Founders’ Day is a celebration held on the birthday of the founder of Scouts, Lord Baden-Powell and his wife, Olave Baden-Powell, founder of guides (both 22 February). This year we marked this with a fun day (albeit a couple of days later) in the outdoors. Mixing Joeys, Cubs and Scouts from across the Port Hacking District we were learning and practising scouting skills with land and water activities.
The first activies were by the water on the shore at Botany Bay. This was the first time in canoes on the water for many of the youngsters in the joeys. The activity was organised and supervised by the team from Lilli Pilli group who have a lot of experience in water activities. Members from their venturer group were out on the water to coach and corral the novices.
While the canoeing group was on the water, the other teams were pitted against each other in variants of soccer and hockey on the beach.
After lunch, we swapped to dry activities which gave the joeys and cubs the opportunity to show how they work together in teams and to help them develop problem solving skills.
The giant ball was put to use as the teams were set the task of supporting the ball above the heads of the team members. Caringbah’s first attempt was 5.65 seconds. After a bit of coaching from the Alcheringa leaders they easily managed the 60 second target.
The joeys showed some amazing patience. Having achieved two seconds in practice, they surpassed the cubs’ time recording a whopping 1 min and 18 seconds.
The scouts had assembled the some trebuchets for a water sponge battle. The team members took it in turn to load and fire the sponges using the machines. After the well ordered battle, the participants took the chance to take a more direct approach to delivering sponges to their adversaries with more traditional sponge throwing.
Giant Jenga was popular with the added twist that several people were moving blocks together. The inevitable end is always greeted which a mixture of excitement and disappointment!
Map reading skills of an unconventional sort were required on the day. The grid laid out had safe squares and danger squares. With no information on which squares where which, the members had to find this out by trial and error to get to the other side without treading on a danger square. With each step they were seeking the re-assurance of a declaration “safe” rather than the shock of a shrill blast on the whistle and a return to the start. Learning from the previous participant, the next one had to try to progress further to get the team to their goal.
After a fabulous day, Kooka and Akela thanked all of the leaders and parents who had helped, either on the day or in planning the event.
The whole group gave Akela a big B-R-A-V-O-O-O.
