Adiero Scout Troop

2 December 2011: Mini Olympics

2011-12-12T09:19:00.001+02:00

At the last meeting of the year we decided to have some fun and did a mini olympics night. The patrols completed against each other to see who was the best. The events at this mini olympics were:

Long jump - Using a baloon blow it up and let it go. The one that goes the furthest is the winner.
Discus - Throwing a paper plate the furthest
Javelin - Throwing a straw the furthest
Reverse high jump - Walking underneath a low string and eating prezel off the string
Steeple chase - Tie the whole patrols legs together as a 7-legged race and go through a steeple chase-like course
Swimming - Swim across the floor (Butterfly was particularly funny)
Sailing - Construct a miniature sailing boat from corks, kebab sticks and paper and blow it across the hall.
Ping pong - Using a ping pong and your breath blow the ball over the other patrols side of the table.

This evening was great fun as the patrols were not aware of what each event entailed.

So ended a great year at Adiero and we look forward to seeing everyone next year for another eventful and fun-filled year!!

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Troop Hike - Groenkloof

2011-09-11T14:34:00.000+02:00

On Saturday we went to Groenkloof Nature Reserve with 1st Craighall for a troop hike. Groenkloof is a really nice place that just outside Pretoria. It was a great place and so near Jo'burg. There are lots of game in Groenkloof but unfortunately we didn't seen many as it was REALLY hot so we think most of the animals were finding shade. The hike was 10km long and not very difficult so it was a great thing to do as a Pathfinder hike

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Africa Scout Day 2011: Fund the Fence

2011-03-16T20:14:00.004+02:00

On the 13th March 2011 was the First Africa Scout Day that Scout African Scout participated in and Gauteng scouts focussed on the environment. It was held at Delta Park Camp Ground and there were three projects run in the day. There was a weed project where invasive verbena was removed, feathering of exotic trees and Fund the Fence.

Fund the Fence was an initiative started by Adiero to plant a hedge along the back of Delta Park Camp Ground to increase security. We asked that people donate R25 for a meter of hedge so that we could plant Carrissa macrocarpa which is an indigenous plant that produces an edible fruit and has thorns for security.

This project was a great success and we managed to raise R6700 of the R7800 needed (Delta committee covered the rest) and so the planting went ahead.

A hundred scouts got together for Africa Scout Day and of that about 80 participated in the Fund the Fence project. The troops that attended and helped were: Adiero, White Horse, Rivertrail, 1st Discovery, Florida Sea Scouts, Jan Smuts, 1st Edenvale (girls and boys), 1st Randburg, Fairlands, 1st Halfway House, 37th Springvale, 1st Craighall, 1st Rosebank and North West District Rovers.

We started by digging a trench so that we could loosen the hard soil for the plants to establish themselves quicker. This took a long time as we had to dig 250m. Thankfully one of the parents had a hole diggers and so he managed to make about a third of the required holes.
The planting then began, 250 plants spread over 270 meters, giving each plant compost and fertilizer to help them grow.

Then came the watering and this also took a large amount of time as 270m requires a large amount of water. Watering was done by hose pipe and by a relay system with scouts carrying water bottles to plants further away.

Finally the job was done and it looks that a great hedge will soon develop to provide security for Delta camp Ground especially after the great rain we had for two days after the event.

Thanks to everyone who helped out for making this day a success and getting together just to have fun.

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Kontiki 2011

2011-03-15T22:27:00.008+02:00

The end of March always signals Kontiki is coming and this year the theme was “Kontiki visits Rome”. This year we decided to compete in all of the competitions and build a raft and shore camp. As usual we never do anything boring we decided to host a brand new girl scout troop on their first ever Kontiki. 1^st Edenvale girls have been going for three months and didn’t have the knowledge of how to do run Kontiki effectively so we decided to help out and teach them.

The raft was run by one of our scouts and consisted of 6 Adiero girls and 2 1^st Edenvale girls. The raft had a different design to what we have usually built but it worked well and provided a lot of shelter for the girls. The raft crew did very well and managed to complete the raft and get it on the water where they did very well in the mobility challenge.

The shore camp also consisted of Adiero and 1^st Edenvale girls and they all did a great job. Everyone got there on Friday and started to setup camp. This was successful as we managed to almost finish the beaver challenge and the 6m table on Friday. Edenvale managed to learn the dress up on Saturday morning and they all enjoyed doing our dress-up of the Latin scout verse. The rest of Saturday consisted of teaching Edenvale how to build a campsite and the cooking competition where the PL of shore did a great job and made really good food.

