Getting 2025 off to a great start
We’ve made the most of the great weather and our new kit! A brilliant start to 2025 with over 200 of our young people enjoying a huge array of activities and new skills.
Thanks to the volunteers that have made it possible.
Liam
Group Lead Volunteer
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Squirrels
Squirrels had a very exciting start to the year. We had a great visit from a Samba workshop which involved the Squirrels playing some of the instruments, it was very noisy to say the least!
Science week was a big success with lots of experiments and messy fun! For Chinese New Year, the Squirrels made lanterns, learnt about the celebration, and tasted some Chinese food.
We’ve planted Sunflower seeds as part of our Let it grow badge, and we can’t wait to see how big they get.
We finish the term making some treats for mother’s day and maybe even a visit from the Easter bunny.
Monday Beavers
We’ve been busy at Monday Beavers this Spring term with a varied programme of activities that have included making toasties, learning first aid, cooking pancakes for Shrove Tuesday, going on a walk to practice our Green Cross Code as well as working on our Book Reader activity badge.
We had a fun evening with Lego – each Beaver was asked to choose 5 pieces of Lego to create something they’d like to take with them to a desert island and then they created their own desert islands; Beavers are so imaginative and let’s face it – who doesn’t like Lego?
This term our Young Leaders planned and led our meeting for celebrating Lunar New Year (fortune cookies are definitely a hit). After half term we visited Walton Firs for the younger Beavers to go caving, exploring 67 meters of tunnels, and for the older ones to go climbing (they can definitely reach the top!).
This term includes Mothering Sunday, so our Beavers beautifully decorated ceramic hearts for gifts and invited their mums/loved ones along to our Mother’s Day Tea when the Beavers can serve tea and cake to their loved one and they in turn get a chance to relax and chat! Our thanks to those who came along and helped make the evening special.
At the beginning of February, many of our Beavers joined with 194 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 of Wind in the Willows, performed by the Cat’s Grin Theatre Company.
End of term is quickly approaching but we still have Easter fun to look forward to.
Tuesday Beavers
Tuesday Beavers have had a successful spring term. We have had 24 children regularly attending our sessions this term.Our Beavers have had a range of experiences and have been able to work towards various badges over the last few weeks.
At the beginning of term, we welcomed six new Beavers and we learnt about what it means to be a Beaver scout reminding ourselves of the promise and law. Following on from this, we worked towards the book reader badge and then learnt about Chinese new year.
At the start of February the children were able to learn further elements of the Emergency aid and safety badges by learning about first aid and the green cross code. Towards the end of February we had a Lego challenge evening, where the children were able build an item they would have on a deserted island to help them.
In March, the children cooked and ate pancakes and enjoyed an amazing climbing and caving activity at Walton Firs activity centre. The children learnt about how to stay safe using the equipment and were able to challenge themselves when learning a new skill.
Towards the end of the term, the children did some Mother’s Day craft and then our Beavers hosted a Mother’s Day tea where they made scones and served them to their mums later in the evening.
Finally our Beavers played some Easter themed wide games at Hurst Park. During the term, our children have earned many different badges including the book reader, creative and emergency aid badges. Our Beavers have had a successful spring term and we look forward to more experiences and fun in the summer term.
Monday Cubs
The Monday Cubs have had another busy term, filled with new skills, adventure and lots of fun.
This term we’ve focused on skills, but have also tried to meet outside the Hut and in the community, making the most of the great weather.
Highlights in the first half term included an eggcelent teamwork evening in the form of an egg-dropping challenge and working on the Outdoor Challenge with skills such as cooking and first aid.
To celebrate Chinese New Year, Cubs worked together in their sixes to cook stir fry, before attempting to eat it with chopsticks.
We also visited Polyapes in Cobham for some outdoor skills, a chance to cook on the fire, play wide games in the dark, and whittle sharp sticks (using sharp knives).
We welcomed several new Cubs to the Monday pack this term, and we hope they’ve enjoyed their time with us so far!
After Half Term we focused of the Skills Challenge, with an evening enjoying some science experiments and demonstrating our local knowledge of Molesey with an urban navigation exercise.
Pancake day was celebrated, we also customised t-shirts with some fancy bleach art!
We ended the term with an amazing visit to RNLI Teddington Lifeboat Station, a litter pick in the local area and finally, a fun evening at Polyapes with rounders, games, and more fire and marshmallows.
Have a good Easter Monday Cubs!
Thursday Cubs
Thursday Cubs have had a cracking Spring term and it’s hard to believe it’s over as it’s whizzed by!
