Second week

Well the second week giving control of the night over to a patrol was not as successful as the first.

The night did not even start well, as no one in the patrol managed to turn up on time. When the first of the patrol turning up I had decided that no one was coming so started the evening myself.

Patrol turned up just as we broke parade for games asking for time to prepare for the evening. So whilst our 'leaders' prepare for the evening the scouts got changed for games and we play two rounds of the Minute game (All sit down count out 60 seconds and stand up when you think the minute is up, Closest one to a minute wins).

The 'Leaders' now 'organised' ran their first game of the evening. Which was a one on one football game (split the unit into two teams giving each member of a team a number. When your number is called you run up and try to score a goal before your opponent).

This game was cut short and not all the scouts got a turn. when some of the other 'leaders' decided that is was time for the next activity, painting. Each Patrol was given a selection of brushes, a palette of paint and a canvas a where told to paint a portrait of their patrol leader. This was given no dead line as it seemed that the had no further plans for the evening. The majority of the scouts soon getting restless and the painting activity did not really involve the entire patrol. So pretty quickly carnage ensued.

At this point it was decided that the actual leader would take over as the patrol had completely lost control of the evening. We got the paintings cleaned away and got the patrol to mark the paintings and the had out points.

before the evening ended we invested a new member. make the count up to 6 investitures in the year already.

Next weeks leading patrol have ask everyone to bring along a baby photo, which should be interesting.

Not as much carnage as expected

SO it went off quite well actually. 

Other than the fact the flag was upside down, and I cut myself... (on a kitchen knife, nothing more serious than that)

The idea being that a patrol runs the entire night, with no real help from us, to give them an idea of how much effort it is to co-ordinate and sort things out week after week. 

First up- was good, started with a game of quarters, or some such thing, with the novel way of non random selection for teams. which worked ok actually, and then let loose. It was good as there was no physical contact, but still very competitive- which is a good thing to think about. 

Then a game of wink murder, swiftly followed by getting on with the evening. 

As leaders we were tyring to be slightly disruptive, just to give it an edge, but not too bad. 

During the cooking, Braddles and I did most of the prep work, while Whitey sorted out 3 of them for investiture next week. 

Each team was given the same ingredients in the style of ready steady cook, and off we went. 

Mild chaos ensued, but I made sure we concentrated on our own stuff, and didnt intefere, letting the duty guys get on with keeping order and making sure nothing drastic happened. Which worked quite well. 

Food was done by 9pm, and as a point for future cooking stuff, it should be noted that hot water and bowls should be out on the tables for immediate washing up use, to expediate clearing up at the end. 

The leaders and the duty guys ended up staying for about 20 mins after, clearing stuff up, but was kind of to be expected really. 

oh, and the leaders are clearly kicking butt when it comes to getting points. 

a success so far. Lets see what happens next week. 

Ye Gads. 

First in a series

So this evening is the first evening in which we let the Kids (ahem, young adults) take over for an evening. 

This one is meant to be something along the lines of ready steady cook, and I suspect that the actual cooking and clearing up is going to take a fair bit longer than they think it is....

Im predicting total chaos, but it might be ok... 

first week back

Entertainment abound...
only really a skeleton idea of what was going to be happening this evening, so the fact it went off quite well, was a very good thing.
Started off with blindfold punch and judy, followed by a thinking/practical game with candles, mugs, string, gaffa tape and bits and pieces.
That was organised by Braddle, and it progressed excellently. Though I think that we need to make it a little more complex and more difficult- they were surprisingly quick at it.

After break we sat down and told them basically what was going to go on this term, camps and outs and things like that.
The First is to Alton towers- just for a weekend at the end of March.
There will be a camp on the second May Bank holiday- which will probably be at Youlbury, or maybe in Gloucester, and Summer camp is going to be- probably- at Hawkhirst waaaay up north.

A minor point about the May camp is that GCSEs and exams start around that time, so it might be a quiet one...

We are also looking at getting 100 nights collective expedition nights out of the Explorers, and the person with the most nights by the middle of the year will get a free Out- which we are planning to be at Milton Keynes snowdome.