One of our favourite events on shore was the STA (Spare Time Activity) where we had to create a chariot that the emperor would want to ride in. The girls had lots of fun decorating a trailer and dressing themsleves up to look like emperor, queen, driver and slave. Well done girls for ebing so creative.

All in all Kontiki was a great success as we came 16^th overall with raft coming 14^th and being on the reserve list for chairman’s and shore coming in 29^th. This was very successful for us as we got to teach our younger scouts how to teach and teach 1^st Edenvale how Kontiki works. We hope that they have learnt a lot and will come back next year by themselves and do a great job.

Kontiki prep camp

2011-02-27T15:15:00.004+02:00

This year we held Kontiki Prep camp at the hall so that we had all our equipment at our disposal. We started during scouts and build our beaver challenge. This was slightly challenging as it was raining and so it had to be built inside...on tiles. The girls learnt a lot and really loved the idea we had and seeing in action was very exciting.

Saturday was spent teaching everyone how to build the gadgets in camp. This was very successful as each gadget was built and refined.

As with most of our prep camps there were lots of discussions about how to build and how to refine certain gadgets and these discussions results in very useful and very funny ideas.

Kontiki Prep this year was very good and we are prepared for Kontiki and hope to do well (as always)

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Meeting - 14th January

2011-01-16T09:41:00.003+02:00

Back to scouts!!!

So we've started scouts again and the meeting last Friday was really chilled. The meeting was spent playing games, catching up on holidays and discussing Kontiki. Everyone had a great time just catching up with friends. The Kontiki discussions produced many ideas (some hysterical and some actually worthwhile).

Basically this was the perfect way to start a hectic term and we hope that it will produce many great times and great memories..bring on 2011!!

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Cederberg 2010

2011-01-16T09:29:00.005+02:00

Over the December holidays two of our girls went on the Senior Scout Challenge which is held in the Cederberg mountains in the Western Cape. The adventure is 11 days long and involves hiking around the Cederberg mountains to different activity bases.

The weather for the hikes varied between scorching heat of 35 degrees and constant cold rain for two days so we got to experience every aspect of hiking.

The hikes themselves were challenging by incredibly beautiful. Rock formations like the Wolfberg Arch (seen in picture) can only be seen by hiking to them. The challenge came in that we were hiking over mountains most days and we only had topographical map to guide us.

The activities were great and various: 4x4, paintball, pizza making, orienteering, dutch oven cooking and gold panning, to name a few. These were great fun as some of these things we don't do in normal scouting.

Over all Cederberg was an amazing experience that challenged most of our scouting skills and determination and we would like to see more of our girls attend the next one in 2012.

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Kate's 1st class camp

2010-11-01T09:31:00.006+02:00

Kate held her 1st class camp over the weekend of the 23-24 October. It was a great camp with fun and relaxing. The girls really enjoyed it as the got to go on a camp that was not a competition but was about just having fun - which is what it's really about anyway.

They arrived on Saturday morning and set up their tents and shelters and build a table ('cos you can't just eat on the floor). Kate taught them some of the basic knots and lashings and then they were challenged to build a tower out of kebab sticks and string that could hold a glass of water. The girls did a great job and designed four different towers to test the strength. Each tower was tested with a glass of water and each one held it very successfully and, knowing us, that wasn't the end. The breaking capacity if each tower was tested and this was lots of fun to see when the towers would fall over.

The girls then made chicken curry and bread for supper which was enjoyed by all. When it was time for bed the girls climbed into their shelters only to be met by the rain so the shelters were abandoned for a dry night in the tent.

On Sunday morning it was time to pack up and go home after a great relaxing camp. Well done Kate on a great camp!!

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Meeting - 15th October 2010

2010-10-17T15:42:00.004+02:00

So this week we did some backwoods cooking - such fun!!

The pathfinders made fires and discovered how much wood you actually need to keep a fire going. Once their fires had simmered down from the huge bonfires that had been created they cooked there boerewors. But as this was an Adiero meeting, nothing is very boring, we cooked the beorewors inside a banana skin in the fire. This meant that the girls didn't have to hold the beorewors over the fire which is always ideal.

