Last Scout Night

The closing week of school is coming quickly, meaning that the last week of scouts too was falling upon us. It was my second week up at the scout den and quite possibly my last, as the scouts do not meet until the day before I come home from my trip. So it was time to make the most of it.

For the night the leaders had organised for a Christmas celebration for the scouts. Food, Decorations and Carols spread in the hall as we all sung and danced our little hearts out. But with such a high energy bunch, Paul the leader approached me asking to run a few Australian games to wrap up the night. So doing what I do best, I ran some highly intensive games for the scouts.

To start it off I ran a classic game of fly. Many of the scouts were mind blown by the idea of such a simple game. To play fly all you need is 6 sticks. By putting together 6 sticks in an orderly fashion parallel to each other, the aim of the game is to traverse past the gaps in the sticks without stepping on the sticks themselves, or  double stepping in any of the gaps. As this was a new concept to the scouts they were all over this like a fat kid on a cupcake.

We played a few more common games to wrap up the last scout night. These games had the main common goal but in differing variations. With such high energy though the kids were bouncing off the walls. The sugar they consumed from all the Christmas sweets had them on a rampage of excitement. Pinatas and lolly wrappers literally littered the hall.  So once they reached the peak of their excitement, the night had wrapped up and it was time for closing parade.

Parade in the UK runs ALOT differently in comparison to Australia. In Australia we create a horseshoe with each patrol in differing sections of the horseshoe. In the UK, each patrol creates a single file with the patrol leader at the front. The second big difference between our parades and theirs is that the UK do not pray on parade. Where we usually have a scout briefly prepare a prayer for parade, these guys  do not pray at all.

But the sweetest part of the parade was that the leader came up to me and gave me a bag of gifts from the scout group. In the bag there was a scouts coffee mug, scarf, badges, and a few edible goods in the bag. It was a gesture greatly appreciated by myself with gifts to be treasured for a long time to come.

Hopefully I get to go to another night next year to say some final farewells.