicate matter, not only the bridge needs to be able to hold itself up, the bread-sticks tend to crack under a tight lace or knot! Building segments and putting them together with a sequence of sheer lashings seemed to be the preferred way to tackle the bridge structure.

Building a free-standing tower with newspaper and sticky tape was again a team effort. My team used tightly rolled newspaper as the building segments of the structure, a scout actually said that we need an Eiffel tower approach, very impressive!

We ended the meeting with a couple more games, "It's a bomb it's a bomb it's a B.O.M.B Bomb!" and Ladders! where things did not get any competitive at all, not much!

What was talked about mostly was the upcoming camping weekend, 3 meetings and we are off to camp, that says something!


The meeting closed with a flag ceremony and a few words from the SL. simple and meaningful.

I love it that the first blog entry of my new troop is short simple and sweet. As characters develop and work is done this will be blogged here, a review of what went on, a resource for future programmes and a testament of what we started.

The Scout's Staff

Won Tolla's staff

I remember back then, when I was a young scout, with investiture came a necker, a woggle, the group's badges, including a small bronze badge for the Beret and there was also a stave!

We did not get to keep the stave as ours but we could now hold the patrol's stave; it had a little flag with the patrol's beast on it, the name of my patrol was Stags (Ελάφια - Elafia) (or Deer but I prefer Stags)!

We also had other more simple stave we used to carry around all the time on hikes, camps, parades and events. The older scouts probably had enough of "them sticks" but we the younger scouts loved to hold on to them as if they are our pets!

So what's in a staff? why stave? well... Only an adult would ask this! Don't you know? Children love sticks!

There are loads of sites about the scout's staff, the history and it's uses. I just did a quick google search and found plenty, one of them is this: scoutingrediscovered.com

Historical, practical and aesthetic reasons are all valid, BP considered it as part of the uniform and it's uses are many, even as a hike staff or a patrol flag pole being the most obvious.

I see the staff  primarily as a training device and a memento of a scout's life. Eventually these years will pass, childhood is very short indeed but on the scout's staff we have enough room to cover it! Once it captures the imagination of a young member we see a long-term commitment on that stick.

A scout is a naturalist, knowing what to pick and what to cut, working in a copse, is a good start to learn about preservation and pick the perfect stave. Then comes the practise with the use of a knife, the design of the stave, making it more practical, finding ways to hold dry matches and a length of chord, adding markings for inches and feet.

Keep yourself occupied at camp, by preparing a stave, taking the bark off and making it smooth and carving it. Sometimes it turns to a totem of animals!

During ceremonies the pose of a scout holding a staff adds to the imagery, as it looks iconic and very photographic! Don't we aim to attract attention to ourselves through the media and general presence in our community? It's better with a stave!

A few scouts with stave can help out with "guarding" a parade or a function; the stave can be held as makeshift corridor or gate, open/close barrier, on entrances and exits when we need to control the visitor's flow.  I remember during Easter in Greece our parish church of St. Lucas in Athens asked us to help out with directing people from one door and out from the other and we put stave holding scouts for hours to act as gates. Believe me, some days it was very necessary to control that as the crowd can be sudden and strong in numbers! This can be practised at camp when each patrol puts "guards" of it's gate and periphery from other patrols.

Sourcing the stick

Getting a staff can be as simple as a walk in the woods or even better the copse but it's worth asking because in UK woods and copses have owners or at least people responsible for them.
If you happen uppon a good stick and you happen to have one of these folded saws then just be reasonable. So what kind of wood did you find, Hazel is the most common, good enough for a staff and good enough for a scout, Ash and Rowan and Blackthorn are also strong and good to work with, but the reality is, get the stick you find! Avoid dead wood, that's wood that's been on the ground and you happened to find. This wood's been getting wet and weak, it will snap so it simply won't do!
Want to know more about which tree gives what stick? Check this guy out!
www.thestickman.co.uk

When you find it cut it a bit longer than you need it to be, you'll need to trim the ends if they split.

If you need them quick find alternative sources, ask around! I got 20 7foot sticks of hazel, straight as they come, from the bloke who takes care of my neighbours garden. I asked him about it, mentioned the scouts and I found them on my doorstep a week later, bound them 5 a bunch and hanged them in the garage to dry. Less for him to take to the tip, more for me to carve!

If you feel that you have to pay for staves, don't! However, the Greek scout shop has them very cheap!
Greek Scout Shop - Staff

Preparation

If you want to make a long lasting strong stave to have and to hold it's best to allow it to dry for a few weeks or months with the bark on as it dries slower and better that way. I never bother to make it straight, I don't know how, I found instructions and blogs about steaming it and hanging it etc but it's too much of an effort and I decided I like them as straight as mother nature intend them to be.