We have welcomed lots of new Cubs into our Pack who have fully embraced all of the opportunities on offer. The Thursday Cubs enjoyed celebrating Burns Night with an incredible evening led by Raffa. It included learning about the history of Burns Night, hearing a special poem and eating real haggis after it had been ceremoniously stabbed with a special knife. It was a very special evening and the Leaders were VERY impressed with the number of Cubs who were willing to try new foods!
We enjoyed cooking our own Chinese food as part of our Lunar New Year celebrations. We chopped, stirred, mixed and fried some very delicious food on the burners. The biggest box EVER of fortune cookies appeared and we all laughed at what some of our future predictions were.
We met Chris’ newest police puppy Apollo and listened carefullly to find out more about the training puppies have to go through before becoming fully trained police dogs. We loved giving Apollo lots of fuss and feeding him kibble, being mindful.of his sharp puppy teeth!
This term we’ve had opportunities to get out and about and used our map reading skills to find our way around the streets of Molesey to answer lots of questions. We also thoroughly enjoyed supporting our community by getting out on a much needed litter pick. We donned our high viz jackets, gloves and litter pickers and cleaned up 3 huge bags of litter. Several members of the public gave us their thanks for working hard so well done Cubs.
We spent an enjoyable evening making mini peg cars and learnt about the different components needed to make a moving vehicle. It was much more fiddly than it first appeared so a resilient attitude was definitely needed. It was worth it though when we got to race our own cars along upturned tables and find ways to modify and adapt our vehicles to make them even better.
We’ve learnt to make our own very unique t shirts using stencils and bleach. It was quite hard having to be so patient so see how our creations turned out.
To prepare for the Summer Term we spent some time learning about water safety and how to use our kayaks.
We all thoroughly enjoyed our trip to Teddington lifeboat station where we got to sit in different rescue vehicles and learn more about keeping safe on the river. These are very important skills to learn as a Sea Scout Cub Pack so thank you Teddington Lifeboat Station, and Nic for accompanying us.
It has been an incredibly packed term and we look forward to more adventures together in the warmer, brighter weeks to come.
Have a super Easter from the Thursday Cubs Team!
Tuesday Scouts
In 2025 we have provided a programme that mixes physical, technical and craft activities for the scouts. Starting the term, the scouts showed great imagination and creativity in making mini golf holes and clubs. This was preluded by them raiding their home recycling bins and transferring the contents to the hut, whereby they glued and taped bits together to make some near-impossible holes. The round that followed did see a few holes-in-one…and 20+ shot holes.
We tried an evening of miniature pioneering at the hut – with cocktail sticks and thread. It’s fair to say that binding cocktail sticks together with thread is not as simple as it might seem and perhaps, we’d be better off with the full-sized poles. More successful was the Lego model making – lots of creative ideas and an impressive volume of Lego at the hut (I think the Scouts were disappointed to finish that session…)
One session was spent soldering and understanding a little bit of electronics, which I understand was successful.
We spent a couple of sessions focussed on orienteering – the scouts used the lamposts to estimate 50metres and compasses to understand what bearings to take (i.e. the fundamentals of getting out and about safely in the countryside), which they were then able to apply in the dark at Polyapes. This fed into the Day Hike, where we had 7 Scouts (and one Wednesday Scout) in two teams taking part in a hike of around 10miles in the Godalming area. Our Scouts were not experienced enough to go alone in competition teams, but one of our teams (led by our Skills Instructor Giles) came 1st overall, which is pretty impressive, with the other team not far behind.
We celebrated Chinese New Year and learned about some traditions.
A popular evening this term was held at the Excel, where we played badminton. There were some interesting 3-a-side matches, played with some ropey old shuttlecocks, which were friendly and largely lacking in competition. Unlike our bucketball matches, which certainly raise the decibel level – I think the girls are 2 – 1 up in that.
We now prepare for the summer term, where we endeavour to get on the water as much as possible, weather and work commitments permitting. So, at our penultimate session, we ran through water safety and equipment exercises.
Hopefully now all of the Scouts will remember the size of their buoyancy aid, know how to hold a paddle, and we can spend time at the river on the water. I know many of the scouts are still grumpy with me for forgetting pancake evening…especially as this then resulted in map work…maybe next year?
Wednesday Scouts
A busy term! Filled with new skills, adventure and lots of fun.
This term we’ve focused on skills, but have also tried to meet outside the Hut and in the community, making the most of the great weather.
The highlight of the Spring Term is always the first camp of the year, our Bushcraft Camp in Godalming for older Scouts. The weather was amazing, and several of the Scouts spend the whole night in hammocks. We also worked on a huge amount of advanced bushcraft skills, and developed leadership skills by working in teams with our friends at 9th Walton.
