Yes, it’s great to be back; enjoying our time together, playing games, learning new things, and generally just having fun with friends.

Talking about friends, we’re pleased to have welcomed and invested four new members to our Pack. Welcome Elodie, Nathan, Fin and Finlay.

This term our programme has been focused on 3 Challenge Badges: our World, our Skills and our Adventure.

In the summer evenings we took a walk around the village, drawing maps and making notes on the location of essential services and the shops we have here in Burscough. We used our findings and the materials collected to make collage maps.

Again, taking advantage of the warmer, lighter evenings we learned; how to set and light a fire, which materials work best as kindling and how to sustain the fire once lit. We really enjoyed cooking over an open fire making; bread twists and bananas and chocolate, and as you would expect of a Camp fire, marshmallow smores. Yummy we’ll have to do this one again very soon.

To coincide with COP meeting in Glasgow we explored what climate change is and the potential impacts of it on our World. We decided that each one of us could help make a difference by Reducing, Reusing and Recycling. We designed recycling dairies and kept records of the amount and type of materials we were able to recycle at home. We then went on to reuse some of recycled materials to make wind speed and rain gauges. Very timely considering the weather in recent weeks!

As the clocks turned back in autumn we learned about the importance of light in our World. To start the term, we had great fun cutting and carving Pumpkin faces, great to see so many imaginative, even if a little scary faces. Well done Cubs!

During Diwali we enjoyed making traditional sweets and learned how light is at the centre of this religious festival, celebrated by many people around the World.

And ten at the start of Chanukah we were delighted to have been joined by Hayley Holmes who told us about this important Jewish festival and how it is celebrated. Hayley kindly explained to us how; prayers, the daily lighting of candles, the breaking, and enjoyment of food is at the centre of this celebration.

Continuing with the theme of light we learned about the major constellations and went for a night-time walk across the muddy field to see if there were any we could recognise. Guess what it was cloudy, but we still had a great time! Another enjoyable evening we’ll be keen to repeat.

Finally, in preparation for our Christmas break, we enjoyed making, decorating and stitching Christmas stockings. Cubs quickly mastered the blanket stitch, regrettably we can’t say the same for the leaders.

 

MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM CUBS

Cubs is for boys or girls aged 8-10, and anyone from 7 years can join. If you would like to find out more, please give me a call on 01704 894117 (or e-mail Akela@ourflat.f9.co.uk).

To continue providing all these activities to our full pack we need more help, ideally on a regular basis but even just occasionally on camps, or day trips etc. Perhaps you have a skill you could share with us? Scouting isn’t just for children to enjoy; it’s for everyone!

I hope to see you soon, Brian Cox (Akela)