Conservation stove

The adventurers made their food composed of mince in gem squash which was also placed in the fire. The adventurers also cooked on conservation stoves. Conservation stoves conserve the heat as all the heat is directed towards the pot. The adventurers made rice (in 20mins) and a sauce for their mince.

Everyone had lots of fun and enjoyed some interesting backwoods food.

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Compo camp Aug 2010

2010-08-29T16:15:00.004+02:00

This year was the first time that the Provincial Camping Competition was held and both of our patrols attended. There were a total of 17 patrols in the competition form Randburg, West Rand and Southerns districts. The camp was run at Saddle Creek and run according to West Rand competition rules.

The patrols did very well. Bats came 7th over all and Crocodiles came 9th overall which is great for a first compo camp. Bats were also 3rd overall in cooking.

Well done to all the girls that attended!!

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6 August: Cooking competition

2010-08-16T12:26:00.004+02:00

So this week we did a cooking competition where the patrols were given ingredients and told to cook them. The difference was that the meal was to be cooked on a fire and not gas (as a result a few other things needed to be considered). The PLs were given the main course to cook and the Seconds the dessert. As we like to challenge our girls the PLs were given: Baby potatoes, a sweet potato, unfavoured soya mince, carrots, whole tomatoes, spinach and half a loaf of bread. The patrols did very well and made a bunny chow and a mince sandwich which both tasted very good.

The Seconds were given: Tennis biscuits, custard, bananas, apples, half a Madeira cake and cream. They had the additional requirement that they had to cook something in that it could not all be cold. Both patrols made a trifle of some kind but once again - they tasted great.

Great food and fun was had by all! Well done girls - you've proved once again that you can handle anything we throw at you.

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51st Gilten PLTU

2010-07-02T18:09:00.002+02:00

During a freezing cold winter 51st Gilten PLTU was held in Gilwell, Florida. Adiero had two participants going, Jade and Kate, and two staff members, Kay and Cougar.

Although it was VERY cold the girls did very well. Kate was named best participant and Jade was in the top five out of 20 participants.

This just goes to show the quality of scouts that Adiero produces. We are very proud of them for their achievements and for completing this very difficult course.

Well done guys - you did really well!!!

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Kay's Springbok Ceremony

2010-06-28T19:38:00.005+02:00

So the time finally came, on 5th June 2010 Kay was awarded her Springbok badge. The whole troop got involved and we had a really big party.

The new tradition in the troop is that the first hour of the meeting is when the troop decorates the hall for the ceremony. Of course we did this in true Adiero style by hauling every decoration we have, that included a pirate flag from a few Kontiki's ago.

Kay arrived after an hour as well the parents and the Assistant Provincial Commissioner for Scout Programme, who was going to give Kay her Springbok. The troop fell in and Kay was escorted by the Court of Honour between the two patrols and presented to the APC with the words we often but slightly changed,

"This is Kay, Kay would like to get her Springbok."

And of course, no ceremony would be complete without a HUGE party with lots of food and fun to celebrate Kay's momentous achievement.

Well done Kay, we are all really proud of you for completing this and becoming the second the girl in the district to get her Springbok.

May there be many more from Adiero!!

Meeting: 21 May

2010-05-21T20:26:00.003+02:00

(somehow this post got away from the whole publishing part of this blog - but here it is anyway)

This Friday we were invited to 1st Randburg's Flinstone car Drive-in. The girls built a Flintstone type car that they could to the Drive-in - yes we put the cars on flat bed, drove it to the Drive-in the then rolled them in! To great amusement of all watching. We then watched the Drive-in movies before we went back to the hall to sleep over (well sleep what was left of the night)

Thanks to 1st Randburg for inviting us to such a great event.

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The beginning of Term 2

2010-04-26T16:49:00.002+02:00

So after a long holiday it's back to Scouts for another awesome term. The focus of this term is advancement because last term was ALL about Kontiki. Even though we all learnt a lot by doing Kontiki there are still non-pioneering advancements to be done.

The first two meetings of this term have been about advancements - the teaching and testing of different requirements. As a result the meetings have been rather erratic and eclectic but, as always, such fun. We strive to have ordered meetings with a logical flow but sometimes that doesn't happen and we're ok with that because as BP said we learn "through the fun and jollity of Scouting; by progressive stages... But if once we make it into a formal scheme of serious instruction for efficiency, we miss the whole point and value of the Scout training..."

