Beavers, Cubs and Scouts

Beavers, Cubs and Scouts

Every Tuesday evening, the Church Hall is alive with the sounds of the beavers, cubs, and scouts of the 127th Oldham St Thomas Moorside Group. All the groups are open to both boys and girls. The Beavers - aged 6 to 8 years old, meet from 6:00 pm to 7:00pm, the Cubs - aged 8 to 10½ meet from 7:00pm to 8:30pm - and Scouts - aged 10½ to 14 years - meet from 8:00 pm to 9:30pm..

Each of the groups covers a wide range of activities to challenge and stretch the abilities of the children, with the accent very much on making each evening a fun, as well as a learning session. The leaders of each of the groups are always pleased to introduce new members to their sessions. Girls are welcome to join all of the sections. However all of the sections do have a waiting list at the present time, adults are always welcome as Leaders and Helpers with a view to shortening any potential waiting list.

To find out more about what the groups do during their Tuesday evenings you can follow the links below, call John Tonge, the Group Scout Leader on 0161 624 4236, or just come along on the night!

2012 is the 50th Anniversary of the 127th Oldham Scout Group at Moorside so watch for news of Special Events.

Beavers

New recruits are always made welcome and usually make new friends quickly during their first evening. Every Beaver - and new member - joins one of the four 'Lodges', identified by the colour of their neckerchief woggle. This promotes a healthy spirit of competition and encourages individuals to pull together to achieve goals through teamwork.

The Beavers earn points towards their 'Lodges' through their groups' and their own individual efforts. Many of the activities are undertaken as part of the Beaver/Cub/Scout tradition of earning badges, showing the skills they have acquired during sessions. They also make new friends and work together as a group doing activities which include:

The Beavers also get out and about on trips, to local parks and organised group events.

Both girls and boys can join the Beavers, Cubs and Scouts. Beavers meet at 6.00 p.m. until 7.00 p.m.

For further details contact the group leaders:

Cubs

The children moving up from Beavers, soon get the opportunity to try one of the real scouting activities - camping!! Three camps are planned every year, all under canvas plus one indoor camp, held out of season in October. In previous years as part of a District trip, the troop have also camped abroad in France for a week.

One of the areas on which the leaders try to get the cubs to focus, is to learn how to earn and keep the trust of others. This is largely done through the games they play.

The nature of the badges and the what the cubs have to do to qualify for each of them have recently been completely changed and they're now called 'Activity' and 'Challenge' badges. There are now fewer badges than previously, but because the competencies needed to qualify for the new badges are more challenging - and therefore take a little longer to learn - it's more of an achievement when a cub attains the necessary standard and is awarded one of the new badges.

For further details contact John Tonge on 0161 624 4236.

Scouts

At the beginning of 2003, almost half of the Scouts attending sessions were girls, so the Scouts is definitely not a 'Boys Own' type of group!! Nor is it just about learning to tie knots!!

The training for the many badges includes such wide activities such as:

Scouting of course wouldn't be scouting unless there were camping weekends!! The group get away about every three months and of course it's still the real thing, under canvas!! On one of the camping weekends, the Moorside Troop meet up every year with one of the Troops from Yorkshire. There's also the Friendship Camp, which is a multi-activity event, usually attended by about 90 Scouts.

For further details contact John Tonge on 0161 624 4236.