Two week project: Sewing/kit bag making

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A few weeks ago we started our two week projects, I chose sewing/kit bag making. The reason I chose this was because I wanted to try a new skill and making a bag sounded fun.

The week before, we chose what colour fabric we wanted. The week after we cut out 50cm by 50cm of fabric, then we found the wrong and the right side, but because we used nylon both sides are the same so we got to pick which one was the right or wrong side. After that we folded 4cm of the top down and then folded it underneath, I then tacked it and then I sewed the hem. Next we measured 39.5cm of webbing, this was to form the clip. In the second week, I tacked the webbing to the hem, then I sewed it onto the hem, afterwards we did a box stitch on both sides near the end of the webbing. Next we did a French seam which is where you sew down one side then turn it inside out and sew the same side. Then we started on the bottom, we folded it into a square and sewed the corners on each side. Carefully we cut the corners of making sure we left the seam, then we tuned it inside out and sewed it again.

I really enjoyed this project and my leader helped me to complete it.

written by Archie Dent

Air-Fix model making 27th Scouts

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Introduction 

On the 11th of March and 18th of March in the organisation of scouts in the building of Colville school in the country of England the groups got on with an activity which was called model making. This consisted of painting, building and talking with friends.

Why it was challenging

We had to do air-fix model making and it was definitely challenging. The building took a while and the painting didn’t always go as planned but overall it was really fun. The paint dried relatively quickly and the paint had good offers for what you could colour your plastic tank. If you wanted to you could mix the colours together to make a new colour, i liked mixing green with grey to make a muddy colour and that worked well. It really made you enjoy spending time with your friends or if you were not with your friends just socialising in general.

Process

The process for me was to build paint and then stickers but for the majority of the group it was paint to build then stickers which worked just as well. It seemed that if you did my strategy it was faster and by the end of the first day of the 2 week project i was already 80% done. I just needed to add stickers. I did loose and break some important parts (well not that important) of the tank, I still managed to make my tank look decent and I won’t be surprised if other people lost parts of the tank they needed but still made it look really good. In general you could change the process of how you did the tank.

Results

The results were surprisingly really good. Some people decided to not go with what the instructions said they should but instead made self thought of tanks, well the paint work.

An example of what one of the tanks looked like is here: 

(This one is mine)

Conclusion

In conclusion, air-fix model making is a great activity for scouts. You can explore your creativity and learn as well. One thing I liked about the activity is that it teaches kids about historical vehicles used in whatever period of time. So, I would recommend making your own miniature masterpieces.

Written by: Jesse

Two Week Project: Bath Bomb And Soap Making

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On Tuesday 12th March, Scouts started their chosen two week projects. I chose bath bomb and soap making. We made the bath bombs the first week. We worked in pairs, and made three bowls of the mixture, one plain white, another blue and the other purple. We had moulds in a spherical shape to put the mixture in. It was a sand like texture, but quite powdery. At first the mixtures were a bit too dry and we struggled to mould them. We were also using small plastic spoons to press them down. When we started, we were using multiple colours and pressing down firmly. This did not work as we needed to press them quite loosely, but we learnt from our mistakes. After that, we started to spray them with water more often. It worked really well. They were quite fragile, but after were left to set they were firm, Some had crumbled when we placed them on the tray, but the rest were intact. They were really fun to make and I would definitely recommend it.

The second week we made three different kinds of soap: orange and poppy seed, banana and oatmeal, and plain. We started off by melting the soap base on a stove. There were different things for everyone to do. Some were mixing the chemicals with water, some were measuring the ingredients, and others were melting them in a large pot. We mixed them all together, in there three different batches, and then blended them with a blender. After that, we then poured them into the moulds and left the soap mix to set. It was really fun especially if you like baking.

Overall, a really fun activity and I would recommend you try it.
Written by: Niamh L

Two-week projects: Digital Maker badge

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 The first part

I chose Digital Maker. For this project, we had to bring a computer and load up and make code for Microbit. The project was split into two parts. We were getting the gist of the software for the first part and had to create a little game between two people. We had to create a hot and cold game where someone would have to hide an object (we hid a pen) and the other person would either press A or B, A meant cold and B meant hot or the other way round. The other person would receive this as what we programmed hot and cold to be for example if we programmed hot to say Hot the other person would get leds that would light up saying Hot. Playing the game was a lot of fun as we had to try and guide the person to find the object we hid but we could only communicate by using the microbits.

The second part

After getting used to the software, we had to create a game in the second week/part. My game was rock, paper, scissors, shoot. To start coding the game I returned to make code for this game. I picked blocks to make the Microbit do what I wanted. It was like building with digital Legos. Now I had to code the Rock, Paper, Scissors game. I had to tell the Microbit what to do when I pressed the buttons. If I pressed A, it was Rock. B was Paper. And if I pressed both buttons, it was Scissors. The Microbit even picked its own choice. It was cool that you could code all sorts of stuff for free.

