Fingal Scout County PL & APL Training weekend

5 of our new PLs and APLs attended a training weekend in Brackenstown Den last weekend. It was a weekend for all PLs and APLs in Fingal Scout County to come together and share ideas and experiences. Given that our group is so new, it was great to see so many of our scouts attending. Luke was nominated as county PRO for scouts so BIG congrats to him. The scouts are going to write a report on the weekend themselves and it will be added here for everyone to read.

Everyone gathered in Brackenstown den for the patrol leaders and assistant patrol leaders training weekend. We were divided into patrols. This was done by giving each scout a playing card, we had to go with the people who had the same card number as us. This became our patrol. We each assigned ourselves a patrol leader and had to come up with a patrol name. Over the course of the weekend we created patrol chants and drew patrol flags. We played games and did activities too. This was a great way to get us to mix with scouts from other troops and make new friends. After getting put into our patrols a lady called Caoimhe came in to talk to us about mindfulness and leadership. First she talked about just living in the now and not to worry, as that is in the future, and not to carry guilt, as that is in the past. Then we all agreed that ‘let it go’ was the song we needed to sing to help us to remember! After we learned about mindful eating, to eat in the now and just concentrate and appreciate what you are eating. To demonstrate that we ate a segment of orange very…very…very slowly! Lastly we talked about communication. We learned a lot and it gave us food for thought! At 9:00 we were told that we had until 10:30 to go down town into swords to go to a chippers or a fast food restaurant. We split into our own little groups and headed off. Me and two of my friends (Tom and Luke) headed down toward a chippers. Everything there was too expensive for me but Luke bought something. Me and Tom headed down to McDonalds. I still didn’t have enough for a whole meal so I was forced to get a happy meal. We found everyone else in Apache Pizza. Tom bought some chicken wings and me and Luke headed back to the den while he was there. We reached the hall with ten minutes remaining and talked until half. There was a good bit of craic that night.

Day two started with a few games. Then we had a number of talks about the ONE programme, the badges, spices (Social, Physical, Intellectual, Emotional and Spiritual), and the Tom Crean adventure.

For the spices there were a number of posters set up around the room. We had to go around read each one and read the statements on each poster. If we had done the statement in the last few months we put a tick beside it on a post it. Once we were done we could easily see what spices we were good at and what needed more work for us to be better people.

There were another few games including a relay race. Then we went home.