2024 is shaping up to be another great year of Scouting for us and we have ambitious plans to extend our Scout Hut, replace the minibus and launch a second Beaver colony for 6 to 8 year olds all within the next 12 months!
My thanks to the leaders, volunteers, children and their parents who continue to make 1st Molesey such an exciting place to be a Scout.
Liam
Group Lead Volunteer
Squirrels
Squirrels had a very busy Spring Term!
We had a fantastic visit to Imber Court to meet the police horses and also had a brilliant evening with the Elmbridge police officers visiting us at the hut too. The squirrels learnt all about being a police officer and even got to sit in the police car and try on some of their equipment!
We enjoyed an evening with Wild about Britian who gave us the opportunity to meet some endangered species including Freddie the Tawny Owl, Snowdrop the African Hedgehog, as well as a toad and a snake! The children got to stroke and even hold the snake. We learnt about their habitats and what they like to eat.
Other activities included Pancake making, puzzles & games, Chinese new year celebrations and kindness rock painting.
Beavers
Beavers this Spring term have taken part in some favourite activities, such as cooking pancakes for Shrove Tuesday, indoor den building and crafting gifts for Mother’s Day. It was our pleasure to once again welcome mums and special people to our Mother’s Day Tea when the Beavers are given the opportunity to serve their mums with tea and cake. Our thanks to those who came along and helped make the evening special!
Another meeting saw us make our own passports so that we could travel to France, Japan, Australia and South Africa where we learned about those countries, tried their snacks and learnt their greetings (merci/arigato/dankie/thank you to those parents who contributed to our travels).
We also tried two new locations this term when we hired a pitch at the Xcel Sports Hub for some football fun and visited the newly opened Rock Up in Walton for some climbing adventure; both activities were successful.
We received a warm welcome to St. Paul’s church by Vicar Anne and enjoyed a tour of the church, rang a church bell, played the organ and lit candles. During Covid we made shadow puppets at home and this term decided to revisit the activity at the Hut with the Beavers showing us their creativity by designing shadow puppets and creating short plays before performing them for the other Beavers.
The Skills badge has “looking after your teeth” as one option so this term we included the Egg-cellent experiment in our science meeting. We discovered how different drinks affect our teeth by carrying out tests on the eggshells using fizzy drinks, coffee and vinegar.
At the beginning of February, many of our Beavers joined with 180 other Beavers when they attended the annual District Beaver Party at Hinchley Wood Secondary School for an afternoon of craft, games, decorating biscuits and watching a superb interactive show, the Wizard of Oz, performed by the Cat’s Grin Theatre Company.
Monday Cubs
We have had a busy and brilliant Spring term at Monday Cubs. Here are some of our highlights!
We started the term off by welcoming our new Cubs, and playing lots of getting to know you games to make sure everyone felt comfortable and one of the pack. We followed this by celebrating all things Robbie Burns by holding a Burns’ Night themed meeting, and learnt some Scottish dance moves and enjoyed shortbread by the fire.
We had an incredible visit from Wild About Britain who brought in different British Wildlife to teach us more about our wonderful, native animals and birds – the baby hedgehog was a particular hit! Pancake evening was a winner – with everyone flipping their own delicious treats.
This was ironically followed by a pack meeting on healthy lifestyles where we were able to guess how much sugar was in various drinks and checked how well we brushed our teeth using disclosing tablets. We cooked ourselves a healthy meal on the gas burners. There were lots of promises of cooking this meal for our families so hopefully this has happened!
A particular highlight however has to be our trip to Walton Fire Station. The Fire Fighters were kind enough to give us a thorough tour and demonstration of their station equipment, and even let us have a go at using the hoses. We all got a bit wet but it was totally worth it! We left feeling so appreciative at what these incredible people do – often alongside having other regular day jobs.
