Explorer Scout 84

St. George’s Day Parade

Last year at my districts annual St. George’s Day Parade I spoke about The First World War in front of the whole Cathedral. I also spoke to the VIPs about my World Scout Jamboree experience I was going on.

This year I got invited to also talk about my World Scout Jamboree experience but I could also carry one of the Explorer flag. I choose this year to carry a flag.

I got chosen to carry the Union Flag which would lead the colours. I therefore lead all of the flags and was in the front of the parade. It was a really good service however, we did not sing the Lord of the Dance or He’s got the whole world in his hands.

My top 10 revision tips …

Stop making excuses to start.
Create a revision timetable (but don’t use creating this as an excuse not to revise!).
Sit comfortably with no distractions.
Have a therapy cat (aka The Monster Rufus).
Make sure that you have all of the equipment you need (again no looking for excuses not to revise).
Keep hydrated.
Take breaks, but remember to carry on afterwards.
Use past papers to help you get an idea of what the examiners are looking for.
Attend revision sessions run by your teachers, as they are knowledgeable in their subject.
Don’t forget to also revise the subjects you dislike. (As these are probably not your strongest subjects)

The Great Blue Sewing Bee

Hi everyone, it’s Blue here again, 84s been really busy revising for her upcoming GCSEs so I’ve decided to step in and help her out. Hopefully 84 will be back soon – she needs to take a break from revision sometime?!

Before the London trip I treated myself to a new necker. Unfortunately normal size ones are way too big for me so I thought I would raid Mum84’s ~~hoard~~ extensive fabric supply and make my own.

I did find it a little bit hard to use the sewing machine, reaching the foot pedal and ensuring that the material was sewing straight proved rather difficult so I roped Mum84 in to help.

After a long afternoon working together I finally had my new necker.

Here are the photos of my progress:

Don’t loose your USB Stick …

I am still in the midst of writing my blog post around the camp I went on a few weekends ago . For now I will be explaining why not to loose your USB stick before I will be back on rewriting my coursework.

Don’t loose you USB stick if it contains all your coursework – you are going to have to recomplete it.

Don’t loose your USB stick if it’s not backed up anywhere – just makes sure you back it up.

Don’t loose you USB stick if you don’t know where you have lost it – if your are here there and everywhere I wouldn’t recommend where to start looking for it.

Don’t loose your USB stick if you take computer science as a GCSE – especially because you learn about the disadvantages to solid-state storage (USBs) including the fact that they can be lost easily.

Don’t loose your USB stick if you are prone to loosing stuff in general – self-explanatory.

Leading Questions with Blue.

Hey everyone, guest blogger Blue here again!

I got to spend a few days with 84 again after meeting back up at one of her county’s events. Since she interviewed me last time I thought I’d do the same.

So 84, you’re looking a lot better by the way, what was the day about?

This day got together the patrol leaders in my county who were leading a patrol on the 24th World Scout Jamboree. We took in a range of activities to learn different leadership skills and techniques.

That sounds good. So what sort of things did you talk about?

We talked about different personality traits – drivers, thinkers, feelers and entertainers. They told us how each different section are motivated as well as push and pull factors.

We briefly talked about what makes a good leader as well as the characteristics they should have; they should be allowing everyone to have equal responsibility, able to handle all situations as well as giving credit where it is deserved.

On top of this we learnt about how to delegate well and the ladder of unconsciously incompetent to unconsciously competent.

Did anything in particular surprise you or make you think “oh yeah”?

I learnt about the ladder of unconsciously incompetent to unconsciously competent.

At the bottom of the ladder you have those who are unconsciously incompetent.

These are the people who have seen a new skill and believe thoroughly that they are able to do this without even asking for help the very first time. They are usually very happy and excited to give a new skill ago; this is until they give the skill ago and become consciously incompetent.

They now have tried the new skill and are unhappy as they are not able to do it; as time progresses they will become consciously competent.

This is where they are still a bit worried about the activity but are able to now take part with very little assistance; this is until they become unconsciously competent.

They now are able to do the skill without really thinking about what they are doing such as tying a reef knot. This is a good place to be in but sometimes they can forget the specific steps in the task and forget exactly what they are doing.

So what would be your top tips for other patrols going out to the Jamboree?

My top tip would be to learn about the different personalities in your patrol. to learn what motivates each individual and the main category of people they fall into.

Are they a “Thinker” who like to work out the problem step by step or are they a “Feeler” who cares about how the rest of the patrol are feeling and doesn’t think about themselves as much?

Are they a “Driver” who drives to make sure that everything has been done on time and to task or are they even an “Entertainer” where they have the most fun with others joking and laughing around?

The more you know your patrol the easier it will be in the long run to delegate specific tasks to and help them to drive towards their target all whilst having fun and enjoying them whilst doing even some of the more boring tasks.

Finally, tell me one thing you learnt about yourself.

I learnt that I am partly a thinker and a feeler; I like to plan ahead of time to make sure that everything will get done whilst checking that everyone is happy; I need to be able to be a bit more firm with others when they are not listening and to also make sure that I not only play to the strengths within my patrol but also can teach them new skills.

Finally I have learnt how the patrol leaders team has been arranged. Personally in my patrol leadership team we have an entertainer (who can also be partly a driver) with me being a thinker and a feeler – everyone has all characteristics which work well together within a team.

Thanks 84, sounds like it was a really good day. Can’t wait to see you again!

North America in a Bag

This week I’ve been out and about with North America in a Bag.

First I took it to the Beavers where I am a Young Leader. I know my Beavers well and I know they like doing craft so I planned the main activity to be making Dream Catchers. We played a version of “North, East, South, West” but with a WSJ spin. I also made some salsa in advance to take along so they could try salsa and nachos. The Beaver Leader was so impressed with how it went that I was given Barry the Beaver to take home.

