Reminders & key information:

This edition’s reminders:

Beavers

Colony meetings:

This week we will be going out and hiding the stones we painted last week. Please send your Beaver Scout with a coat and shoes suitable for walking up onto the trail. If any parents/guardians/carers can join us to ensure we have our safety ratios that would be helpful. If the weather is bad then we will be inside instead.

  • Boomers and Castors will BOTH be doing this Tuesday evening between 18:15 hrs and 19:30 hrs.
  • Millstones will be at gathering at their normal time and meeting place on Friday.
Badge work from the summer holidays

If your beaver scout completed any badge work during the summer holidays, e.g. the book cover / summer reading from our session at Penistone Library, please bring it in and hand it to your section leader.

Cubs

Alegre  – It’s our first week back so we’ll be welcoming beavers moving up, playing some team building games and getting back into the swing of a new term of cubs!

Bella Vista  – Lisa and Sarah have a messy treat in store; your cub may want to wear an old t-shirt under their jumpers.

Raptors  – We’ll be meeting at Cawthorne Parish Church (on Church Lane). We’ll be walking through the church grounds followed by a tour of Cawthorne Museum. Parents welcome to stay too, it is £2 donation per person . Cash on the night in cub in labelled envelopes please. Full details plus a map will be emailed out prior to the event.

Scouts

Enigma   –  Team building, games and planning for the term ahead. This will be at the normal times (19:00-21:15) on Monday.

Wibbles   –  Team building, code of conduct and the setting of individual objectives for personal challenges. This will be at the normal times (18:45-21:00) on Wednesday.

Viernes – First Aid (Level 3) for those who did not get the opportunity to this week. Those that did First Aid this week will be learning survival skills. This will be at the normal times (19:00-21:15) on Friday.

Explorers

  • The explorers will be building penny stoves. Please remember to bring empty drinks cans for this.
  • Young leader places are being sorted by Alison so if you still want to move around or try out a young leader place get in touch with her soon.
  • Reminder to work on D of E evidence for skills and physical sections. See Alison if unsure of what you need to do.

Everyone

Group Camp

  • The deadline for the £25 payments has now passed. If you haven’t yet paid your child’s balance, please hand it to your section leader at the start of your meeting this week. Cheques should be made payable to, “Penistone Scouts Camp Account”. Please note, the deadline for booking a place was the end of July – if you said yes but no longer require a place, the £25 is still due. As a charity we are not allowed to make a profit and therefore must budget based on the committed numbers.
  • Consent forms also need to please be returned. If you do not have access to a printer, please let your section leader know and they will endeavour to get you a paper copy you can complete and hand straight back in.
  • In line with the message Sam Hough emailed, if you can help over the weekend, your adult assistance will be gratefully received. This can be anything from supporting small groups of beavers or cubs, to catering or something else you might have in mind. Please contact Sam if you can help.
Group Executive
  • The group AGM will be held on Monday 24th September in the Beaver Lodge of the Scout Hut at 19:30 hrs.
  • We are going through a period of change with a new Group Scout Leader (GSL) being sought, an interim GSL currently in place and several current Executive members moving on to other things. It’s a great time to become involved as we move into the future and help deliver more #SkillsforLife to young people. If you can help us with this, or you’d like to know more, please take a look at the following post.
Ceilidh (Jamboree Fundraising)

The Jamboree team have arranged a Ceilidh for Saturday 13th October at Thurgoland village hall . This event is open to everyone and will be a great family occasion. Please see the dedicated event post for full details.

Leaders

First Aid training – Brian will be running a First Aid training session on Sunday 4th November. This is for adults and covers module ten of the Leader, Assistant Leader and Sectional Assistant training. For details of how to book a place, please see the dedicated event here.

With the reminders out-of-the-way, let’s recap the week.

This week:

Team building / New patrol leads

Alison had high praise for Wibbles, “Good to see everyone back in good spirits as well as three new cubs joining in. Played lots of team building games after appointing new Patrol and Assistant Patrol leaders. We worked on team building in small groups as well as the troop as a whole. Looking forward to seeing scouts return that couldn’t make the meeting last week and working more on team building and code of conduct as well as setting individual challenges for badge work.”

First Aid / Survival Skills

Viernes scouts split their programme in two. Half working on their level 3 Emergency Aid badges and the other half working towards their Survival Skills badge. Next week the two halves swap.

Welcome back

Some old faces rejoined the leader team at Scorpion Explorers – the evening’s theme was team work and games.

Stone painting

Beavers from all three colonies burnt off some energy playing games and painted / decorated stones in readiness for hiding them during the next meeting.

Thank you

Some of our leaders had their last meetings this week. Beavers waved Rowan off to University with a care package. And Wibbles said, “Bon Voyage” to Josh who has joined the Navy. Thank you so much to both of you!

Penistone Show

The Jamboree team controlled the car parking at Penistone show on Saturday. There were some great examples of how confidence is growing in everyone. This was evident given there were some challenges with the weather and building inter-personal skills with the public on the day.
Many thanks to all supporting parents that attended as well as Carolyn, Phil, Vicky and Alastair for supporting them. A massive thanks should also go to scouts Luke, Jack, Isaac, Elliott, Molly and Cassie, cub Abi, plus parents Steve, Peter and Anne for helping too; without you all we wouldn’t have managed the day.  All of these volunteers helped at the worst part of the day and got a soaking and we can’t thank them enough.

And finally:

Group communications

To complement our group’s communication backpack (Facebook, Twitter, the group website and Online Scout Manager) we’ve enabled the subscriber module on our website.

In layman’s terms, this means that when a new post is made on the group web-site, a notification and basic copy of the content will wing its way through the digital etha to your email inbox. The first example of this will have been the executive committee communication earlier in the week, and now this weekly round-up.

Scouting at Penistone is fantastic; we know we don’t need to hammer that fact home to our biggest fans: parents, guardians, carers and relatives! One key piece of feedback we have consistently received over the last twelve months of generating “Rewind” is the how you like the look ahead view and simple summary of the previous week. We hope the snapshot to your mailbox is as useful too.