ANZAC Day March

Last Monday was ANZAC Day and I have to say I am very proud of being a Cub Leader for Beenleigh. We had 22 Cubs registered to attend and of those we had 20 show up. 2 pulled out due to illness. Considering that this year the march was in what would have to be the longest weekend ever, was an awesome result.



Our cubs also walked tall and stayed in formation the entire way. When you look around at the numbers, outside of the military aligned groups, that the schools had only a couple attending, we were one of the largest groups to show.



Not only did our Cubs walk tall, they also behaved during the ceremonial section of the morning. I don't believe any of us leaders had to pull our cubs into line for misbehaving. When we can take our cubs out and see them in this light we show how great our group is and I know from some of the comments on the way through the march that we were well noticed.

ANZAC Day is an important part of Scouting, we have a military link with Lord Baden Powell, but also on the wall we have all our past Scouts that lost their lives in the wars, and if I recall I think one was even awarded a Victoria Cross for the efforts. So it is important for us to attend to show respect for their efforts.

ANZAC Day March is part one to earning the Our Heritage Badge for 2011. I am working on organising a night at the RSL to look over the items they have which will finish off the requirements for the badge.

To parents, thank you for bringing your cubs along on a weekend that was odd due to the number of public holidays. I am truly grateful for making our participation well represented.

Camp Ahead

Camp is upon us. Cubs are getting excited for our Movie Camp. Tonight I set the cubs a task to help prepare them for camp.

Each bunk house they will sleep in will be called a dressing room, and each dressing room will have a star attached. Each star has a name on them. 5 boys , 2 girls and 6 directors/producers.

The cubs were each given one of the following names to go away with and tell me who the star was, what type of movie they made and some names of movies they made.

• Charlie Chaplin
• John Wayne
• Harrison Ford
• Miley Cyrus

Leaders were taksed with telling me the name of movies made by the following:

• Penny Marshall
• Steven Spielberg
• Barbara Striessand
• Clint Eastwood
• Walt Disney
• Ron Howard

I also set the Cubs 2 other questions that will earn extra reward if they can answer the question:

1. Who was Fred MacMurray and what movies did he star in?
2. What movie did Fred MacMurray star in that was related to Scouts?

If they get it right they will earn 3 rewards for the effort.

Looking forward to movie camp.

Bagheera

Introduction to Pen Pals

Hi Everyone,

Tonight our cubs explored the world of writing to our pen pals in Anthem, Arizona, USA. We had a brainstorm session to seek questions and what they should put in the letter. As time ran out for us to write the letters out I decided to put this email out with the questions, and have your Cub send back a response so I can forward on to our contact in the US.

The cubs will earn a badge if we keep this communication open, this is the starting point. Also, if the Cub respond the email can help them earn credit towards their IT badge also. I have set a deadline of May 10 to complete this task.

Format for the email below:

===================

Hello, my name is _________________,

I am a Cub Scout from Beenleigh, QLD, Australia.

My Hobbies are .........

My Favourite thing to do is .........

My Pets are .........

My favourite thing of being in Cubs is .....

At Cub Scouts we do the following fun activities .......

============

The cubs then decided that they would ask the Anthem pack the following questions, which will be tagged to the end of each email/letter we send out.

1) Do you call it Cubs Scouts in the US, and if not what do you call it?

2) What do you do in Cubs?

3) What camps do you do and what types of themes have they had?

This is a base point to build on, eventually I hope to do a Internet hook up later in the year at the next sleepover to meet and greet them.

Regards,

Bunnings Night

After much planning and asking from the cubs to bang things together, we held a night at Bunnings Underwood. The cubs were given a chance to make a bookcase for a desk.

I would like to thank Bunnings for taking our 23 charges and give them the opportunity to use their hands. It was obvious that some of our cubs have not been exposed to a hammer and nail much, while others surprised me at how quickly they got it done.

At the end we had the cubs do a hunt around Bunnings for a list of items and they had to come back with an aisle number they existed in. Some cubs were clearly on the ball, as Bagheera had forgotten to lay  down that they could not ask for help. Oops, they did it again!

See the videos.

Cub Sleepover – Mar 19

Finally it was here, the Sleepover that we had to have to prepare us for Cub Camp in May. What a fantastic afternoon and night it was too. In all we had 24 cubs sleepover and 6 Leaders/Helpers.

The object of the weekend was to have the cubs learn to think ‘outside the square’, think creatively and put this in situations that would help develop their character and personality. All I can say is that after the weekend I am now seeing some of our quieter Cubs in a totally different light. No more will they suck us in to think they are ‘meek and mild’ – Ha!

After fearing the we would be in trouble due to wet conditions. We were able to come up with games that were indoors. There is nothing like a game of indoor bean bag hockey to get the cubs fired up and working together. The timing worked well, as Jason from the QLD Theatre Company arrived just before 1, and he stayed after seeing our charges going nuts!

Jason was great fun, he worked our Cubs hard. He was able to build our Cubs up from a series of basic games to some really hard activities that stretched some of the Cubs. Initially the first activity was to walk around the den and stop when told. After a while he started to add a Clap and a Jump. The Cubs had to do the actions spoken and freeze when told. This was fairly easy for most of our cubs, but that was just the start of some hard work ahead.

Next Jason made the Cubs do the opposite to what he was asking. So he took the first game and turned it around. Whenever he said Clap, they had to jump. When he said Stop they had to continue walking. It was fun to watch and in the end he was able to eliminate all Cubs to 1.

From here we went into a game of ‘Get to know you’. Jason had all cubs and a leader – me – sit on the ground in teams. In the centre he put up a sheet, he then got a team member from each side of the sheet to stand and when revealed say the name of the cubs on the other side. Great game and it will be something we will do again to help the other Cubs learn each others names.

The next activity was to have a conversation, but the twist was to continually talk over the top of the other, and not to laugh. It was amazing to see how many cubs could talk – some underwater. The ones that I thought would be great failed, while our quieter Cubs succeeded. I did well here too as did our every talkative secretary – Yvette.

After this we had a game where the cubs were being interviewed, and the only response was ‘sausage’. The object was to make the Cub being questioned laugh. Some were surprisingly good, but the best was when Raksha got caught out tricking her son LMc, and then realising she had to get up and be interviewed.

 

Continuing on the Cubs then were giving another interview task to explain an imaginary item. Jason was interviewing and asking questions one Cub – KP – certainly went the extra distances. Purple elephants in a huge box, that ended up having tigers, with a stove to cook Jason. He had us laughing. Others took the mickey out of Bagheera.

It certainly was a great session. The cubs and us leaders got a heap out of it. We will do it again in the future. The best bit was being able to give our cubs a task after Jason had left to come up with their own skits. They were tasked with getting a piece of clothing and a prop, and in teams of four create a skit. See the results in the videos below.

After this we settled into Pizza for dinner, made popcorn, set for bed and watched ‘The Sorcerer’s Apprentice’, ‘Jimmy Neutron’ and ‘Up’. By 11:30 all Leaders were crashing, but the Cubs wanted more, as always. However, it was getting late and we had to be up early for the big Sleepover Breakfast, pack up and go home.

Sleepovers are fun, and we will be doing another in the 2^nd half of the year. What theme will we come up with next?

A Game we played.

Beenleigh Scouts YouTube Channel

This is our new area for hosting our Videos. These links are only available if we publish them. Only those with the link can get to the videos.

http://www.youtube.com/user/BeenleighScouts?feature=mhum