The Highfield Beavers, Cubs and Scouts got together with the 1st Southampton North Guides and Brownies to take on the invasive Himalayan Balsam weed at Woodmill. The good news is that the Highfield Kids won 🙂
It was a bit on the muddy side at Southampton City District Camp – but that didn’t bother our Scouts, Cubs or Beavers! They fully engaged with the environment and came up smiling – many thanks to all the hard working adults who made the Camp possible 🙂
Follow this link for more photos.
[simage=650,200,n,left,left] On Sunday, the Cubs and Scouts raced in the district cross country competition.
From Scouts, congratulations to Daniel who came third in his age group, with Max coming 5th. Finn, Josh and Jin-Ho worked together to claim a team victory in the over 12 age group, returning the trophy to its rightful owners!!
The Cubs over 9.5 also claimed victory for the team trophy, with the under 9.5s coming second. Alfie Da… triumphed, coming first by a long way in the under 9.5 race. Ned stormed to second place in the over 9.5. But all our Cubs ran brilliantly for the 14th, so congratulations to Frankie, Euan, Robert, Dodi, Ned, Fraser, Thomas, Finn, Alfie Da…, Quinn, Gregory, Rory and Alfie Du….
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On Sunday February 13th our Beavers, Cubs and Scouts, helped by other members of the Highfield community, assembled a giant Parrot of Coins in the Atrium of the WestQuay Shopping Centre. In doing this we raised an amazing £4,512-75 for the Childrens Cancer Ward in Southampton General Hospital and collected an astonishing 76,857 coins.
“Project Parrot” was inspired by one of our Beaver Scouts who has been treated for Leukaemia in the Piam Brown Unit. He and his family were keen to raise funds for the Unit and our Scout Group was eager to help. The symbol of Piam Brown is a parrot – hence “Project Parrot” – the plan was to collect a large number of coins and lay them out in the shape of a parrot in a public space. Naomi, one of the Cub Young Leaders, suggested WestQuay as our venue – the authorities at WestQuay were only too pleased to help and offered us a 50 square metre area in their Atrium.
It dawned on us that the parrot needed to be big and the volume of coins required was huge – we needed tens of thousands of coins! But our Highfield Beavers, Cubs and Scouts, joined by Highfield Rainbows, Brownies and Guides, Students from Southampton University’s SSAGO (Student Scout and Guide Organisation) and the children of Highfield Church, were prepared to take on the challenge. The families in our Scout Group and Community have collected tens of thousands of coins since Christmas.
We took 15 buckets of coins to WestQuay on the morning of Sunday 13th February together with Maggie’s large and colourful Parrot Template. And then our children went into action. They collected more than two thousand pounds from a generous Southampton public – the copper and silver parrot was surounded by a ribbon of gold pound coins.
Thank you to everyone who has made Project Parrot such an outstanding success!
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Last night we saw another great swimming performance by the Beavers, Cubs and Scouts of the 14th!
Our Beavers set the tone with a win in the Beavers final, and competititive swims from all our Beavers. Our Cubs reclaimed the Cub District Swimming Trophy from a strong team from the 22nd and, once more, our Scouts swept the board, winning both the under 12 and the over 12 trophies. The 14th claimed the overall Group Championship.
Very well done to everyone who took part! Please check out the photos on flickr.
A group of Beavers, Cubs, Scouts and their families made time on a busy Saturday morning to help with some restoration work on Southampton Common. We joined up with an Environment Working Party organised by the local “Common Sense” Group and the Hawthorns Urban Wildlife Centre to clear brambles and scrub from an area of the Little Common.
Successive working parties have made a real difference to the area and it was great to see members of our Scout Group helping in that process.
The Cubs and Scouts came together last weekend for a brilliant group camp. We were fortunate enough to have absolutely perfect weather so managed to do all sorts of exciting and challenging activities.
Ed: From a Scouts point of view, it was fantastic to see the new troop gel together, with new assistant patrol leaders and patrol leaders taking over from where the old ones left off at the end of summer camp – congratulations to them. Equally impressive was seeing scouts helping each other, even the brand new scouts helping older scouts!
This is the start of what I am sure will be a great year for the scouts and us leaders! Roll on the next camp – sadly we’ll have to wait 5 months now!!
Neil: Our Cubs had a great time too. They seemed to be up for everything from the massive Foxlease zip-wire to doing the washing up! My favourite activity was our big Saturday afternoon Treasure Hunt through the New Forest which was set up by George, one of our Young Leaders. I was really impressed with how the Cubs hiked with maximum enthusiasm – and minimal moaning! – and was pleased to see they had a real and well deserved sense of achievement at the end.
As well as the Activities, I think they’ll also remember the Wide Games in the dark, the Campfire Circle, the Tin Can Football Challenge, the “Adder” in the woods (ask them) and the fantastic food, courtesy of Maggie and Susy. I think our four newest Cubs deserve special mention too – they camped like Cub Camp Veterans and we were delighted to be able to Invest them on Sunday afternoon. Follow this link to see the Cub Photos on flickr.
Finally, from Nico, Ed and Neil, many, many thanks to all those who made the Camp possible, who dedicated countless hours of their precious time to make it happen and who helped it to run so smoothly.
We attended the annual St George’s Day Parade and Service at Central Hall on Sunday 25 Apr 2010. It was an excellent presentation by our chaplain Chris, the DC, and the Network Scouts and the mayor was there too. Well done everyone who took part!
Finn and Chris E did amazingly well in the under 12s – Finn grabbed first place in the final 3 metres, and Chris came 4th, with nobody behind him for a long way!
