Reminders & key information:

This edition’s reminders:

Beavers

Castors and Boomers – Tuesday and Wednesday Beavers will be producing special poppy rocks to remember the fallen of the two World Wars as named on Penistone’s memorial and making pictures from natural materials of autumn. Given the Beavers will be crafting, please send your young person in “messy” clothes and a coat.

Millstones –  Friday Beavers, will be having a Halloween party.

Additionally, Castors, over the coming months, will be sending their new beaver “Bernie” home with a Beaver each week, along with an action camera so they can get some photographs over the following week. The instructions for the photographer badge will be accompanying Bernie and the camera; we hope that all Beavers will have the opportunity of working towards that badge. Once we have got through all of the Castors Beavers, Boomers will then get the opportunity too.

Cubs

Alegre – please look out for an email this week with details of our section plans.

Bella Vista  –  will be building fires and doing some backwoods cooking. Please make sure your Cub is wearing sturdy footwear and has a coat.

Raptors  –  will be making “guys” ahead of Bonfire Night. If you’ve newspapers you can send with your Cub, please do so – we will need them to stuff the guys with.

Scouts

Enigma –  will be meeting at Quest Taekwondo.

Wibbles – please look out for an email this week with details of our section plans.

Viernes – will be seeing which Patrol can become virtual millionaires as they take part in our Trading Post activity.

Explorers

Please look out for an email this week with details of our section plans.

Everyone

  • It will soon be Remembrance Sunday. This is the only compulsory event in our group calendar. Please make sure that your young person will be available. Sections will soon be putting forward their flag bearers, assistants and wreath layers. Full details regarding meeting times for the parade and service will be shared soon – the dedicated event page can be found here.
  • Uniform – If your young person needs a uniform, we need you to place orders via our website. You can find our web store right here. We take PayPal, or you can choose to pay cash on collection. Those who have recently placed orders, we’ve received our Scout Shop fulfilment and will, therefore, be able to provide ordered uniform on section nights.
  • We have a number of sections that, due to other adult commitments, regularly need additional support from other section leaders or parents/guardians. The group can only continue to provide a challenging and fulfilling programme whilst it has sufficient adults involved. If you can help, in any way, we would love to please hear from you. It could be in a non-child facing role and does not need to be every week. For more details, please see the following post we shared where Bear Grylls asked for your support.

Jamboree

  • A reminder that we are having a textiles collection at October half term so please, if you’re having a sort out, we’ll love to be able to recycle your stuff; however, please don’t bring anything in just yet as we don’t have space to store it! Clean usable clothing and textiles including curtains, bags, belts, shoes, soft toys but please no pillows, cushions or duvets. Thank you!

Leaders

First Aid training – Just a reminder that we have some spaces remaining on the adult first aid training course (4th Nov). 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:

Grant used to purchase kayaks and equipment

The group are incredibly thankful for a grant from Blackstone Edge Wind Farm Community Benefit Fund. We’ve used the monies to purchase six kayaks for young people and two instructor kayaks. We also have wetsuits, wind jackets, buoyancy aids, paddles, spraydecks, helmets and on top of this, a sign-written trailer to haul it all about in! You can see the post we shared over the weekend giving details of our purchases here.

Tie-dye  t-shirts

Cubs from our Alegre pack made tie-dye t-shirts. The cubs loved doing this; we almost had to cancel due to a leader shortage. Thankfully, we had a fantastic response from the wider leader team offering to help so that the meeting could go ahead and the young people not miss out.

Creative Challenges

Scouts from our Wednesday troop caught up on some of their Creative Challenge badgework. There were some great examples of Hamas bead decorations and everyone put in lots of effort to make them scout themed. Additionally, we managed to eventually catch up with making penny stoves and we will be testing these out next week. Young Leaders Jacob and Christopher ran a fantastic base which was the most difficult of the evening. The final challenge of the evening was to create a harvest-themed corn sheaf from salt dough. Superb team efforts made amazing creations and these will soon be baked.

Quest Taekwondo

Wednesday beavers had fun on Thursday at Quest Taekwondo. They practised different kicks and punches and watched some live video of some professionals in a competition.

Home help

This week the Raptors completed some of their ‘Home help’ badge element. They learned how to make a bed, iron their neckers, sew on a button and sort washing. The remaining elements will be sent home as a sheet to do with a responsible adult at home. We’re looking forward to seeing the results!

Sorry we didn’t get a picture

Lots of other activities took place this week, but we didn’t necessarily get a photo:
  • Viernes Scouts held a troop forum, produced posters advertising Scouting in the local area and worked through some gaps in challenge badges around health/wellbeing.
  • Bella Vista Cubs took part in our Trading Post activity.
  • Millstones made autumn leaf pictures.
  • The Jamboree Team organised Ceilidh went down a storm at Thurgoland Village Hall. Thank you to everyone who took part and made the event a sold-out success.
  • Cub Leader Susie Roach and her father, Papa Roach (recently retired Group Scout Leader) have made it back off of Mount Kilimanjaro. They’ve had a welcome shower, meal and rested overnight. As you read this they will be travelling back to the UK and are due to arrive in London on Monday morning. We’re looking forward to sharing some photos of their challenge in the coming week; if you’ve not yet sponsored them, or would like to know more about their efforts around Diabetes, please see the post here.
And finally:

Fantastic achievements by our young people

We are so proud of all of our young people; however, we are especially proud of the recent list of so many Penistone names being sent through to the Barnsley District team ahead of an Awards Night recognising Scouting achievement.
This time around, we have:
  • 6 Chief Scout Bronze Awards
  • 10 Chief Scout Silver Awards
  • 18 Chief Scout Gold Awards
  • 1 Chief Scout Platinum Award
  • 4 Duke of Edinburgh Bronze Awards
  • 2 Duke of Edinburgh Silver Awards
  • 3 Young Leader Buckles
The dedication and determination of our Group’s young people continue to be outstanding. We are confident that we will be adding many more people to the list of achievements. Parents/Guardians, if your young person has recently received one of these awards, please look out for an invitation via post to the District Awards night (23rd October).
A massive well done to you all; we will be sharing full details and some photos soon.