The first meeting became a knots teaching day where all the required knots for various levels were learnt (and subsequently passed the next week). The second meeting was a lot more exciting as we had the TS and ATS from Half Way House girls troop come to visit. We had a great time playing memory map symbol games and one of our favourite running games, North, South, East, West. We hope they had fun and we look forward to doing more stuff together in the future.

So here's to a great term of many advancements: one First Class, two Adventurers and about two Pathfinders!!!

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Crazy adiero times

2010-04-08T11:50:00.003+02:00

Ok - so what happens when you put a bunch of bored Adiero girls in a hall?

One INSANE game of duster hockey!! Except as this is rather impromptu we used staves as sticks and an old hot chocolate tin as a ball.

So the rules were simple - stay behind the line and don't let the other team score past you're line. If your number is called run up and get the tin behind the others' line. Crazy times (square hot chocolate tins often don't go in the right direction) with lots of fun and great team spirit shown by all.

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Kontiki 2010 goes to El Dorado: Shore

2010-04-08T11:04:00.007+02:00

Here is the second part of our Konitki story - the shore! The shore is generally divided into five parts: the campsite, beaver challenge, competition meal, STA and dress up.

Campsite
The campsite was well constructed with our famous octopod gateway, table that could seat the whole troop and a new design for the prep table that was perfected at Kay's camp.

Beaver challenge
This years beaver challenge used the raft because we did not launch it so we decided to give cubs and young scouts the opportunity to explore a raft. Each cub/scout was required to wear a life jacket while on the raft and then they had to count the number of coins hanging as decorati on the raft. The cubs/scouts really enjoyed this as they got to explore a raft - an activity previously reserved for older scouts.

Competition meal

This year Christine organised the competition meal and did an amazing job! The food was excellent (of course). She led a patrol that made vegetable pancakes, crumbed chicken strips and a delicious fudge tower that looked like the Mayan tower, and yes, everything was made from scratch - crumbed chicken and fudge - everything! Thank goodness there was left overs and the rest of the troop got to pig-out when they returned

STA

The STAs (Spare Time Activity) are a great time as the girls get to be creative and make stuff from nothing. This years STA required us to build a catapult. This tested the whole troop as building a catapult from scratch is a quite difficult - especially when we have nothing elastic to create the necessary force. But, we managed to build quite a successful one that shot a acorn 6m and for a 1m-arm-stave-and-sisal catapult we think that's impressive.

Dress up

For this years Dress up we used the campfire song "Old Fashioned Ford" and changed the words to become "Old Scout Patrol". All the girls wore their Kontiki shirts and acted out the words. One person who should be mentioned is Kate who was the PL who's grown a beard - attaching a tin foil beard to someone is a very Adiero thing to do.

The shore competition this year was very well organised as each senior person in the troop had a job to do. In general Kontiki was an excellent experience for all! We came 15th for the campsite which when added with the raft gave us an overall position of 16th. Still one of the top 20 troops in the Area and for one for so small we're very proud of ourselves. Next year - top 15!!

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Kontiki 2010 goes to El Dorado: Raft

2010-03-27T12:36:00.007+02:00

Konitki was held from 5-7 March at , the old favourite, Murray Park in Springs. So for Kontiki this year we did something never been done before - we build a raft but did not launch it. We did this as the number and average age of troop did not allow us to build a raft to the standard we expect. However, as this is Adiero and we believe no activity should be wasted we decided to build a raft with the whole troop to show them how it's done so that next year the entire troop had experience of building a raft under Kontiki conditions. As this raft was a teaching exercise it did not need to be very big so a 4m x 4m raft was constructed with less super structure and decoration as we wanted to ensure that we would finish on time.

This idea was a great success. The Court of Honour arrived early at Kontiki to build a large part of the campsite and then when the rest of the troop arrived construction began on the raft. As the times of build changed this year - construction began at 18h00 - only 1 hour after construction could commence. As our 'raft crew' consisted of 11 people the base was done in an hour and a half followed by dinner and then further building until 24h00. At this point we had constructed the base, paddle wheel, barrels and beginning the super structure - all in all, great nights work.

Saturday morning began early and construction began right away - the super structure was completed as well as decking put on and the final touches of the decoration. We were ready for launch at 10:30 - 30 minutes ahead of actual launch.

