Monday, April 26, 2010

The beginning of Term 2

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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Thursday, April 8, 2010

Crazy adiero times

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



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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