Squirrel Appreciation, International and Big Garden Birdwatch Prep

How are we almost at the end of January already? There's only next week's meeting left! But let's stick with this week and we'll start with the Squirrels and it was all about... Squirrels!

Squirrel Appreciation Day falls on 21st January every year, but that was Tuesday so we did it the day after when we met. There were masks being made, we learned all about Squirrels and we played games where we pretended to be Squirrels!

Did you know Grey Squirrels didn't originate in our country? Or that the closest Red Squirrels live on the Isle of Wight? Or that there are Red Squirrels where Scouting started on Brownsea Island!

Creating Squirrel masks while we learn about Squirrels

Pretending to be Squirrels

Can't catch me!

The Beavers worked on their International Badge. Fact sheets about Beaver Scouts in other countries had been cut up and hidden around the room. Each sheet had a coloured dot on the pieces, a different colour for each sheet. Their first job was to find the pieces that had been hidden around the room and reconstruct them to learn about Beavers from Canada, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Australia. Did you know Canada still calls Scouts of our age Beavers, but they're Grasshoppers in Hong Kong, Keas in New Zealand and Joeys in Australia?

We also played a flag game. Each person was given a sheet that had two flags on. Above one it said "I have" followed by the name of the country. Above the other it said "Who has?" followed by the name of the country. The idea was for each Beaver or Volunteer to read from their sheet and find who had each country. For example, Mongoose started the game with her sheet. "I have Germany, who has Spain?" The person with Germany would then read theirs out. It went all the way round until it got to Annalise: "I have Great Britain, who has Germany?" It was fun so we swapped sheets and had another go!

"I have Great Britain, who has Germany?" Playing flag games

"I promise... to be kind and helpful" An older Beaver assists a younger Beaver read their slip

Waiting their turn

After the sections finished their games and learning, it was time for a story which Bagheera read to them. With changes to her shifts, she can't often attend all the meetings anymore, but she's on leave this week so she read the story.

Story time with Bagheera

The end of the meeting saw Sam swimming up from Beavers ready to start Cubs next week. He said goodbye to all his Beaver and Squirrel friends and swam under our river sheet.

Preparing to say goodbye

Sam receives his Moving On award

Swimming under the river

Emerging as a Cub

A busy evening for our younger sections. Let's take a look at how Cubs got on.

Sadly, our visitors from last week didn't return and one of our members was unwell so Robin had the meeting to themself. It didn't stop us from continuing with our planned activities: preparing for this weekend's Big Garden Birdwatch.

We started off by making bird feeders using pine cones (or fir cones, I'm afraid I can't remember the difference!), lard, peanuts (we checked, there were no allergies in our group and we cleaned up afterwards), and bird seed. After that, we used air drying clay to make our own birds and while doing that we discussed the sorts of birds we might see this weekend. We also talked about the sounds birds make and were surprised to learn that of the British Owls listed on the RSPB website, only the Tawny Owl actually makes the traditional hoot noise. Most of the others sound like cats or like screams which was fun to learn about!

Creating bird feeders

Learning about what we might see during the Big Garden Birdwatch

Creating their own bird

So there we go, another week's meetings completed and loads more learned. Don't forget to check out our social media pages for more about our adventures.