Final thoughts

The Micro:bit has this tiny screen that’s like its own little world. I made it show Rock, Paper, or Scissors symbols, and it was like a tiny battlefield. When I won, it cheered with me, and when I lost, it gave me a little pep talk. Who knew a screen so small could hold so much fun?

Written by: Duleep

 

Two-week project: Pasta making and Photography

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The Projects

At the end of November the 27th Scout group gathered together to start a two-week project. This project consisted of Dungeons and Dragons (most popular choice), coding/digital making, board game making, pasta making and photography. I chose pasta making and photography as cooking is a growing passion of mine and the description of what we were going to do in photography sounded really interesting and cool.

Pasta making

When we went to the kitchen for Pasta making, straight away we washed our hands and got the ingredients ready. We were making 2 different types of pasta; a wet one and a dry one. The wet one used flour and eggs and the dry dough had semolina and water.
I made the dry dough first. I mixed the ingredients together by hand and then kneaded the dough for around 10 minutes before wrapping it up in clingfilm to rise. After 10 minutes I undid the seal on the clingfilm and took a small chunk of the dough and rolled it into a long sausage. Then I cut them into to sugar cube sized chunks and shaped it like gnocchi. To do this I put the knife sideways and rolled it towards me.
Next came the wet dough, for this the method was the same until the shaping. For the shaping I put it into a pasta maker at the highest setting, then folded it in half and repeated it a six or seven times to make it stretchier. Then I decreased the setting by one after each pass through and then I put it in the final time to shape it like tagliatelle.
Pasta making was more complex and time consuming than I thought. I really enjoyed eating the pasta I made.

Photography

For photography I started with the dangers of what I was doing as this style of printmaking involved chemicals. The first step of the process was to make the room dark and only light it up with red lights as any other colour light would start to make the film develop. After this I got a few random items (such as lego, marbles, pencil etc) and prepared them to go on some film. Then I placed them on the film paper and moved the red shield protector off of a light emitting thing to start to develop the image. After 10-15 seconds I placed the red shield protector on again and moved the film to the developer chemical. After a while when the image had nearly fully developed I had to take it out and quickly plunge it into the stopper chemical which stops the image form developing more.
Then it went into a chemical which “held” the image and after this I put it in running water for around 5 minutes. Then I transported it over to some rinse aid to allow me to squidgy the excess liquid off and let it dry. 30 minutes later they were dry and ready to go. Most people made 2.

My conclusion

Both activities that I chose were really fun and I would definitely do them again in the future. My one criticism would be that we ran out of time a little bit on the pasta making as it was quite complex method but I enjoyed it none the less. I would 100% recommend it to other scout troops as well.

Written by: George

Two week project: table top game

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The Project

At the end of November the 27th Scout group gathered together to start a two week project. This project consisted of Dungeons and Dragons (most popular choice), coding/digital making, board game making, pasta making and photography. I chose board game making (The best one!) because I like being imaginative and I always wanted to do something with my imagination. My other options would have been digital maker or Dungeons and Dragons.

Getting Started

When we went to the station for board game making we were given stuff like dice, blank cards, pens and pencils, cardboard and pieces of paper and other board games to give us inspiration. The games I love are Exploding Kittens and Citadels. I think you can keep playing Citadels for a long time and it never gets boring. The thing I love about Exploding Kittens is the feeling of it and the artwork.

The Experience

The thing I was most stuck on was ideas. It took me a very long time to think of something, I didn’t want to make it really identical to another game so I tried to be original but that was hard. So I took some inspiration from games I love. I saw other people getting started and it made me feel rushed so I closed my eyes and thought.



I really like Warhammer and the idea of war and anarchy so I wanted my game to be about some kind of civilisation. In school we were learning about the Romans and they are fascinating to me so I wanted my game to be based on Roman civilisation. The Romans aren’t barbaric (lets forget about Gladiators and the games!) and I wanted my game to be not silly but serious.

My game

My game is a fast-paced card game. Each game takes five minutes and the aim of the game is to get the most cards. You play characters like a senator, hacker or citizen. Different characters have different powers. The senators can roll three dice because they had more power than citizens. The hacker tries to sabotage the vote by putting a fire in the deck of cards and if you pick up a fire you miss your go. The hacker can only do that if they roll a 1-3. There are different versions of the game like advanced and beginner. You roll a dice to have a go. You have to roll a 3-6 to have a go.

My cards

My conclusion

Next time I would spend more time on the artwork because I’m good at art and have lots of ideas of how it should look. I’d also make it more complicated. But I was happy with what I did in the time. Apart from when I got stuck on ideas I was confident that I could do it as I’d made a video game in the past with my Uncle who codes. I’m imaginative too so I knew I could do it.

I enjoyed it a lot! And I would recommend it to other Scout groups. I think the rest of troop enjoyed their options too. Overall it was fun and I feel like I stretched my creativity. Thanks for reading and have a go at making a card game yourself!

