Meeting: 21 May

(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

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

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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Kontiki 2010 goes to El Dorado: Raft

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!

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

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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