2021 Cubs Spring Program
Saturday, 06 February 2021 07:03
14th Andover (Stockbridge) Cubs Programme Spring 2021
31st March
Dear Cubs
It's almost time for you to break up for Easter , if you haven't done so already. Its a time to look back over the last year and reflect a little on what has happened to us all and to look forward to getting back to having face to face meetings after the Easter Break. We are so excited to be able see you all soon. We won't have to be in 2 groups anymore, if we are outside (but we will inside) but we still need to keep a distance away from each other. We will be investing some of the cubs who have been with us for a while now, but we haven't had the chance to make their promise.
Ideas and Challenges for the coming week:
Nature's Easter Eggs (Artists and Naturalists):
We've attached a picture of the eggs we think will be fun to make . You need the following items. Let your creativity run wild
- Cardboard – Any kind of cardboard will work. We like to use cardboard because it’s sturdy but if you don’t have any cardboard, regular paper would work too. You would just need to make sure you didn’t glue anything too heavy onto it.
- Hot Glue – Hot glue works well for these Nature Eggs because it is perfect for securing heavier objects (rocks, sicks, etc..) to your cardboard. It also dried super quickly so you don’t have to wait around to enjoy these eggs, but you must be careful and ask for an adult's help, so you don't burn yourself or anyone or thing else. If you don’t have any hot glue, white school / PVA glue would work, it would just take a little longer to dry and might be a little harder to secure some of you items.
- Nature Items – All you need to do for these is take a little walk around your yard, or neighborhood, and pick things that you think would look pretty on your eggs! A few suggestions of things we used: leaves, berries, seeds, branches, sticks, rocks, flowers, pine needs, bark. You can really get creative here!
Cheese and Bacon/Ham Muffins (Skills and Chef)
This is a savoury microwave mug muffin recipe. Before you make it you must check with an adult that the mug you are using is safe to go into the microwave. If you get it wrong some can explode or damage the microwave so you must always check. Wait for the muffin to cool down a little after you take it out before you try and gobble it all down. They can get very hot.
You need:
Ingredients • 4 tablespoons of flour • 1/2 teaspoon of baking powder • pinch of salt • 1/2 tablespoon of butter (chopped into little pieces) • 3 1/2 tablespoons of milk • 1 tablespoon of cooked bacon/ or ham (chopped into little pieces) • 1 tablespoon of grated cheese.
Mix together all the dry ingredients in a microwave proof mug, add the milk and mix well, making sure all the flour at the bottom is mixed into the mix.
Cook in the microwave for between 45 and 60 seconds. It's difficult to be exact because all microwaves are slightly different. You may need an extra 10 seconds more or less. Your muffin should be light , fluffy and delicious.
Building a Bottle Terrarium (Gardeners, Skills):
We know from last year some of you (like Riley) are amazing gardeners. Now is the time to start getting in some seeds. Why dont you plant some tomato seeds now, or perhaps peppers. You could buy your seeds or alternatively you could grow some from the food that your parents prepare for you. See you you can find the seeds. We have also attached the instructions how to grow a garden in a jar . Have a go.
Trip around a Typhoon Aircraft (Air Activities):
Are you interested in aircraft, flying or engineering. Take a virtual tour around a typhoon aircraft and learn some interesting facts about it. We are very lucky where we live to have lots of parents and leaders who work with aircraft.
See how much you know about them already. Typhoon Virtual Tour
Tell us what new things you have learned.
Woggle competition:
Finally congratulations to Henry A and Ranluph who have been shortlisted to the national final of the woggle design competition and have won themselves a woggle each. Don't let us forget to hand them out to you on our return.
Have a great Easter Cubs. Make sure you get out into the fresh air over the holidays. Be kind to your family, remember your cub scout promise and law, and fingers crossed we will see all of you in the flesh next term. We will send out the programme and more information a bit closer to our return.
Yours in Scouting
Akela, Ikki, Hawkeye, Naag, Bagheera, Emily, Mr Harrison, Mr Weghofer, Fox.
17th March
Dear Cubs
it was great to see so many of you on our zoom meeting last week . Lauren and Rebecca asked me to say thank you for being so well behaved and asking such interesting questions. We have sent them a special box of afternoon tea cakes to say thank you. They have sent us a colouring sheet , which if you complete and send back to us or them they will post on their facebook page (so please dont put your full name on the front) We have also now got our adoption certificate for Barney the naughty goat and donkey from Kelly's Donkeys which we have attached so you can see them. When we are back in the hut we will put them up on the wall.