After perching our raft just on the water's edge we anchored it in place and began our beaver challenge - which raft based. Cubs were required to get on the raft, with a life jacket, and count the number of large coins on the raft. This required exploring all areas of the raft -much to the cubs delight.

Overall, the raft was a great success, the scouts got to experience building a raft in a certain time and the cubs got to enjoy going on a raft. We came 22nd for the raft which is a great achievement as we did not complete in mobility which is a large percentage of the available marks.

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We are famous!

2010-03-08T18:46:00.002+02:00

Our troop has come, been seen and (almost) conquered!!

We have been mentioned in two other scout blogs!!
The first is the SA Scout Association Gauteng Province, Chairmans Blog. Here there is a picture from Kay's Springbok Camp at the beginning of the blog.

http://gautengscouts.blogspot.com/

The second is Ropes and Poles - a really great pioneering blog run my Peter Le Roux from 9th Benoni Greyspear. Here you can see our famous octopod lashing that we did for our gateway. Thanks must be given to Peter for putting this on his blog in the first place so we could learn it.

http://ropesandpoles.blogspot.com/

Checkout these sites not only for our stuff for scouting in general.
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BP Sunday 2010

2010-02-23T11:23:00.004+02:00

On the 21st of February Randburg District held BP Sunday at Groenkloof Nature Reserve in Pretoria. This was a change from the normal as we usually go to a local school and have a gala. This time the theme was orienteering. Three courses were constructed, cubs, junior scouts and senior scouts, of gradually increasing length and difficulty. We had a patrol compete in the junior scout section and Kay participated in the senior scouts section. Our junior scouts had lots of fun in the game reserve and saw 7 giraffes and a few zebra and managed to collect some interesting rocks on their walk. Kay came first in her section with a time of 1:27:10 a good 2 minutes ahead of the next group. Well done to Kay on doing so well!! We hope everyone had a great BP Day on the 22nd February.

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Meeting: 19 Feb 2010 Kontiki Prep

2010-02-23T09:56:00.004+02:00

This week's meeting was very erratic. Kontiki is only two weeks away and so we had to make sure that all the equipment was ready. This required taking down barrels and paddle wheels and sorting through the kitchen trommels to make sure we had enough equipment for the camp and the competition meal. We also had to finalise the Dress up and the Competition meal. Although the meeting was rather unstructured it was very productive and Adiero is now ready to kick-butt at Kontiki 2010.
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Meeting: 12 Feb 2010 Mapping

2010-02-18T09:50:00.002+02:00

This week’s theme was mapping as BP Sunday is coming up and we needed to prepare for the Orienteering that would be done. We focussed on map reading skills and what maps can tell us.

We discussed maps in general and why we use them as well as map symbols. We played our map symbols memory game - a game that involves choosing the correct symbol and name from a group of cards lying face down - this was great fun and everyone enjoyed competing to see who could get the most pairs.

We then discussed contours and what contours actually tell us, this is a very difficult topic to explain as it seems obvious to experienced scouters that contour lines show gradient and where mountains and valleys are placed. In order to understand this topic better we used play dough to build a representation of the map. Each patrol was given a section of the map and told to copy this with play dough so they could see the mountains and the gradient in 3 dimensions. This was lots of fun (‘cos who doesn’t enjoy play dough?) and we all learnt a great deal about how to view a 2D map in 3 dimensions.

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Kay's Springbok Construction

2010-02-12T16:46:00.004+02:00

Last weekend Kay completed the last requirement for her Springbok, her construction project. Construction started at about 9 in the morning and we finished at about 3. We build a 6m beacon tower outside Delta Park Camp grounds. We had the help of 1st Greenside to build as pull up the tower.We used a pulley system to help pull up this tower with the anchorage around a large stump we found. As this was a beacon tower a smoke bomb was let off from the top and this created a very good signal.

Well done Kay on the completion of her Springbok!!!
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Kay's Springbok Camp, Arrow Park

2010-01-25T15:17:00.004+02:00

This past weekend, 22 - 24 January, Kay did her Springbok Camp at a VERY wet Arrow Park in Benoni. Over all it was lots of fun and a great learning experience as this also doubled as the troop's Kontiki Prep camp.

The majority of the camp was spent building structures needed for the campsite at Kontiki but there was also an inter-patrol cooking competition and all the girls completed Water Biologist badge which included crab fishing (and yes, we did catch a crab).