In January we focused on the Teamwork and Skills Challenges, two big badges that make up part of the Gold Award.
We demonstrated local knowledge of Molesey with some urban MapRun, worked on our teamwork skills with egg-dropping challenge and visited Polyapes for outdoor skills, firelighting and cooking, wide games in the dark and some axe and knife skills.
The Scouts enjoyed celebrating the Lunar New Year by working together to cook a variety of oriental themed dishes.
A highlight of the first half term was definite a visit by Jim from World Music Workshops, who led us in samba drumming, as well as guoyue (Chinese music).
At Half Term we ran an RYA Level 1 powerboat course and enjoyed a trip up the Thames to Walton.
Following the break, we focused on outdoor skills and preparing for water activities in the summer term.
The Scouts loved an evening of night navigation on Esher Common, a real test of our night-vision and mapwork skills – great practice for the district Day Hike which took place during March. We’ve also been making great use of our own air-rifle range, with the Scouts all developing their skill!
We also took part in a litter pick, with patrols leaving the Scout hut with nothing but a bag and 6 grabbing sticks, returning with a huge amount of rubbish – great effort!
Shrove Tuesday was recognised…
1st Molesey are very forunate to have been awarded funding to replace almost all of our powerboat and kayaking equipment, so we spent some time getting used to it, learning how to maintain it, and preparing to take it on the river.
As the weather has been so settled we managed to finish the term with some night-time powerboating with a beautiful sunset which was loads of fun.
The start of the Easter break has given further opportunities for powerboating, but the real highlight has been unwrapping our new kayaks and trying them out in some unseasonbly warm April weather!
We can’t wait for next term, Happy Easter Wednesday Scouts!
We have an enthusiastic Explorer Unit and each week we hope to provide them with an opportunity to form new friendships and to have fun together whilst still learning skills.
This term we trialled making damper in individual bags, which involved combining the ingredients together in a bag before cooking over the campfire, however we all agreed that in future we would make it in the old-fashioned way!
Our pizzas on the other hand were an outstanding success. Huge thanks to Pete for bringing in his pizza oven enabling the Explorers to make their own pizzas, which were without exaggeration fabulous! Another trial for us this term for Shrove Tuesday was frying American style pancakes rather than our standard crepe style. The Explorers gave mixed reviews, some preferred whilst others didn’t, so we will have to vote next year.
All enjoyed the typical Burns Night fare, haggis and mash – no surprise there – however the addition of deep-fried Mars bars was the hit of the night – also no surprise there! Thanks Chris and Chris for your time. In fact, my thanks to all parents who volunteered to help this term, we wouldn’t have been able to do it without you.
Jim currently doesn’t have a young person in Explorers, but the Explorers wanted to see if he would still be willing to lead us on our termly night walk. He kindly agreed and led us through Esher West End Common, Esher Common and Fairmile Common; 5 miles of woods and chat on a clear night with a full moon – very bracing. Thanks Jim.
Explorers have shown creativity this term, firstly with paracord keyring fobs and more recently with their Mother’s Day Craft. Their efforts turned out so well, I was impressed by their skills, and I think their mums will be very happy with their button bouquets.
Explorers are encouraged to participate in the Young Leader Scheme, Scouts Top Awards as well as the Duke of Edinburgh Award scheme, which means some will be undertaking hike/paddle expeditions during the Easter and summer breaks. We also have four Explorers taking part in the Explorer Belt. They have been busy with training weekends, organising their own practice hiking expeditions and more recently updating their First Aid training in preparation for their 15 day trip to Poland that will include a self-led 10-day expedition where they’ll select their own route and accommodation and cover about 150km on foot. An exciting adventure ahead.
Fundraising
Fundraising info for news letter: Molesey Carnival is on 14th June this year. If you can help on our stall, or help set-up or clear away please contact me on Jo.Jethwa@1stmoleseyscouts.org.uk
We usually have the scouts running a candy floss stall for us, but Carnival this year clashes with Bizzaz for the Beavers and Squirels, and a scouting activity [please amend activity details as appropriate @Max]. We may therefore be running the stall a bit differently this year. One idea is to have secret books like we did for Magical Molesey, but including adult books (there were lots of requests for adult books at Magical Molesey).
If you have any kids or adult books to donate, please wrap them and write the following on the front (there are stickers avaliable too):
Age:
Genre:
A little clue:
I will leave a box at the hut again for you to drop your book off.
Thank you, JoDon’t forget though, buying new from the group also supports us.
Jo Jethwa, Fundraising Team Lead
Jo’s email address is jo.jethwa@1stmoleseyscouts.org.uk