I was only invested as a Scout less than two weeks before lockdown so when this hit it was a bit of all shock. I thought it would be ages before I did anything Scouting again which made me sad because I’d only just started. Because I was new I hadn’t had much time to meet anyone so making friends had kind of been put on hold.
So when the leaders emailed my mum with loads of badge stuff to do it felt like being a Scout was coming back sooner than I thought it would. It was exciting again!
Over the next few weeks I started to learn new things. I started making my own meals and I even made my mums. She didn’t have to force me either, I chose to do it! I actually enjoyed doing it…..and eating it too!
I started to combine school work with Scout badges, like the writers and artist badges. For school I was drawing a futuristic scene which helped towards my artist badge, and for my writers badge, I did poetry and wrote a story about a Maya Tomb.
Me and my mum took part in the Hike to the Moon challenge for BBC Children in Need and Comic Relief (aka The Big Night In). We walked our mile to our local nature reserve. We had our neckers on and got a few strange looks but I didn’t care, I felt proud to be taking part.
What came along next was REALLY cool and it help me to reconnect with the other Scouts and my leaders too. We started doing weekly Zoom meetings. I really looked forward to them each week and was usually one of the first Scouts on. We did some really fun stuff on them. My favourite was Kahoot quizzes and scavenger hunts. We learnt things too about maps and photography too.
One of the last things we did was a virtual camp weekend. We camped in the living room. It wasn’t just because the TV was in there, honestly! It’s because we have a tiny garden! Over that weekend we did craft, went for a nature walk and found a tiny baby frog, ate hotdogs and Smores and had bacon rolls in the garden for breakfast in the morning. We ate all of that because it’s what we have on camp.
Overall, lockdown hasn’t been bad for Scouting thanks to all our leaders. I’m now working on my naturalist and photography badges and am looking forward to going back to proper Scout meetings sometime soon hopefully!