Of course we have also been busy developing our basic scouting skills; whittling, knots, lashing and fire making, and have enjoyed working as a team in various tasks – we spent an evening litter picking at Hurst Park, and worked together in small groups to find and collect rubbish. We’ve also played many, many fun team games!
We have really come together as a pack, and have enjoyed a varied and exciting term – with lots more to come this Summer!
Tuesday Scouts
Our first couple meetings of the New Year focused on Communication starting off with a Troop Forum where the Scouts provided feedback on the previous Term/Year of Scouting and gave input on collective goals & activities they would like to cover over the coming Term/Year. All of which contributed considerably to the YouShape award, with the following week finishing off the Communicator Badge where the Troop constructed simple Morse code oscillators and sent messages between themselves utilising the correct procedures.
In March we took part in the Esher District Day Hike with Scouts from both troops taking part in a challenging route on and around Chobham Common. Very muddy but lots of fun!
The Highlight of the Term came in the form of celebrating Burns Night with Scottish Dancing (Reels & Jig’s) and a supper of Haggis, Neeps & Tatties. In later weeks further sessions included Shrove Tuesday, getting arty with soap in the form of whittling Imperial Leather bars, while another saw the Scouts embody their inner Ken & Oppenheimer for an Oscars themed night. Our final weeks of the term saw us visit Polyapes, then finish with an Easter themed treasure hunt and quiz around the hut, where the scouts were able to egg-hibit their map reading skills.
As ever, our interim leadership team delivered a broad variety of activities. But an ongoing plea for help – if you have capacity to support us on a Tuesday evening (if you’d like to run or support any of our activities, especially if there is a skill that you have that you’d like to share, we’d love to hear from you).
Wednesday Scouts
Lots of fun again this term! As always the focus has been on having fun, experiencing adventure and learning new skills.
We were super excited to welcome 8 new scouts to the troop in January and so started the term with a reminder of our our Scout values, the words that underpin everything we do, how we act and the way we treat each other. Some senses challenges and teamwork games led to a lot of laughter and getting to know each other!
With nearly 40 scouts It can be tricky coming up with games that work in the hall when it’s cold and dark outside but we used plenty of team games to get to know each other, our new Scouts and work on our teamwork skills. We have visited Polyapes a lot this term for a chance to work on survival and bushcraft skills including knifework, firelighting and backwoods cooking. These evenings always go down well!
We had a lot of fun trying out our new Tomahawk throwing equipment and loads of success with the larger targets! Huge thanks to Andy from the county team for helping us secure this kit, we’ve loved sharing it with other Scout Groups too.
The Scout programme and badge scheme gives us plenty of opportunities to blend traditional skills with modern tech… digital skills are the survival skills of the future after all! The Wednesday troop have been trying a new orienteering/navigation platform called MapRun. It’s been a lot of fun trying out this new app in urban, open and wooded envrionments with great success and competition between our patrols!
In February we celebrated Chinese New Year and Pancake Day, stalwarts of the spring programme and enjoyed by all.
After Half Term the Royal Navy engagement team joined us to deliver a brilliant session on ehancing teamwork skills and working together to achieve great things. Access to brilliant opportunities such as these is one of the many benefits of being a Royal Navy recognised group and we are very proud of our continued affiliation and the opportunities it brings including visits by the team, as well as visits to ships.
Chef Chris joined us for ‘Chris and the Chocolate Factory’ where he taught the Scouts how to pipe and prepare delicious belgian chocolates, just in time for Mother’s Day! Hope they were enjoyed.
We finished the term with a visit to the new climbing centre in Walton!
The highlight of the Spring Term, by far, though, was our Easter Bushcraft adventure to White Beeches in Godalming. We were joined again this year by some friends from 9th Walton Scouts.
The weekend’s activities were designed by our Patrol Leaders and they had so much fun getting back to nature and developing team leader skills.
Big thanks to our wonderful Wednesday Scouts and the awesome team of volunteers for another fun-packed 12 weeks. See you soon!
