Woggleknot.com – An Explorer Scout's Blog

I said there was going to be 12 places and over one hundred people, but that was wrong. There’s 15 places and 60 people took part – so I have a better chance of getting a place. It was a really good day – the first half of the day my group were doing survival activities. We learnt about the best way to light fires and the best kindling to use. I missed most of this one because I had to go to my interview (which I think went okay). After that, we learnt how to make food to take with you on the go. We mixed flour, wheat grains and fruit together to make a dough then flattened it and put it on tin lids and left it on the fire for a few minutes – we now had biscuits! But mine was rock solid and I couldn’t even get it off the tin lid – I had to scrub it off ): . We then went to the next activity and we made a shelter out of a big plastic sheet and rope. These activities were really fun, so I’ll have to make sure I go to the survival camp at Blackhills in july!

After lunch, we played a few team games. These were tricky and required quite a bit of thought and planning. My favourite game was one where you had to fill a pipe with water so the toy ducks at the bottom would float up and come out. However, the pipe had lots of holes in that we had to cover up or else the water would leak out. We all ended up getting soaked!

I’m not sure really sure If I’ll get a place on Jamboree – I really hope I do. But if I don’t, at least I had a lot of fun on both selection weekends!

This saturday coming up I’ll be taking part in county jamboree selection. In February I went on a selection weekend for my district but I didn’t get a place. Then, there was 3 places for 12 people. This time, there’s 12 places for over one hundred people – so the chance of getting a place is even lower. I really hope I succeed this time!

The event is going to be held at Blackhills Campsite. There’s going to be outdoor, team building activities but I don’t know what we’ll be doing. They’ll want to see how we work as a team and watch how we interact with other people. If building a fire is one of the activities I just hope that It doesn’t rain! It’s hard to get a good fire going with wet wood and it usually creates a lot of smoke – this means we’ll stink for the rest of the day.

Everybody has to give a 3 minute presentation about “The World Jamboree in Sweden 2011″. I’m planning on including a few interesting facts about Jamborees and scouting in Sweden. Does anybody know any? Please comment!

Chris at Jabbering All Day Long is holding a competition – and the prize is a copy of the scouting skills book which I reviewed here. Make sure you enter because it’s a great book to have in your collection, especially if you’re a scout.

There’s 2 copies up for grabs and all you have to do is answer a fairly easy question.

Check out the rules and enter here!

This is becoming a bit of a habit – I’m making a post a whole week after I did something. Last weekend I was on a young leader training course at Bradley Wood (which I seem to be spending a lot of time at recently).

I completed 5 Modules (A-E):

• Module A, Prepare for take off! - This was all about Child Protection, Bullying and stuff.
• Module B, Taking the lead – This was about different leadership styles and when to use them.
• Module C, That’s the way to do it! – In this one we learnt different ways of instructing young people.
• Module D, Kids Behaving Badly – This was about how to deal with challenging behaviour and we learnt about possible causes – such as things happening at home.
• Module E, Game on! – This was about how to organise games and how to use them as a tool to teach young people

If you only look at this list the weekend sounds a bit boring, but it was AMAZING FUN. I met quite a few new people there and the presentations were interesting with lots of activities in between – this gave us lots of chances to talk and get to know each other. If you’re a young leader and haven’t done the training – DO IT! It’s worth it.

Anyway, I’m off camping now (again) so I better get my stuff ready!