This week we would like to challenge you:
- to see if you can earn a Green Blue Peter Badge. Here is the link https://www.bbc.co.uk/cbbc/findoutmore/blue-peter-apply-for-a-green-badge
Depending on what you do it can be put towards lots of different badges. Please send us a photograph of anything you send in to Blue Peter. If you achieve a badge it gives you lots of free entry into places.
We also thought you might find this interesting to listen to and challenge yourself or others to
- guess which birds are in your garden
What it might be helpful to do is sit and watch the birds in your garden for a while first, then once you have identified the bird by looking at it , you could listen to the recording of your bird , then see if you can hear it in the wild.
- Woggle Design competition There is still time to take part in our 105 birthday woggle design competition the forms are attached, but we need them back by the weekend at the very latest.
- Finally we have attached the form you need to fill in if you want to take part in next weeks Zoom meeting , which will be an online fencing lesson! We arent really sure why you need to fill in a form that tells us that you can or can't swim 25 m before we can take part in the lesson, but perhaps all will be revealed! Your brothers or sisters and family members are welcome to take part but everyone needs to fill in a form and send it back to us at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it by next Tues. We will also send out the link reminder then. The instructor has told us you need lots of space around you and a bottle of drinking water nearby. I think they are going to work us hard.
We hope you are all enjoying being back in school and seeing your teachers and class mates. It must be a bit strange , but it is the first stage to us all hopefully getting back together after Easter. We will be back in our groups of 15 again, largely working outside. We also want to do a load of investitures to all those would be cubs who havent made their promises yet, maybe the first week back, so try and ask mummy or daddy to please order you a green cub jersey so you are ready.
Be Good and Kind Cubs and try and keep your cub scout promise and law.
We will see lots of you next week on zoom ready for fencing!
Yours in Scouting
Akela, Ikki, Hawkeye, Naag, Bagheera, Emily, Mr Harrison, Fox and Mr Weghofer
3rd March
Dear Cubs
It was really great to see so many of you on our zoom call to Kelly's Donkeys last week. We have now officially adopted Barney the naughty goat https://kellysdonkeys.co.uk/adopt-one-of-our-donkeys/. Well done for being so polite and asking some great questions.
We have lots of bits and pieces for you to do this week.
Commonwealth War Graves Seed Planting: As many of you know,we look after the graves of World War 1 pilots in Stockbridge Graveyard. Sadly there are many servicemen and women buried in graveyards in most of the villages around us. In preparation for War Grave Week in May the Commonwealth War Graves Commission is asking us to get out and find the graves and plant some wild flower seeds in memory of the people who died. https://www.cwgc.org/our-war-graves-your-history/war-graves-week/. They have been providing free seeds, but currently this is paused, but maybe you could go and buy a cheap packet of seeds from the supermarket or garden centre (they cost less than a pound) and either plant some seeds in a pot , to transplant into your garden , as a memorial garden or to scatter on the graves if you find them. You could go out for a walk at the weekend and see if your local churchyard has some war graves in it. https://www.cwgc.org/visit-us/find-cemeteries-memorials/. Some of the big graveyards like Andover have almost 100 war graves in them. Our World Challenge
Katie, one of our cubs has been completing her Team Leader Challenge by giving us a game we can all play. We have attached the details. The game is from times long past and looks great fun.
In preparation for our zoom call next week we are starting to look at the Disability Awareness Badge . We have attached a great video by Lucy Edwards about how blind people do things to make their life easier. We learned loads watching it. It's called"how does a blind girl?" https://www.facebook.com/BuzzFeedUK/videos/397594727938991 - if you can't access it via try the shortened youtube video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhEyFGnKQKk. Lucy has lots of videos on Youtube talking about all aspects of her life. Perhaps mummy and daddy can look up some of them for you.
We would like to enter the wogglemakers design a woggle for our 105th Birthday. You have till the 20th March to come up with a design for a woggle, which we will then submit to a national competition. Skills Challenge, Artist Badge.
Final-105-Woggle-Competition-F (1)
Finally we've attached a identification sheet for butterflies you can identify this month. Naturalist Badge.
Next week we will have a visitor on our zoom call. We will send you link a couple of days before.
Great news as well the big bosses at the Scout Association in London have said that we are able to start meeting face to face again as a cub group after the Easter holidays. We will probably meet outside again for most of the meetings. We will know more in the weeks to come, but we can't wait to get back all together and have some fun. Lots to look forward to. We don't know about camps yet but are keeping everything crossed.
