Centenary Camp

This weekend was the Districts Centenary Camp to officially celebrate 100years of scouting in my hometown.

It was lots of fun with a full day of activities on the saturday and activities all of sunday morning before they went home in the middle of sunday afternoon after a scouts own.

On the saturday I was in charge of the giant bouncy slide activity. This mainly involved letting no more than 8 kids on the slide at a time and restricting them to 3slides at a time and telling them if they wanted more they then had to go to the back of the queue!

There was lots of activities on offer all weekend. They had the following to chose from (that I know of/saw evidence of): Bouncy slide, bouncy castle, bouncy obstacle course, pyography, juggle ball making, kite making, dream catchers, making tincan pancakes, camp donuts, climbing wall, badge making, face painting, airplane making and many other things such as large wooden logic type puzzles, sumo wrestling, handpowered cars things (you basically sat in a seat and used are power to turn the wheels so you could move about).

I arrived at the campsite at about 4pm friday afternoon. By 6.30pm when all the kids arrived we had all of the tents up (8 of them). This was quite an accomplishment on my half seeing as I have never really put any tents up and it was windy and there were no instructions with the tents. This was aided by the help of 1 explorer scout for the majority of the time. Friday evening was just supper and getting settled in for the scouts.

Saturday morning I was woken up at 6.30am (after getting at most 3hours sleep!) by some very noisy girl scouts who I was less than impressed with as they were on the opposite side of our pitch. Which means they were far too noisy for that time of the morning for my liking and I may have got up and shouted at them to be quiet especially when they were the tent who caused the problems the night before with noise and going to sleep! At 8.30am all of the cubs and beavers started turning up ready for activities to start at 10am. What ensued was basically organised chaos with the kids free to go to any activity they wish with the instructions 'they be safe, have fun and if there is a long queue at one activity then go to another and come back to the other one later as they would be there all day'.

Saturday night was the campfire which our group rocks at! We provided the best songs and entertainment at the campfire and got everybody joining in our songs where as the other groups didnt! We are very proud of our campfire abilities. Although I may have got abit too strenous during the song I led 'the chicken song' and did end up hurting my chest and generally tiring myself out for the rest of the weekend over a 5minute song (but so totally worth it). Apparently I was extremely close to another leader coming upto the front and telling me to go sit down! oops!! At least they care enough to know that I am probably overdoing it and making me stop.

Sunday morning was again more activities and then in the afternoon a scouts own was held. A scouts own is usually held at the end of a camp and is a time for them all to reflect on things they have done over the camp and what kind of messages they can send to others about scouting (it can be quite religious in its reflections or can be kept more general but it is kind of like an extremely mini church service-usually no longer than 20-30mins). Then it was time to send the kids home!

I also went home last night because I had overdone it, I did however have the option to stay on one more night and enjoy a leaders night at camp. Basically leaders night is a chance for all the leaders to socialise without having to worry about looking after anyone under the age of 18 whilst also drinking copious amounts of alcohol! If there are any children on site then it is a dry camp in terms of no alcohol is allowed to be drunk.

Overall a very good weekend even if on occasion it was very windy!!!