Halloween Scout Meeting

With it being Halloween & the mid term, we were missing a few scouts tonight who were away with their families. That wasn’t going to stop us having the craic though. The meeting room had been Spookily decorated for the Beaver meeting just before ours, which helped get everyone in the Halloween Spirit. some photos here

Our first game was outside. It had something to do with Pythagoras and running along the sides of a triangle. I took pass maths for my leaving cert, so I didn’t quite get it, but the scouts seemed to enjoy it and appreciated how they could put a practical application to trigonometry. All the maths classes finally paid off.

We then went inside. The leaders explained that there were now enough scouts to make 3 patrols of 6 and that it would work better than 2 patrols of 9. Emma and Aoife were staying on as PLs, but swapping APLs. The new PL was Ella and her APL was Jessica. Each patrol was then asked to pick a patrol name. We previously had the Wolf and Bear Patrols. It was the PL’s decision, but they should listen to their patrol. It turned out that we have 3 new Patrol names. Ella is the PL of the Raven Patrol. Emma is the PL of the Jaguar Patrol. Aoife is the PL of the Cobra Patrol.The patrols were also asked to come up with something to add to the opening ceremony as the leaders felt that a salute to the flag was just not enough. All patrols agreed that we could recite our group charter. We agreed to try it out for a few weeks.

To lighten the mood, we had a fun relay race. Each member of each patrol had to drink a pint if water. Then they had to eat a cream cracker. Then they had to chew and swallow a toffee. It sounds quite easy, but is a lot more difficult than you might think especially when you are racing.

As it turned out the Jaguar patrol won. Well done to them.

For the Discovery Badge we need to have attempted 3 Adventure Skills Badges. We have almost completed the Hill Walking badge so tonight we started on the Air Badge. Ciaran explained about where badges went on the uniform and showed the scouts some of his. Level 1 of the Air Badge is fairly straight forward for scouts, so we pretty much coveted it off. On the practical side of things, each scout made a paper airplane. Each scout was allowed a test flight and to make any changes they saw fit. Them we had a competition to see who could fly their plane the furthest. There were some interesting flights and even a couple that landed behind where they took off from, but Darragh from the Raven Patrol was the clear winner.

At the end of the meeting, Fiona gave out a few sweets to help start the Trick or Treating. All of the scouts said they were dressing up for Halloween.