Activities for scouts

[Oliver G]

Afternoon all,

I've been given the heads up by my old man that my step brother wants me to do a stand with his scout group on a survival / bushcraft gist.

Has anyone got any ideas for stuff the scouts don't normally do? I've got all my green kit so I'll show them how a soldier lives in the field (I'll probably skip over hiding beer in your bergan though).

Cheer's,

Ollie

 

[keithg]

Hi Olle, did a cub camp (the younger age group than Scouts) recently, and we had a couple of cadets helping us as part of their D of E work. We did a base where we covered (1) making an emergency shelter -a low one for daytime concealment (2) making a shelter using a basha (3) make pegs from wood using axe (demo as our cubs do not do axe work, but scouts may - you will need to check with their leader) (4) knots used in securing basha and guy lines (5) use of camo (6) concealment techniques (7)one cadet hid in undergrowth and cubs had to spot him from fixed location.

It proved quite popular with the cubs. Scouts may have done shelter building before, but the concealment aspect was new. Concealment should be popular, as Scouts love wide games and you would be giving valuable info. You could probably cover other stuff - using a hexi burner, sampling rations, water collection etc.

i don't think that it matters if you cover what they have done before eg knot work, as you can show the practical application of it, rather than pure theory in the scout hut.

Hope it helps. Don't worry - whatever you do will be appreciated by the scout leaders as it's often difficult to come up with something fresh! Good luck

keithg

 

[Oliver G]

Hi Keith,

Thanks for those ideas, I'll try to snaffle some rat packs back from Germany. I'll have a look at getting some cam and concealment kit as well.

Cheers,

Ollie

 

[brancho]

I would advise meeting with the leaders to get an idea of what they want to do and what the may have issues with.

HERE is a good book (a bit old though)
Here is another not quite so old

If teaching them knife skills try and get the Troop to buy their own knives half a dozen of THESE is a good start

Basically you cant beat burning things ,cooking things, cutting/chopping things and building things with Scouts of all ages.