Be Good and Kind Cubs and see you next week on Zoom
Yours in Scouting
Akela, Ikki, Hawkeye, Naag, Bagheera , Emily, Mr Harrison, Mr Weghofer, Fox
24th February
Dear Cubs
We hope you have had a great half term and managed to get out in the fresh air to see the countryside starting to wake up. Akela has spotted yellow brimstone butterflies and frogspawn already this morning.
It was lovely to see some of you at our trial zoom meeting at the last meeting before half term. This coming half term we will do a mixture of zoom meetings (which will always have a visitor) and challenges.
For our first week back, we will be, by the magic of the internet at ..........A DONKEY SANCTUARY.
We will get a chance to meet all the donkeys as well as all the other animals they look after. You will have a chance to ask lots of questions, if you would like or if you prefer you can just look at all the animals as we go around the stables. We will also been choosing which animal the pack would like to adopt. This meeting will go towards both your Animal Carers Badge and the Our World Challenge.
The Zoom details have been emailed:
Mo Collins / Akela is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.
Topic: Cub Donkey Sanctuary Meeting
27th January
Dear Cubs
welcome to week 3 of our challenges. We hope you are well and keeping yourself busy. Wasn't it fun having snow over the weekend. Did any of you make snow men / ladies/ animals? If so we would love to see the pictures and maybe put them on our website if your parents are happy for that to happen.
We have a new set of ideas and things for you to do this week.
Great Garden Bird Watch:
Between the 29th and the 31st Jan is the Great Garden Bird Watch. You need to put aside an hour to count the birds that visit your garden and identify them. We have attached the forms and an ID chart. It might help to have a bird book close to hand too. (Our World Challenge) (Naturalist Badge)
Here is the webpage with the instructions https://www.rspb.org.uk/get-involved/activities/birdwatch/everything-you-need-to-know-about-big-garden-birdwatch/
big garden bird watch id poster
great garden birdwatch submission poster.pdf
Even if you dont have many birds visit your garden, it's important to know that too.
National Chocolate Cake Day:
Today is national chocolate cake day so we are sending you the recipe for a chocolate cake you can make in a mug in just a few minutes. A few things to think about. Ask an adult to make sure your mug can go in the microwave (not all can), use a big mug, don't dive in and eat your cake straight away, they can be VERY hot, so let them cool down for a while. Don't forget to WASH UP when you have finished. That is the most important thing.
Chocolate Brownie Mug Cake instructions
We would love to see all your pictures (Skills Challenge) and find out if the cakes were really yummy.
Catkin Identification:
If you look in the hedgerows around you at this time of year you can see what are called Catkins. They are the flowers of some types of trees. They are all different. On your walks this week see if you can spot any and take some photographs with a camera or phone then see if you can work out what they are: Here is a link that might help you identify them (Naturalist Badge)
Nature Bingo:
Finally just for fun we have included a nature bingo card to play with your family when you go outside. See if you can be the first to find all these things.
Have fun cubs, Be kind and remember your cub scout promise:
I promise that I will do my best, to do my duty to my God , and the Queen, To help other people and to keep the cub scout law
Until next week
Yours in Scouting
Akela, Ikki, Hawkeye, Naag, Bagheera, Emily, Mr Harrison, Mr Weghofer and Fox
20th January
Dear Cubs
Happy Wednesday. We hope you are all keeping well and busy. Its quite blowy today isn't it. So we have lots of ideas to keep you busy for the week.
24th January is the International Day of Education:
Its a time to think about all the teachers that you have had in your lives, and what a difference they have made to you. Maybe you would like to make them a card (part of the artists badge) to say thank you and tell them why they are a special teacher to you. Also while you are home schooling think about other children around the world who are also home schooling because of Covid-19. What must it be like if you live in the countryside in other parts of the world like Uganda, or Nepal or Indonesia? Many of those children don't have access to telephones or computers, How hard must it be if you are a child in Mozambique for example there their community is recovering from Cyclone Idai. In times like this there is a real risk that children miss out on school because their families need to send them to work, to earn money. As part of your World Challenge you could find out about charities that help children go to school in other parts of the world and how this is working during the lockdown. Maybe you could come up with some ideas how to fund-raise for them?