Christmas

Christmas party the other night... went off ok, certainly not the most disaterous we've ever had! No, really, actually it was good. 

Started off with a boisterous game of balloon stamping... and didnt tell them we were going to turn the lights off until they started. Most amusing. 

Then a quiz, kindly made up by one of the other leaders, which was great, except I didnt know the answer to all the questions... ah, maybe I should have watched even more TV as a kid. 

The chocolate game was quite a success, especially as we didnt actually introduce it as such- the leaders got all the bits together, and started playing. One by one, the kids drifted over to join in, and within 3 mins, I stepped away and let the whole lot get on with it. A good piece of gaming with no shouted instruction or any type of information. One could almost call it viral...

The evening finished with charades, which I wasnt too convinced about, but they absolutely loved it. The most well thought out one being Brokeback mountain. (interesting point), everyone seemed obsessed with acting out the film/book content, rather than simply acting out the title... ie breaking syllables into sounds and acting them out... symptomatic of todays youth? I dont know. 

Last night

So... organisation is a good thing.
After last weeks sit-in-the-pub-and-work-out-what-the-heck-we-are-doing meeting, it was decided that it might be a good idea to incorporate more games into the evening.

as well as that, make the "tasks" more game like- so as to make it more like the Kids are enjoying themselves and arent noticing that they are learning.

So we started with flagbreak, all good, except for a fair amount of disruption by one member.
straight into the first game, dividing them down the centre of the hall- with no accounting for who wanted to be with whom.
tarpaulin, kids standing on the edge and finding the ball underneath.
second game was putting objects under buckets- using the same kind of teams, and each time getting a pair of them to find one of the objects.
Again- slight disruption from a particular member.

main activity was in teams- getting the teams to light a candle that was about 7ft away with non saftey matches- with sandpaper at 7ft away again.
no idea how it went as I was doing an investiture talk with 3 of them.

we split for tuck- at 2030- pretty good time keeping- and re-convened at 2045 when they did the circle/key game.
again, no idea how it went, as I was continuing with more investiture talking, while another leader was doing 1-2-1s with the elder explorers as to what they need to do to get their platinum/diamond awards.

ended with a game of 1 on 1 hockey and flag down.
15mins of disruption from one particular individual, and minimal phonage on behalf of the younguns.

Campfire Pizzas

We tried out this recipe on a recent camp and the explorers absolutely loved them. They where easy to make, the was pretty much no washing up and it make it easy to cater for vegetarians.

Ingredients:

• Tin foil
• Cooking oil
• boxes of pizza bread (1 box make enough dough for about 2 people)
• Tomato pizza topping or tomato based pasta sauce
• Grated Cheese
• A selection of toppings

For the topping we had:

• mushrooms
• tomatoes
• pinapple
• ham
• pepperoni

Method:

1. Give each person a sheet of tin foil about 50cm is plenty.
2. pour1-2tsp(s) of cooking oil on the the tin foil and get them to spread it all over the tin foil with there fingers (this also help with stopping dough sticking to their fingers too much).
3. Put a portion of the dough on to the centre of the foil and get the person to start flattening out the dough. it does not have to be a perfect circle. We need find that a thinner base when crispy when it was cooked and thinker base turned out more like bread when cooked
   
4. once the the pizza base is ready spoon on the tomato sauce and spread over the base avoid going right up to the edge of the base.
5. Sprinkle liberally with the grated cheese
6. add the topping of your choice.
7. Now fold the pizza and the tin foil in half like a Cornish Pasty or a Calzone
8. once the pizza is in half carefully peel back the tin foil and press the edges of the pizza together.
9. finally wrap the pizza back up in the tin foil and place on the fire. We had ours about about 6 inch away for the base of the fire and kept feeding the fire.
10. While the pizza are cooking keep turning them over so that the dough get cooked evenly on both sides.
11. once cooked open up the tin foil and enjoy.

Note: The camp we made the pizzas on was so wet we did not take the camera out the tent so recreated the pizzas at home to get the phones.