are tee squared

Summer Camp 2010

are-tee-squared — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 09:32:43 +0000

Well, we have just returned from a great summer camp at Ennerdale Scout Centre in the Lake District. It is by the side of Ennerdale Water, and we actually had great weather for the majority of the week. We went canoeing on Windemere with the folks from Great Tower, we played lots of wide games in the woods, pioneered a rope bridge over a river (they all fell in eventually), built rafts, and went on a 12 mile hike. The thing that they all seem to remember most was the pool and table football tournament that we played in our free time.

lunch!

I learnt a new knot – the Fisherman’s knot (not sure what I’ll use it for), and about route cards.

Magic Bean Trading

are-tee-squared — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 11:14:58 +0000

Last night we played a trading wide game with the cubs. The leaders had cups of black or white beans, and were wandering around in the woods. From a start of 4 beans per six, the cubs had to trade up to 30 beans each in order to have a go in the lucky dip. I white bean could be traded for 2 black beans, and vice versa. It took about 1 1/4 hours, once we had had the obligatory discussion of the rules, and endless what if….a dragon came and ate all my beans? and so on. It seemed to go well, with the cubs developing various strategies, and working together in their sixes to ensure everyone had enough beans. An ESL also present suggested a good variation for Explorers – many more coloured beans, with restrictions on which beans could be swapped which changed as the game progressed. As leaders wander around they can swap their beans/instructions cards to confuse matters.

Equipment

coloured beans

pots – we used drinking cups as we had a few of them lying around – to put the leader’s beans in.

prizes – I only spent about 10 – 30p each.

Rules

You can only make one trade at a time – anyone who was obviously hanging around was banned for a bit.

You must have 30 beans of the same colour to trade for a lucky dip prize.

It is permitted to trade beans with other players.

Impolite players don’t get a quick trade!

Variations

Limited amount of prizes – time is of the essence.

more beans/less leaders.

Obviously played in the dark it would be so much more fun!

WPGMappity & lat/long finder –

are-tee-squared — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 19:31:41 +0000

So as I’ve been playing with our Group’s website this afternoon, making some google maps for locations that we go to often, especially our local campsite as we are usually there during the summer months (as the rest of the district are it seems). New parents especially don’t know where this is, as it is fairly unobtrusive and off the main roads – best place for a hundred cubs running around lighting fires I reckon!.

I was using the plugin WPGMappity which has an excellent and easy interface for inserting maps into posts. It requires an googlemaps API key for your domain. Being scouts however, we tend to want to mark places that are off the main roads (like the campsite) as these are where we hang out. WPGMappity uses postcodes and addresses to place its markers, and centre point for the map, which doesn’t work so well when the nearest postcode is for some stables around the corner! I found a somewhat laborious solution though. Using Lat – Long Finder I found the lat and long for the marker points, and edited the database entries using phpmyadmin to the correct lat & long. Result – my markers are now in the correct location! It was simple enough, but I am always pleased with myself when I work out how to change things for myself.

Nights Away Course

are-tee-squared — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 09:07:12 +0000

I have just returned from the Nights Away Course at Ferny Crofts – what a blast! We had the opportunity to play with lots of different kit, learnt an awful lot about the technical bits of planning a camp, and cooked a chicken in a dustbin. It was all too short, although very intense, and I think we were all sad to have to return to real life .

Hello world!

are-tee-squared — Tue, 25 May 2010 15:17:49 +0000

First post in a blog that will probably demonstrate to any readers that once the scouting bug has got under your skin it’s never only an hour a week! I joined our Cub pack just over two years ago whilst on mat leave, and since then have 13 nights away under my belt (a part of me wishes they gave us badges), several district badge days, many camp-fires, and most of my adult training. This week we held our pack night at our district camp site, and gave the Cubs some practice in fire lighting. We had some roaring blazes pretty quickly, but also some frustrated pyromaniacs. Next time we’re going to give them marshmallows as well.