As I stated earlier this camp was very wet and by Sunday 75% of the land was under a thin layer of water and as a result we were walking around barefoot on Sunday as shoes (other than wellington boots) were a bit pointless.

Preparations for Kontiki are looking good as all the girls are clued up as far as pioneering goes - we are also excited for Kontiki as we will be building and decorating an octopod in our campsite.

Well done to all the girls on a sucessful Prep camp and achieving their Water Biologist badge and well done to Kay for planning an excellent troop camp.

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Kay's Springbok Hike

2010-01-15T21:47:00.004+02:00

On the 5th-7th January Kay took a patrol of three on her Springbok Hike in the Waterberg near Ficksberg in the Free State. She took 2 girls from our troop and a guy from 1st Greenside

Day 1
On the first day there was also a lot of flat farmland with haybales but then the terrain became very hilly with lots of small rivers. There were lots of cliffs and attached to these cliffs were poles with ladder rungs attached so that you can climb up the ladder and reach further up the cliff. They were interesting to climb up but seemed to have no other purpose. While we were in a ravine with cliffs on both sides in began to pour with rain and even with our raincoats on we still got sopping wet. That night we slept in a cave and dried our clothes by the campfire.

Day 2
The terrain this day was also very hilly with lots of small rivers to walk through and next to. That night we slept in a hut which was very different to the previous nights adventures. In the hut were triple bunk beds with three matresses on each bed - needless to say much sleep was had by all.

Day 3
This was the last day of hiking and so it was a bit shorter than the rest but we did find a small rock pool carved out of rocks so that the river ran through it. This water was very cold but we swam nonetheless.

In general it was a very good and rewarding hike and we went to Wimpy afterwards to celebrate and eat proper non-hike food.
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Kay's Service Project

2010-01-09T11:06:00.006+02:00

From the 28th November to 3 December Kay ran her Springbok Service Project by collecting old and new toys to give to children's homes in Eldorado Park. She went around to Randpark Ridge Group to the 3 cub packs and 2 troops to ask people to donate their old toys and tins of food. She also created a stall at Bright Water Commons to ask people to help by donating toys and food.

These were collected and on 21st December all these toys were packed and wrapped for distribution to the homes the next day. There were so many toys that they almost covered Kay's lounge floor.

Thank you to all the girls who participated in the wrapping all these toys and helped at the children's home - you made some little kids very happy. Thank you to all who donated food and toys to this great cause.

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Hike in Groenkloof

2009-12-20T16:38:00.007+02:00

On the 12th December four of us, and Lynx, went hiking in Groenkloof reserve outside Pretoria. It was a great fun although the day started out cold and ended up being VERY hot when we had finished. We saw a lot of game including wildebeest, zebra and impala, which were all very near the hiking trail so we ended up trekking through the bush a few times to avoid them. This was used as Jade's Adventurer hike and two of the other girls now have their pathfinder hikes signed off.

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The Owl Part II

2009-11-21T15:07:00.005+02:00

Wow, it's been a while. Exams are terrible things. However, we now have pictures of the owl we built a while back. Isn't it lovely? (I'm also updating the Chairman's Challenge entry with pictures.)

Technically, the second photo has nothing to do with the owl, except that we built it on the same camp. On Sunday morning, just for fun, we used the cloverleaf lashing to build an octopod. We thought it was pretty cool.

Now, for the scouts: here's the question to answer for Friday night: who is standing on top of the octopod? (You can click the picture to see a bigger version.)

Bonus question: In the first picture, Pippa is wearing uniform because she's been at a special meeting for Patrol Leaders. What are meetings like that called? (Hint: look at page 147 of your Scout Trail book.)

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Building

2009-10-26T15:15:00.003+02:00

We were planning to build treehouses on Friday night, but the weather had other plans. The rain was bucketing down by the time our meeting began and there was no way we would be working outside. Instead, Pippa (Crocodiles' PL) ran some pioneering activities inside.

The girls built and braced a pair of tripods. Then they learned how to use a bowline and rolling hitch to fasten themselves securely to the tripods before climbing up onto the bracings. With more time, we could have transformed our tripods into a tower, but with all the knotting practice, and the power cut that meant we were working by gaslight, that didn't happen.

