Poppy loves a challenge. Not only has she been awarded her Chief Scout Acorn Award and completed all her activity badges, she's taking on the newly created YouShape Award for Squirrels.
The best way to have a programme the young people will enjoy is by involving them in the formation of the programme. The Scouts call it Youth Shaped planning.
Not only do we encourage our Squirrels and Beavers to be involved, but we give them the chance to earn this special award.
The badge is split into four sections: YouShape, Plan, Lead and Represent.
YouShape is about deciding what you want to do to earn your badge, what themes, ideas and how to go about it.
Plan pretty much does what it says on the tin. By getting them to make their own plans, it encourages creative thinking and working together.
Lead is all about improving confidence in our young people. They've chosen the activities to do, now it's time to lead others, support them and deliver their own programme.
Represent gives them the opportunity to talk to others about what they've done, learned and what others have told them about the experience.
That's the basic gist of the badges, anyway. Further information is available on the Scout Association website and the award is available for each of the sections, right up to Explorers.
So that's the badge. What did Poppy do?
In a previous week, Poppy lead a game similar to Jelly Beans (where you shout the name of a type of bean and have to move in the style of said bean, for example jumping for jumping beans, wriggling for jelly beans, stretching wide for broad beans... you know the one) but in her game, she called out types of aircraft.
Helicopter: arms above your head and spin around
Chinook: get into pairs and do helicopter
Airplane: arms out and run around
Hot air balloon: make a circle with your arms above your head and move around slowly
Red Arrow: arms make a point in front of you and run around fast
Rocket: arms in a point over your head, bend down and jump up
This week, she led the group in creating their own paper darts and building slot together model planes (those ones where you slot the wings into the body and put the plastic propeller on the nose). After they'd made them, she had cones set out as a marker not to go beyond and used flat cones to mark where each of their planes landed.
At the end, she chatted to Bagheera about how it all went. She was pleased that everyone had fun and liked how the game went, but says next time they probably wouldn't choose to use the slot together planes because they break too easily which makes them less fun.
To see more photos from Poppy's activity, check out our Facebook page!
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