Beaver sleepover

The beaver sleepover went well. I came in well under budget which was even better. The beavers arrived at 10am and the first thing they did was go for a walk (yes in the nice frosty, snow sat on the cars, very large chill in the air) to collect things like leaves to make a collage picture later on in the afternoon.

There lunch afterwards was a very warming jacket potato with beans and cheese, which was shovelled down by the kids! Followed by a cupcake each that the young leader had made for them.

The afternoon was filled up with making play-doh, finger paints, cake pops and collage pictures with the leaves they had collected earlier. We also had a visit from a local running/athletics group who taught the kids some cool things to help make them run faster and to be able to succeed in the long jump and high jump when they are older. 1 of the ladies also brought in her olympic torch for everybody to have a hold and a picture taken!

After that very busy afternoon, we had decided we would treat the beavers to takeaway pizza. We ordered 6 cheese and tomato pizzas for 13 beavers (the youngest being 6, the oldest being 8). I thought there would be loads of pizza left over- there was 3 slices. So between 13 of them they devoured 45 slices of pizza! It was an impressive sight! The adults also all had their own pizza (with whatever topping they wanted, I just stuck to cheese and tomato for the kids for simplicity). We ate it out the box all sat round in a circle on the floor. The kids were abit confused to start with but then got into it.

After pizza we went outside and did sparklers, before coming in, getting into our pjs, setting our beds up (roll mats and sleeping bags!) and watching a film using the projector I had borrowed. I took 'The rescuers' for them to watch, and not 1 of them had seen it before! Sad days for classic disney. They all enjoyed it and were all fast asleep by 9.30pm. Even those who had been worried/upset when they first arrived about staying had no problems what so ever.

Sunday morning, due to the clock change, we were all up, dressed and beds packed away by 7.30am. Ready for our breakfast of cereal, followed by pancakes and ice cream for the beavers and bacon butties for the adults! We then did a spaghetti and marshmallows challenge (which our beaver mascot also helped with):

Mr Beaver also decided to sit in amongst everything that the beavers had to take home with them (it was an impressive amount for a 24hour sleepover):

The badges the beavers got for coming on the sleepover:

At the end of the sleepover, we invested 2 of our newest beavers into the colony and handed out lots of badges (the beavers who were the newest and had been invested went home with 9 badges!), all of the things they had made and some certificates congratulating them on surviving a beaver sleepover.

The last picture is of me on the sunday morning about 9am, with another hour left to go on the sleepover. I was operating on about 5hours sleep! Whilst the kids slept all night we had some whimperers in the sleep and instinct kicks in for you to go check on them and make sure they are alright. I never sleep well on a beaver sleepover!

So that was a beaver sleepover in a nutshell!