I stayed on after Beavers to run a session for my old Scout unit. I didn’t think they’d want to spend half the meeting making dream catchers, but I still gave them 10 minutes to make one in their patrols. To add to the challenge after 5 minutes I told them they could only use one hand each. We played the Stealing the Sombrero game and then held a debate over which was better: tea or coffee. The session ended with lots of really good questions about both the Jamboree and the fundraising to get there.

The following evening I took the bag along to the Scout group my Explorers are attached to. All 4 sections meet on the same night, with some overlap, but I managed to spend some time with all of them. I spent the most time with the Cubs, I’d been a bit worried about this sessions as unlike the night before I didn’t really know any of them. It went really well with them enjoying themselves and showing a lot of interest. I also managed to speak to the Scouts and Explorers and run some games with them too.

My final visit was to my old Rainbow unit. I turned their regular circle time into a Pow-Wow with the headdress passing from one Rainbow to the next as they gave their news. They also enjoyed making the dream catchers and playing the games.

Although I’ve been a Young Leader with Beavers for a year and a half it was good to try and plan things for the older units as well. I’m also secretly hoping some of the Rainbows might defect to Scouting in the future.

Cookies and Cakes

Yum, recently at Explorers we completed a £20 challenge. We split up into small groups and our group decided to hold a cake sale to maximise our funds.

We were lucky enough to have our own personal chauffeur service in the form of my fellow Explorer’s older sister, so we were able to go shopping to buy our ingredients without relying on parent help. We bought lots of ingredients at the supermarket ready for the Great Explorer Bake Off one Sunday afternoon.

On Sunday afternoon we made fairy cakes (which were expertly decorated by my fellow Explorer’s younger sister), a lemon drizzle cake, a coffee cake, a banana and chocolate cake, crispy cakes, chocolate crunch and peanut butter and chocolate cookies (made with cutters from the Stanpit Company, another WSJ fundraiser). Plenty of yummy treats for our whole unit from Beavers through to Explorers to enjoy. Except there was a slight problem…

The evening of our cake sale coincided with the Beaver and Cubs bowling trip, so we had to rely on the Scouts and Explorers buying our delicious treats.

We sold a fair few cakes despite having two sections missing. We were able to give our £20 starter fund back and when the ‘profits’ were split we each had raised a small amount. Mine is going towards my Jamboree fundraising.

We’ve also learnt the valuable lesson to plan and check the programme in future!

Planning meeting

As a Beaver Young Leader I went to my first ever planning meeting. Here we work out what the beaver plan would be doing each evening until summer. We added dates in for Jamboree in a bag and another meeting to be run by the young leaders. To try and get as many beavers their chief scout bronze award, we had to plan our meetings to allow this and fit it in.

I was expecting to be at the meeting for just under an hour but was there for much longer than expected- I now realise the amount of planning which goes into each Beaver meeting. One of the leaders wasn’t able to make the meeting so instead was at the meeting virtually via a Skype call which however, kept cutting out.

I was very disappointed when I found out that the Beavers last meeting in the summer they are going bouldering and caving. I realised that I will already be out on the Jamboree site so will miss the Beavers last fun meeting.

Sustainability

Since, the 5p plastic bag ban occurred in the UK over 3 years ago (October 2015), the amount of people using one use plastic bags has decreased rapidly since this. Recently on the news, Morrisons has been saying that they will trial paper bags similarly used in America. They are trying to sell or provide no plastic bags to their customers to reduce the amount of one use bags polluting the planet and ending up in the sea killing marine animals.

This week at Beavers, I was responsible for running the evening. The theme for this evening was sustainability (which is one of the key principle at the 24th World Scout Jamboree) so, the Beavers were decorating reusable shopping bags. We taught them that it takes over 15 years for a bag to biodegrade and how many marine animals are dying from eating plastic or getting caught and tangled in plastic bags. We explained how to fight this issue you should think about how much plastic you are using and whether this is really needed. They also learnt about the 3Rs: Reuse, Reduce and Recycle and so how they can use this in their daily lives.

As the Beavers were decorating their bags, they were silent for 45 minutes – I’ve heard that is a record so I’m very pleased with how well they enjoyed it.

That’s not my quiz

it’s for Sis84

Last Friday I had a break from my own fundraising, to go along to a quiz being held to fundraise for my sister’s gang show. I didn’t really want to go but I was reminded that Sis84 has been dragged along to multiple fundraising events for me.

So off we went braving the icy roads to get to the scout hut. It turned out to be a very popular evening as they had to sort out extra tables as there were so many teams taking part.

It started with a table quiz of picture questions on Christmas best selling toys and an alphabet take from sweet wrappers which we had to name the sweet. We started off great, with Dad84 naming all the Lego variations and Mum84 doing well on the sweet wrappers due to her sweet tooth.

The first challenge came with the title of the first round ‘Sport’ well Fam84 are not particularly into sporting events so we dreaded this round. The first question was a complete guess, but had they listened to me they would have got it correct – cricket. Mum84 excelled in her sporting knowledge, knowing the answers to a few including who first ran the four minute mile.
We did so well that at the halfway point we were in 2nd place. Amazing …

The second half was also fun, yet again we guessed a few (OK more than a few!) Dad84 disappointed us by getting the name of the newspaper that Peter Parker works for wrong and Mum84 had a good stab at the musicals and film theme songs. The last two rounds were our best – dingbats and logos. I hate to say it but I just don’t get dingbats even though its say what you see. Thanks to my celebrity big brother guess for one of the logos Mum84 correctly got ‘Bird’s Eye’.

We had a great evening and ended up coming 3rd! Not bad for an amateur team. It has to be noted that the winning team consisted of the family of my Beaver Leader. Congratulations.