Written by: Jesse

Night hike 2023

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On Saturday 25th of November the 27th Cambridge and several other troops took part in the annual night hike. It was very cold at 0 degrees, but due to flooding we weren’t camping this year! I was part in Eagle Patrol. We arrived at HQ at about 3:45pm where we received a map and we were given a set of 6 figure co-ordinates which we used to find the location of HQ and the 5 bases we would arrive at across our journey. There were two routes that would be assigned to different Patrols. Eagle patrol were doing the anti-clockwise route meaning we would go from HQ to Base 5 then Base 4 etc. At Base 5 we were given 5 mixtures of 2 ingredients and we had to guess what they were, for example banana and marmite! At base 4 we had 15 minutes to build a shelter with just 2 stakes, 4 ropes, 4 pegs, 1 tarp and a tent cover.
At Base 3 we had to solve puzzles as quickly as we could. At Base 2 we practiced first aid by simulating a rescue of a person who had fallen into a river which included calling ‘999’ and giving the patient a warm cover. At Base 1 we had 10 minutes to catch a string on fire by making a fire big enough beneath it. When we got back to HQ we had hotdogs and brownies. Overall I enjoyed the evening and thought that I and others learnt a lot about navigating and using compasses and maps. My favourite part was the first aid simulation base and warming up with a hot chocolate at the end of a long walk!

Written by: Noah

Autumn Camp 2023

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On the 6th of October, an hour before dusk, 27th Scouts arrived at the Jarman center, and began to pitch tents, before it was too dark. Next we had our dinner and played wide games in the dark, which was hard but fun. After that we went to our tents and went to sleep. It was meant to be silent from 10pm to 7am.

Some of us woke up around 7, and headed down to the firepit to help with unloading the food delivery, but others coincidentally appeared when breakfast was on the table. We each ate two pancakes and cereal, then started one of the three activities. My group started with fire lighting, and we could get the fire started, but then it died, and became embers, doing that over and over until we moved on to the next activity, run by Thomas. In this, we whittled tongs that we would use for cooking brownies later. Next, we did an activity run by Max, in which we made symbols using sticks and tried to find each other in the woods. After lunch, we did some more activities including making brownies in orange skins and whittling sausage sticks and feather sticks for our campfires.

Then we set about making our fires. In Kestrel, we started by collecting wood and bark, whilst Alex made a lattice to start the fire. We soaked two pieces of cotton wool in Vaseline, then lit them. The rest of the twigs soon caught fire, so we gradually added larger and larger pieces of wood until it was so large we weren’t sure it was going to be out in time to cook on it. Thankfully it was, and we began to roast our sausages. Most of us ate the sausages, but 1 or 2 didn’t cook in time and were thrown away. Then we cooked our brownies, and played more wide games in the dark, before heading to the main campfire for some songs.

The next day we had bacon for breakfast and did archery, twine making, cooking and taking the tents down, all before we went home. All the scouts had a good time.

Written by: Madeleine

Jamboree on the internet 2023

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On the 21st October, the 27th scouts attended the yearly jamboree on the internet. The jamboree started at 4:30 pm and ended at 8:30 pm. We started by going onto ScoutLink. Mostpeople used tablets, a few had laptops. We chatted with many english-speaking groups around the world (such as Indonesia). We talked about anything really. There were also Skype calls to other scout groups.

After that it was pizza time. We ordered from Domino’s pizza. Popular scout choices included original cheese and tomato, pepperoni and the meatfielder.

To top the evening off, it was then time for the gaming. We had Super Smash Bros and many others. We got to use a Nintendo Wii, Nintendo Switch and a really old computer. All in all, I think it was a successful evening.

 

Expedition Camp 2023

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On Saturday the 17th of June, 27th scouts went on the yearly Expedition camp at two mile bottom. we started off the day at 9:00 at HQ then walked to Cambridge Station from scouts HQ and hiked to the expedition camp. my patrol was the first one to reach the camp but some patrols go back much later. (foreshadowing, that was going to be us the next day). we got to the camp and set up our tents then started the patrol gadget. My patrol made a washing up bowl / spit over the campfire (unlit, obviously). Around 6:00, we started to make burgers for dinner. the burgers were alright, although we were a little bit worried for Felix getting food poisoning. But that’s our questionable cooking skills so you would’nt need to worry about that. we had a bonfire, sang campfire songs, general scoutsy stuff for a camp. we went to bed at 10:00 and, to be honest, it was surprisingly one of the best sleeps I’ve ever had on a camp. We had a filling breakfast, packed up and set off for the train station. my patrol walked the other way to the train station, through 4 miles of nettles, so i suggest you don’t take the route next to the river. We eventually got to the train station and had a nice trip home. (even though we missed the first train by one minute). we got back to HQ at around 4:00 and I think it was quite a successful camp all-in-all.

Written by: Rose