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Ash Cub Pack

This term we have been quite sporty as we have been trying out new activities for part of our Fitness challenge badge. The cubs were willing participants when Iain showed us a few Jutitsu techniques, firstly on his very brave assistant, Stephen!

We hope to have a coaching session with the Dorking Phoenix Basketball club and an evening learning some cool moves from a tutor in the style of Street Dancing (indoors!) and Freestyle dancing.

The cubs have been learning first aid skills with the help of the Leatherhead St John Ambulance for the cubs’ Emergency Aid badge. The cubs tried out placing each other in the Recovery position and it was unusually quiet when half the pack were pretending to be unconscious! Well done to our Ash cubs who earned some more badges at the District’s Badge day in February.

We formally invested 5 new cubs in the presence of our new Pack flag which contrasted with the rest of the meeting’s fundraising activities for Comic Relief. Comical activities invented by the cubs included eating a jam doughnut with no hands and no lip-licking, a Big Clothes relay race, apple – bobbing, joke-telling and red balloon races!

In the summer term we will be focusing on the older cub’s Personal challenge part of their Silver Awards where they will be pursuing a challenging task over an 8 week period, giving an account of it to the rest of the pack and running an activity for their fellow cubs. Some of Greville Scouts are kindly helping us practice some “traditional scouting skills” which we hope to be using at our pack camp at Boidier Hurst in June. We hope some cubs will be participating in the St Georges Day service at Ashtead in April, the District cross country run in June and kayaking on the River Wey.

We will be saying farewell to fifteen of our cubs who are due to start at Scouts in September – we wish them continuing Adventures in Scouting!

Many thanks to Alex and Andrew, both Explorer Scouts who have been helping us as part of their Duke of Edinburgh Awards – the leaders and the cubs have enjoyed having them at our activities.

Thanks to our cubs’ parents for their help in our activities.

We are happily using our temporary meeting place at Effingham Scout HQ but we are looking forward to using our own new Scouting Centre – thanks to all those who are working so hard planning the building of it and the fundraising. It was a real boost to the project to have our Chief Scout Peter Duncan “cutting the turf” for our new HQ in March. Peter has a genuine and infectious enthusiasm for Scouting and like us, is keen to develop Scouting for our next Centenary!

Claire Thomas and Alison Foster

You may like to look at the Scout Association’s website www.scouts.org.uk/cubs.