Sleep in an unusual place:
Normally we would be starting to plan our spring camp. Akela and her son have completed the "Frosty Challenge", you can see in the photos , they camped outside last weekend. Could you sleep somewhere unusual for a night in your house? Could you make a den and sleep there? (make sure that you have a breathing space if it all collapses). If you are thinking of doing the Frosty Challenge like Akela, you must discuss it with your parents first and ONLY do it with an older brother or sister or an adult. You will need lots of layers as well as sleeping in a hat and gloves and a hot water bottle!. You need to make sure you have lots of layers underneath you, as well as on top of you, to keep you snug and warm and a torch and key to get back into the house if you need to. If you send us photos of your den or camp will will mark this off a a virtual Night Away on our records
Look at the world around you:
When you go outside for you exercise ask if you can borrow a camera or use your parents telephone to take some pictures (Photography Badge) . See if you can take 10 pictures of things from an unusual angle or see if you can get 10 photographs of interesting things you see in nature. The trick often is to look at things really close up using the camera. Look on the camera settings on the telephone look for the one that say Pro. This will let you focus in really closely on things. Then use the zoom settings. See if you can fill the whole screen with the picture you are taking . Look at leaves, berries and seeds. Look at cobwebs in the frost or the moss. Lots of things are starting to happen at this time of year. Already the snow drops are starting to poke their noses up. through the soil.
Be good cubs, remember your cub scouts motto " A cub scout thinks of others before themselves, and does a good turn every day"
Make sure you do your good turns. Speak to you next week
Yours in Scouting
Akela, Ikki, Hawkeye, Naag, Bagheera, Mr Harrison, Emily, Mr Weghofer and Fox
13th January
Hello Cubs and welcome to our new recruits. Happy New Year
It is so sad that yet again we can't see each other face to face for a while, but we have lots of ideas to keep you busy. Remember you don't have to do all of these things (or indeed any), but if you can send us pictures or emails we can mark what you have done off , which can go towards your badges when we all finally get back to normal.
This term we thought as well as setting you a weekly challenge we would also set you a termly challenge. This termly challenge is a big challenge which will involve probably your whole family , but certainly towards the end you will need an adult.
Termly Challenge: Make a survival blanket out of old crisp packets.
Here is a link to a video about this challenge. You could probably find many more on Youtube to watch, but this will give you the basic idea.
Crisp packets are made of a type of foil material which is useful for keeping you warm by reflecting the heat back towards who ever is sleeping on the material while keeping the cold out. You could use your blanket to sleep on when we do our next camps , or maybe you could donate it to a homeless centre.
the first thing you need to do is collect LOTS of crisp packets , and then give them a really good wash!. You will need about 100. This is why this is a termly challenge.
Badge Challenge: Book Readers Badge
you need to read at least 6 books and be able to tell either your parents or us about them
You might also be inspired to write a short story (Part of your skills challenge)
The author Keiron Larwood is a friend of our cub pack . He writes the Podkin One Ear Series and the Uki Series. If you like adventure and fantasy stories he might be a good author for you to read. He always draws a map at the beginning of each of his books and here is a short video about how he draws his maps to inspire his story. Maybe you could draw a map in the same style as Keiron.
Outside Challenge: Ice Fun
Ice sculptures are great fun to make now the weather is frosty and cold at night. They are really easy and look very pretty.
All you need is a shallow dish and a piece of string.
Fill the shallow dish with water. Make a loop out of the string and rest it in the water with the loop bit hanging out. The loop will be where you hang your sculpture. Remember ice can be very heavy so make sure the string you use is strong enough and the loop is big enough to hang over what ever you are going to hang it on.
Put some different leaves or berries in the water and then wait for the magic to happen over night. Once the water has frozen, ease the ice out of the container and hang it on a tree or somewhere you can see it look pretty while it melts.
Pendants are great, but the Ice Bowl is our favourite.
You will need:
A balloon (water balloons are best as normal balloon’s don’t stretch as much)
Some water
Fill the balloon with water and leave out to freeze.
The contents of the frozen balloons
Once the balloon is firmly frozen, peel off the balloon. You should be left with a round shape that’s mainly hollow inside.
place a tealight inside ( you might have a battery one which wont melt the ice so quickly).
You could experiment with different food colourings in the water if you have them.
We would love to see any pictures of any that you make.
Be good cubs and be kind. We will send out some more challenges next week
Yours in Scouting
Akela, Ikki, Hawkeye, Naag, Bagheera, Emily, Mr Harrison, Mr Weghofer and Fox
