Monday, November 1, 2010

Kate's 1st class camp



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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Sunday, October 17, 2010

Meeting - 15th October 2010

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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Sunday, August 29, 2010

Compo camp Aug 2010




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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Monday, August 16, 2010

6 August: Cooking competition


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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Friday, July 2, 2010

51st Gilten PLTU

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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Monday, June 28, 2010

Kay's Springbok Ceremony


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!!

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Friday, May 21, 2010

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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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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Saturday, March 27, 2010

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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Monday, March 8, 2010

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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Tuesday, February 23, 2010

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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Meeting: 19 Feb 2010 Kontiki Prep



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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Thursday, February 18, 2010

Meeting: 12 Feb 2010 Mapping

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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Friday, February 12, 2010

Kay's Springbok Construction






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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Monday, January 25, 2010

Kay's Springbok Camp, Arrow Park



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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Friday, January 15, 2010

Kay's Springbok Hike


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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Saturday, January 9, 2010

Kay's Service Project

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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