For a scout activity, 20 sticks just cut from a copse a week or a month ago and a pocket knife is enough to get it going. I wouldn't add more effort to dry or straighten them either.
Remember that knife work is with risks and we need to minimise them...

Once the bark is off, then with some sandpaper make it as smooth as you can, the hand that holds the stave needs to have a comfortable feel on it!

Here are some ideas to make it a bit more special:

• Mark feet and inches, start from the bottom marking 12 inches, then mark every foot above.
• Drill a hole at the top, to put a lanyard or a small flag.
• Drill another hole 90° right under to the one above to scope right angles.
• Carve out a small place for a compass. Have it on top and level.
• Coil a parachute chord on it as handle but detachable for 30 feet chord you might need.
• Cut a notch for every camp or hike you went to.
• Conceal a compartment for dry match or other small things.
• Put a hook on top for grabbing things.
• Put a walking stick rubber foot at the bottom, it protects the wood.
• Decorate it with animals or a scene like the old sailors used to do.
• Add the scout symbol as a brass sign for walking stick and staff.
• Burn / brand your name or the Morse code or the name of your group.

Knife work

We all know knife work is serious business, warning lights go off with the mention of a knife but it doesn't have to be a difficult or taboo subject, scouts use knifes, they learn how and preparing a staff is a good platform to learn.

Folded Saw

If I feel I can not handle 20 cubs and 20 knives with the manpower available I would change the scenario and organise a parent and child event where they can supervise their child with the knife or have it as a station for 2-3 scouts at a time.

Knife work is fun when it is done responsibly, teach them the right way to work with the knife, keep it sharp and show them how to sharpen it.

Work away from the body and the legs, inner thigh, tummy or other scout. Always have a first aid kit visible as a warning and as a requirement. People will notice you wear one ready to use it, it makes you look the job and it reminds them of the sharp end.

Risk assess the activity, if it has a knife risk assess it.

Conclusion

So how useful is a staff to a scout? Well, far less useful than it is to a scout leader! You can take your scouts to a long adventure for that piece of stick; from finding it, to making it straight, dry and cleaning, whittling it or branding it with a hot branding iron, adding gadgets to it and functions...
Eventually the time comes when they use it, on a hike,  ticking off camp-nights on it; the stave is a companion to a scout for the years to come so better start them early!

Remote Emergency Care - REC 2 / The Program

From the very beginning of the course it occurred to me that first aid, adventure and being prepared are all inseparable, plus an excellent program idea source if I have ever seen one!

They say adventure starts when your plan doesn't quite pan out as expected, not to tempt fate but this does sound pretty much spot on.
First aid also starts when the unexpected takes a turn to the worst and being prepared is not so much about being a prophet but accepting that this can happen and plan for it.

I've once heard that you prepare for the rain by taking an umbrella, no reason to spend to much time preparing for a lovely sunny day is it? (Do wear your sunscreen!)

So week in - week out, in scouting, we help young scouts to have this outlook over things... So if we aim to help them learn First Aid just by doing the DRsABC(DE) and highlighting the use of the necker as a triangular bandage we might miss the opportunity to make it a more holistic experience. After all lessons in scouting become knowledge out there in the field when we do scouty things, not in an academic way or by sitting in a class.

A Short Story

When the hiking party got caught out in the rain, a couple of scouts felt a bit tired and the moral quickly started falling. Hypothermia was high in the leader's worries and it looked like they had to decide; Do we keep going or do we stop here?

The young leaders immediately saw the opportunity; Set up a tarpaulin, look for dry space to light a camp fire, make some hot chocolate and get us all warmed up. Then we go over our maps, maybe have a team go find a phone signal up the nearby hill, see what needs to be done as we have enough time to alternate the route but if we all feel strong and in high moral 2 hours ahead is the shelter, easy to reach if we are all up and happy again...

Soon enough, the rain stopped, the group packed their stuff and they all got ready to move on, two hours later they arrived at the shelter, didn't even register they did something extraordinary, extraordinary people as scouts are.

The Program

I can see a program stemming from the above case, and it all hinges around First Aid Training without a triangular bandage in sight although By all means do incorporate more calamity if you wish.

Scouts should know what to do with just a simple "let's stop here and put the kettle on!". Soon a couple will set up the tarpaulin, another the fire, the kettle and at the same time they can all chill with a few silly songs, thinking about backtracking or going ahead based on what is happening now and not underestimate the condition of the one or two fellow scouts.

If you are prepared for this scenario, aren't you prepared for an adventure?

As a first aider and Leader I can see the benefit of assigning jobs to scouts who are prepared to do them.

It raises morale, gives me time to deal with the casualty and have all the help I need looking after the group as a whole.

A scout program must incorporate all the elements and activities that help to achieve this level of readiness.
To put it another way, my first aid pack is one side of the equation, the group's readiness is the other.