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Beavers Bablake District Christingle

December 7, 2024 🔗

What do you get when you wrap a ribbon round an orange, fill four toothpicks with sweets and stick those into the orange, add a candle and light it? A Christingle, of course!

These Beavers are concentrating hard while they put their sweets onto their cocktail sticks. One is finding it easier than the other!

These two Beavers and their Young Leader are finishing up their Christingles, getting their loaded cocktail sticks stuck into their oranges.

The Beavers had a great time joining other Beavers and Squirrels from Bablake District at Saint Thomas' Keresley for their annual Christingle. It's always great to see lots of Beavers join together, sing a few carols and celebrate the beginning of Advent.

The Beavers and their Young Leader have finished making their Christingles.

All the Christingles are lit and giving a soft glow to the Beavers' faces.

Week 12: December 2-5

December 6, 2024 🔗

The Scouts were led by one of their own this week, as Gabe taught them how to make a variety of Christmas origami decorations. They also made dot paintings, copying the style of Aboriginal art in Australia. The Scouts certainly seemed to be enjoying themselves. At the end of the evening, they were given the badges they'd earned this term and the medals for the shooting competition were awarded. Well done to the winners!

One Scout is demonstrating to the others how to make an origami star.

Concentrating hard on their designs, the Scouts are working on dot paintings inspired by Aboriginal art in Australia.

One of our Scouts made this gorgeous piece of dot art, of a flower.

The Bronze, Silver and Gold medal winners of the group's shooting competition earlier this year look rather pleased. The gold winner is cheekily biting his medal.

The Cubs had a full night on Tuesday, squeezing in all the badgework they could into one evening! They located services on a map of the local area, talked about renewable energy and played a related game, before wrapping the evening up with more games. The Howlers won the firelighting competition this week. Well done!

The Cubs are working together to find where services are located on a local map.

A Cub is trying to get her cotton wool lit in order to win the firelighting competition. Her Sixer is giving her tips from behind her shoulder.

Thursday evening, the Beavers got to make simple water filters using cotton wool, sand and gravel. It's always a popular and memorable activity with the young people. It's amazing how the filthy, muddy water turns into crystal clear water, if the Beavers build them right!

This Beaver is following instructions and carefully following the groove as he cuts around the bottle.

These Beavers did not follow instructions, and their bottle has been cut wonky, so it's not standing up straight. Oops!

One of the Beavers exclaims, "I found a gem!" as she finds a piece of quartz in her gravel she's adding to her water filter.

These two Beavers look amazed at the clear water their filter is producing from the filthy water that was poured into it.

The water filters did their job to varying degrees of success, one being visibly cloudier and the other end of the row looking really clear.

Cubs Bablake District Christingle

December 3, 2024 🔗

What do you get when you wrap a ribbon round an orange, fill four toothpicks with sweets and stick those into the orange, add a candle and light it? A Christingle, of course!

These five Cubs all look rather pleased with their Christingles. Some of them are making silly faces for the photo.

The Cubs had a great time joining other Cubs from Bablake District at St Mary Magdalen for their annual Christingle. It's always great to see lots of Cubs join together, sing a few carols, donate selection boxes to those less fortunate and celebrate the beginning of Advent.

These Cubs are being very careful with their lit Christingles.

This Cub looks very happy to have her Christingle lit.

Beavers Christmas Sleepover

December 1, 2024 🔗

The Beavers kicked off the first advent weekend with a Christmas themed sleepover. For many of the Beavers, it was their first time coming on a Beavers night away. The night began with a snowball fight, to burn off some of that excitable energy the Beavers had arrived with! The Beavers and their leaders had a blast chucking the snowballs at each other (and hoarding the snowballs to attack others in rapid-fire, in some cases).

Cheeky grins on faces as the Beavers choose their next snowball target.

This cheeky Beaver has gathered an armful of snowballs to chuck at her leader. Uh oh!

What a funny fellow this Beaver is. Instead of throwing his snowballs at others, he's holding them like big cheeks next to his face. He'd better watch out, another Beaver is trying to take one from him!

Looks like two of the Beavers decided to get their leader, as snowballs fly toward the camera. Two other Beavers are diving to grab a snowball to throw at someone else and several Beavers are chucking their snowballs at each other in the background.

Next up was a Christmas tree that needed decorating, so the Beavers coloured in some gift tags and made a really long paper chain. One of the leaders even coloured in a Christmas mandala to use as a star (she loves a bit of colouring!). The Beavers all took turns putting their decorations on the tree, and two Beavers took charge of wrapping that long chain around the tree until it was all done. They did a wonderful job!