Thursday Cubs
Thursday Cubs have had a blast this term, welcoming lots of new Cubs into Pack. We enjoyed celebrating Burns Night in January and learnt lots of new Scottish phrases. The shortbread tasting washed down with cans of Irn Bru certainly seemed to be a bit of a hit!
In February we joined together with Monday Cubs for a fantastic winter adventure weekend at Polyapes in Cobham. Kifework, axes, saws, pioneering, campfires, wide games, a hike and rifle shooting!
We enjoyed having a visit from some British wild animals and learnt lots of new facts about hedgehogs, snakes and owls. We had an opportunity to inspect owl poo close up which was surprisingly popular!
The Cubs were very fortunate to make use of the new first aid training equipment that has been gifted to us by the George Bairstow Charitable Trust (thank you!). First aid is such an important skill for everyone so it was a really wonderful to put it to good use helping our children develop these lifesaving skills.
Like Monday Cubs, we also thoroughly enjoyed our visit to Walton Fire station and want to say a bug thank you to Barry and his crew mates for making us feel so welcome. The Cubs loved taking part in tomahawk throwing and for many of them it was the first time they have been able to do this. We are so fortunate to have the kit to run this adventurous activity and we were very impressed with the number of Cubs who managed to get all three axes into the target first time!
Finally, one of our favourite weeks has to be Sixers Night. Our Sixers Night was hosted by three fabulous Cubs, Shayan, Kieran and Antoni who are all leaving us for Scouts in the summer term. They hosted a fabulous night and everyone thoroughly enjoyed taking part in their activities and learning new skills.
Well done Cubs, we look forward to even more adventures together in the summer term!
Explorers
Explorers have had another busy term with the programme being entirely youth-led!
Activities this term have included Taskmaster (dubious singing but also resourcefulness), baking cakes (we are a tart away from completing the chef badge), paper planes – evidently still fun when you’re 15!
A traditional trading post evening was also a lot of fun, each team competed by demonstrating their Scouting skills, imagination, resourcefulness and teamwork!
We also celebrated Shrove Tuesday with a pancake night, some pancakes more edible than others!
Jim led us on a hike in the Oxshott area (thanks Jim), 3rd Molesey kindly hosted us for an archery session at their HQ (thank Barry) and Max and Giles ran a brilliant evening of rifle shooting and tomahawk throwing at our HQ.
The explorers are looking forward to warmer weather, a slower river, and being able to get back afloat preparing for water based DofE expeditions!
We are looking for someone to lead the Explorers Thursday evening programme, so if you’d like to chat to someone about getting involved or finding out more please contact us.
Fundraising
Huge welcome to Jo Jethwa, our new fundraising coordinator. Jo is mum to a 1st Molesey Cub Scout and we are really glad to have her on board!
What’s the target?
We have a fundraising target of £10,000 for this year, so we really need everyone to get involved. This is much needed money for a new van so our young people can get all their equipment to the river and on camps.
Getting involved
We have a small fundraising committee with lots of ideas for new events, and we would love other people to come and join us.
As we put on events, we will be looking for subcommittees to help run them. This could be a group of volunteers interested in a specific event, or we may ask different groups to take on different events. The important thing to remember is that we need PARENT (and scout) volunteers. We are keen to move away from the leaders doing the bulk of the fundraising support because they already do so much for our children!
Please do get in touch if you would like to volunteer. This can be for specific events, generally helping out where needed, or you may have a specific skill you think could help us. We are also very happy to hear your fundraising ideas.
Thanks to the Molesey Beer Festival
Huge thanks to everyone that supported the Scout Group by visiting the Molesey Beer Festival. You’ve allowed us to purchase enough brand new tents to allow both of our Cub packs to go camping at once (60 children). We can’t wait to use them at District Cub Camp in June.
This is an important fundraiser for the group and we depend on your support.
Please share the dates and link to the website with your friends and family.
Thank you to Not Just Travel for their continued sponsorship
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