Happy New Year! 2024 in Review!

Bagheera needs to offer big apologies. She works in a venue that had an awful lot going on for Christmas which took up more of her time than she expected, even as far back as November. This is why there have been no updates of late, but it's time to make up for that and pick up that ball she dropped. So, here we go!

2024 was a big year for us. It was our first full year (as we opened in June in 2023) and it was jam-packed with adventures! Let's take a look at some highlights.

The first month of 2024 was spent being creative and exploring wildlife. There was Duplo and playdough, inventing superheroes and making birdfeeders for the Big Garden Birdwatch.

We said goodbye to Crow, a Young Leader who'd helped us as part of her Duke of Edinburgh award. She'd shared her music with us and aided us in achieving our Musician stage 1 badge.

There was an investiture too, Louie into our Squirrel Drey.

It's strange to think that this was 12 months ago now! Skip ahead to this year's January and we've got loads more adventures coming up.

Although the weather remained chilly, by the time we reached February there were still plenty of adventures to be had, including our first sleepover! There was also fruit tasting, biscuit decorating, making pancakes and using junk to create marble runs.

With February ending, we were definitely starting to head into Spring, with Easter just around the corner.

With the arrival of March, we learned about Scouts from around the world and how we fit into the wider Scouting family, achieving our International Badge in the process. There was also youth led programming where the Squirrels and Beavers put forward their ideas for the term ahead, the District Beaver sleepover at Gosport's HQ and one of our leaders, Hedgehog, was invested with the assistance of Poppy, her niece and one of our Squirrels. The term concluded with Easter, including our end of term family meeting with badge awarding.

As March ended, we started to look ahead to April, an important month for Scouts: the celebration of our patron Saint, St George.

Most of April was taken up with the Easter school holiday, but when we returned our focus was preparing our fledgling group for their first ever St George's Day parade. Our initial meeting upon returning from the break was spent learning about our patron and what can be expected at the parade.

There were only two meetings in April, plus the Sunday parade, and the second meeting was taken up with the first phase of working towards our Emergency Aid stage 1 badge.

Whilst at the parade, there are always awards presented at the end of the service. It felt very fitting that at our first parade, the first of our leaders was awarded their Wood Beads for completing their training. When our group started, Otter was the only leader who had any experience in Scouting until Bagheera joined in the September. With the awarding of her Beads, Mongoose became the third to be trained.

April also marked the creation of our website and the first of the blog posts.

The weather was improving all the time as we left April and headed into May, although, don't forget, we are still in the UK so we did still have to put up with rain, it's just that the rain got warmer!

In May, there were more opportunities to get out and about between meetings, both near and far. There was the County trip to Marwell Zoo but also a Saturday spent looking after the planters around there church where we meet.

At our meetings, the Force was with us as we marked Star Wars day as part of the Scouts partnership with Disney for the release of Young Jedi Adventures (May the 4th... May the Force... be with you!).

The Beavers started working on one of their section's newest activity badges, Money Skills, while the Squirrels made contact with another Drey across the country. There was a visit from a member of the RNLI and also a Scavenger Hunt.

May was another important month for our volunteers as we invested Rabbit.

After yet another action packed month, how could we top that? We're not even halfway through the year yet! But June was to bring us loads more, including the group's first birthday!

June brings us our first birthday. The group's first meeting was on 7th June 2023 and on 5th June this year, we celebrated our first year (we couldn't really meet on the actual day. We meet on Wednesdays and this year was also a leap year.) What a way to start a month's worth of meetings.

Following that, there were preparations for our first District Camp day, Matthew was invested, further badge work including our Emergency Aid badge with help from a paramedic called Stuart, making birthday cards for the King's official birthday, a Beaver adventure at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard, the Squirrels fun day at Ferny Crofts in the New Forest, and the start of fundraising season at the Harbour Cancer summer fete.

There was another milestone for one of our leaders again, too. Otter was awarded her Wood Beads for being the group's Assistant Group Scout Leader (and yes, I know the terms have all changed now, but I can't remember what they all are. I'll make a translation page soon to help us all, myself included, to remember what we're supposed to call our adults now.)

With June coming to a close, it meant the school term was also soon to end. This means only a few more meetings before summer activities start.

July started off in the most exciting way possible: a visit from the Fire Brigade, complete with their engine! We were even allowed to have a go with the hose!

After that, the Squirrels did sensory activities while the Beavers had fun with balloons and the term was completed with a raffle, an indoor campfire, badges and games, but that wasn't the end of the fun for July.

Term might have finished, but we were given the opportunity to take advantage of Gosport's water activities centre at the district's headquarters.

This month also saw another investiture, this time it was Robin into the Beaver section.

So that's the term over, but there was still fun to be had in August!

1st August is the anniversary of the creation of Scouting. It's known to the movement as World Scout Scarf Day and Scouts everywhere are encouraged to wear their necker wherever they go that day, especially as in August there are often no meetings due to most groups only meeting during term time, as indeed ours does.

The day is marked to celebrate the first day of the experimental camp Lord Baden-Powell led on Brownsea Island in 1907. We marked it by going on a sort of scavenger hunt in which we walked through the local area looking for things to fill in an acrostic to complete the words "Brownsea Island", so for example we spotted brambles along our walk which we could add next to B.

Towards the end of the month, we had a picnic jointly with another of our district's groups, 1st Lee.

Between that, two of our Squirrels set themselves the challenge to achieve all of their Squirrel activity badges so they had two special meetings set up to help them with that goal. By the second of these, a third Squirrel joined the challenge too.

The summer holidays drew to an end which means a new term is ready to start. Time to go back to Scouts!

Our new term started with a lot of badge work nights, but in amongst that was a very special letter. Remember how back in June we made birthday cards for the King's official birthday? Bagheera sent them to the palace. September saw the arrival of a letter from the palace, a response for the cards we sent!

Towards the end of the month, there were two fun days in the New Forest as well. The first day was for the Squirrels, the second for the Beavers.

As September drew to a close, so too did the evenings, meaning our meetings started to end in the dark. Let's head towards October and the next half term. And although the evenings were getting darker, it didn't stop us from having extra fun between the meetings!

October meant the end of half term, but before we got that far we had more badges to achieve and more places to go, including a picnic at Fort Brockhurst, Paultons Park for the Beavers and the annual Jamboree on the Air / Jamboree on the Internet.

The meetings involved work towards our Go Wild badge and All Around Us challenge for the Squirrels, and Health & Fitness for the Beavers, but this doesn't really cover all we did in October.

We were really lucky with the weather throughout October, meaning our outdoor adventures weren't wet! Would that continue into November?

Once half term was over, it was time to head into winter.

The month began with a sleepover, Wizard School style. This was followed by us marking Remembrance in two different locations: at the District parade and at the ceremony held by Fort Nelson. There were badges to earn, Chief Scout Award formal presentations, getting back in touch with our penpals and members moving sections.

The main highlight of November, though, was us finally opening the next section of our group. On the 6th, our first Cub meeting was held, attended by Millie and Robin. We're only a small pack, but we've made a start!

So that was the end of November. There's only one month left of the year now: December.

The final month of the year had us rounding off as much as we could to complete badges. The Cubs worked on more science experiments and the younger sections explored Scratch (a child friendly website introducing them to computer coding), as well as making Christmas projects.

There was also the Cubs first Christmas party and the final meeting of the year where we played games and did a quiz as well as had a raffle. The year also ended with Robin swimming up from Beavers to Cubs and Hedgehog receiving a new necker for passing her Wood Bead training.