Several Beavers are working on their colouring, while two others look through the pencils for the right colour.

The Beavers are sat round the table, colouring in gift tags to use as decorations on their little tree, while a leader colours in a mandala to use as a star.

A group of Beavers are working as a team to make their paper chain longer so it can be wrapped around the Christmas tree. One Beaver is holding a swag of chain while the others work to attach their short chains together.

These two Beavers took on the task of making sure the paper chain is wrapped nicely all around the Christmas tree, and are adding on extra rings to the chain, as they decided it wasn't long enough yet.

That done, everyone chose their sleeping partner for the night, put their tent up with help from a leader and set their beds up inside. Once their bags were all repacked, everything looked nice and cosy for the evening.

With the help of a leader, these two Beavers are getting their tent set up for the night. They look like they're having fun threading the poles into place.

These two girls have got their tent all set up and ready for sleeping later. It looks cosy in there!

Making beaded snowflakes proved a little challenging, as the Beavers needed adults to fold the wire over the last bead, and if it was tipped over before that happened, all the beads came sliding off! The Beavers did really well, though, and there were all sorts of interesting patterns on their snowflakes. They decided those should go on the tree until home time, so the Beavers each found a spot and hung their newest ornament, after attaching a name tag to each one.

The Beavers are being extra careful while getting their beads onto their wire snowflakes. This Beaver is using a different pattern on each branch of his snowflake.

These two boys are helping each other with their beaded snowflakes.

Time for a snack and film! Christmas cake, mince pies, lebkuchen and toffee popcorn served up with hot chocolate or mulled apple juice was a nice treat before the film began and everyone settled in to their tents to watch. Surprisingly, only two Beavers fell asleep during the film (there are usually more!). Eventually, they all settled to sleep, even the chatterboxes.

The Beavers are all snuggled up in their beds, watch their Christmas film with the glow of the Christmas lights above them.

The next morning began with a round of pass the parcel, followed by breakfast.

Still in their pyjamas, the Beavers are playing pass the parcel next to the Christmas tree, with a little something for everyone. There's a pile of torn wrapping paper in the middle of the circle.

A Beaver clutches a long-legged gonk ornament in her hands, the prize from pass-the-parcel. She's got a smile on her face as she lifts him in triumph.

There were two more crafts the Beavers could do if they wanted to, which almost everyone chose to do both. They coloured in wooden reindeer (popping them on to the tree with the other decorations) and made Christmas bead bracelets. As the Beavers finished, they joined into a ring toss game, taking turns wearing the inflatable reindeer antlers.

With a big smile on her face, this Beaver is showing off her wooden reindeer decoration that she's coloured in. It looks lovely, with stripy candy cane antlers!

These two Beavers are carefully threading beads onto elastic to make Christmas bracelets. One Beaver is being very kind and making hers for her brother.

Two Beavers take turns tossing their inflatable rings through the air to land on the reindeer antlers worn by the other Beaver. A green ring is flying through the air towards the antlers. Will it miss?

By the sounds of things, everyone had a great time, and even managed to get some sleep in! Merry Christmas, everyone!

It's been a lovely Christmas sleepover and the Beavers are all posing in front of the Christmas tree they decorated. They are a cheeky lot.

Week 11: November 25-28

November 29, 2024 🔗

The Scouts had fun using our group's new laptops, that we received through the #CovConnects donation scheme, to research various natural disasters and the support services who assist when disaster strikes. Natural disasters happen all over the world and our Scouts were having a blast juggling their resource balloons, to demonstrate how hard it is to prioritise and use the support services during a disaster.

This group of four Scouts seem really interested in what they've found out on the group's new laptop.

The Scouts are trying to keep all their balloons in the air, but there are a lot of them!

Tuesday night was team games for the Cubs and they were in high spirits all night! They had a great time playing Interceptor, Pass the Button, the Spoon Game and Crab Football. Unfortunately, the Cubs ran out of time for their firelighting race this week.

"Hold on, whose spoon is this?" Cubs try to work out which way to swap spoons to get them back to their owner.

A couple of these Cubs are jumping high in an effort to intercept the ball being thrown by the other team, while the others cheer them on in excitement.

As part of their badgework, the Beavers learned about endangered species and made animal masks of their favourite endangered animals. Tigers and pandas and rhinos, oh my! They also told each other about a time when they did their best, which had a wide variety of tales being told.