Instead, Pippa and Lynx taught the troop how to tie a Cat's Paw, a rather unusual knot used with pulleys. We don't know where the name comes from, but if any of our readers do, we'd love to know!

At the same time, two of our senior scouts were on Backwoods Camp. In that rain, it must have been chilly. The girls earned their Backwoods Interest Badges on the camp.

During next week's meeting, the group AGM will be run and all parents are encouraged to attend. Afterwards, there'll be campfire for the whole scout group, so remember your campfire blankets!

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A New Term

2009-10-10T19:48:00.003+02:00

Yesterday we had our first meeting for the last term of 2009. Over the holidays, a new system for storing our long (five and six metre) poles had been set up, and we got to pack them away. This is more exciting than it sounds, because the poles are stored several metres up. Getting them there required two PLs in safety harnesses and four people on the pulley systems. The author of this blog now has four blisters, but apparently she is getting soft, as everybody else was fine!

We also learned different ways of carrying injured people and which should be used when. Then we ran races using the different carries. It was a fun and practical way of making sure everyone understood how they worked.

Before we ended, we got to hear about the projects Kay will be running to get her Springbok Scout award, and to meet our new District Commissioner. I can't wait for another term full of scouting activities!
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Chairmans!

2009-09-13T20:16:00.004+02:00

The girls got back from Chairman's Challenge today. They did really well, placing fifth overall!

The raft came in eighth, after six and a half hours on the Vaal River. At this morning's cooking competition, the scouts 'went green'. Adiero cooked greek salad, pancakes and curry and rice on a biofuel stove to tie for third place.

Way to go, girls!

Here you can see the rafts setting off.

Here's Adiero's raft and crew.

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Chairman's Challenge

2009-09-06T20:03:00.004+02:00

I don't have any pictures, which is very sad, but I'm going to post anyway. Otherwise, this blog might go for a whole month without any activity, which would be awfully disappointing.

The Owl Part II will be coming soon, but first I need to get hold of those photos. In this case, a picture is worth quite a bit more than a thousand words.

Meanwhile, we've been getting ready for another pioneering event: Chairman's Challenge. Our troop's raft placed tenth at Kontiki (the Gauteng-wide scout raft rally) this year, which means we were invited to race the other top twenty rafts down the Vaal river. Our senior scouts have been designing the raft and practising the building.

Since only six scouts will go to Chairman's, the rest of us spent the meeting outside, around a fire. Once the fire was laid and lighted, we cooked twists and boerewors: delicious! We also spent a bit of time thinking about how we use the Scout Law and Scout Promise in our day-to-day lives.

Next week, the raft crew will be at Chairman's. The rest of us won't be meeting, but we're wishing them the best of luck!

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Mixing and Matching

2009-08-08T10:59:00.005+02:00

This week's meeting didn't have any particular theme, unless it was 'following the scout trail'. We began with a going up ceremony, where we welcomed one of the cubs into the scout troop, after which she was invested. There are no pictures, because only invested scouts may watch an investiture (although we do make an exception for the parents).

We heard about some of the activities Kay has been doing for her Explorer badge,
looked at the calabash doll she found on her river cleanup,

and watched the slideshows from the outings.

We learned about practical safety and maintenance of gas equipment - part of the Adventurer badge, but a good thing for everyone to know.

In between, Cougar taught Pathfinder level First Aid, we played games, we spoke about the owl that we'll be building on the twenty-second and we even cleaned out our storeroom.

The Owl Part I

2009-08-01T17:52:00.003+02:00

There's a district pioneering event coming up in three weeks, so we spent a meeting practising our building skills. The finished structure will be a giant owl, although we couldn't build the whole thing in just one meeting.

Lifting up the central quadpod. (Built with a cloverleaf lashing, which everyone - well, Lynx and Charlotte anyway - thinks is awesome.)

Unhanking a rope as we get ready to brace the quadpod and build the superstructure.

We're nearly finished bracing the quadpod; everyone's attention is drawn by the owl's head.

The owl's head - or at least its structure. The final product will be covered and given simple features.

Mapping

2009-07-25T10:25:00.005+02:00

Map Reading

The ever-popular mapping symbol game. (It's a variant of the card game Concentration, but as well as remembering where the cards are, you have to remember which description matches which symbol.)

Plane tabling. This mapping technique is relatively complicated, but everyone enjoyed learning it and mapping out the hall. Next time, we'll need something bigger to map!