Back to the ‘Patrol Activity Award’ and the final requirement, gain a collective Achievement Badge.
At the next Patrol -in- Council and Patrol Leaders Council meeting the Scouts decided to do the “Entertainers Badge” as the final part of the ‘Patrol Activity Award’.
At this point the Scouts where going to stage a play, together, as a group, for the parents and friends but after much, discussion and exchanging of ideas, this became two separate ‘plays/sketches’ and two different groups of Scouts doing them.
During the next three Troop meetings a variety of rehearsals took place and it became apparent that things were getting nowhere, and some members of the group were becoming quite disruptive and using every opportunity to “lark-about”.
Decision time, how to ‘take charge’ but still allow the interested ones, to continue with the requirements to gain the “Badge” without it interfering with Troop nights, a discussion took place for all the Scouts involved, the requirements and possible alternatives where discussed and finally it was decided that one group would organise a walk, take slides and organise a presentation using the slides in conjunction with tape recordings, the other group decided on a magic act, and a third produced a video on how to pitch a tent properly.
When everything was ready an entertainment night was prepared on one of the troop nights, and the separate items where presented together as one show, also included was a very interesting talk by one of the Scouts on budgerigars doing his “Smallholders Badge”. Presenting the entertainment this way allowed the Troop nights to continue without interference, it also gave them the added responsibility to deciding who was interested or not, and gave them more freedom to complete the show.
The night itself was a success and everyone enjoyed themselves but as usual the attendance by the parents could have been better, all the Scouts involved were awarded there ‘Entertainers Badge’ and later the relevant Scouts their Patrol Activity Award but I will explain how later along with the problem of parental participation.
While we had been preparing all this, Troop nights went on as usual, and now I will try to explain, how we overcame the difficulty of producing a workable but enjoyable? Programme, considering the previous organisation as mentioned before, first we had to overcome the youth club concept, and introduce some basic Scouting, hence the Patrol Activity Award. A number of the older boys, had got into the routine of playing contact games with the Scout Leader, this had left some of the younger ones just watching, also played were wide games, in the form of scavenger hunts etc, but the most popular was an obstacle coarse erected in the headquarters, with the game tig! Played on it, another game was ‘British Bulldog’ this I was told later, although not banned, was better not played. The playing of games, had become the main feature of the night, with some knot trying, and on one occasion I remember they made a rope out of wool, the most difficult thing I found in forming a programme, during those early days, was, trying to keep all the Scouts interested, but more so breaking a routine, along with gaining the confidence of the Scouts themselves, bearing in mind all that had been happening.
My first introduction to planning a program, and “indeed” forming some sort of structure, to troop nights, was from the Group Scout Leader, during those few weeks before he left.
We tried to find what the Scouts wanted to do ‘themselves’ and also include some of the previous activities, a form of brainstorming or perhaps the first Patrol in Council?
From this a programme was formed, or should I say a theme for that particular troop night, cooking, map reading, observation, etc, not to much at first, but just enough to get them interested, cooking was very popular both in and out, but a bit messy at times, cooking simple things at first, with or without utensils, keeping an extra eye on the fire, and gas rings, during those first months was essential, but eventually they became quite competent, when cooking outside, first they would have to collect wood (we are very lucky, having room to build fires, and having hedgerows with a plentiful supply of wood) and build the fire for themselves, this was very good practice, because within three years they had won the District camp cooking competition, and the County bake a cake in a camp oven competition.
