At the 12th we usually are active and outside as much as we can be. Being isolated away doesn’t mean scouting has to stop completely. After a week of homeschooling, Joe Wicks exercise and completing every gardening job we have, we decided to brave the virtual and hold an online meeting. The group is in the fortunate position that one of the leaders through their work has a full Zoom account. If you do not the free version will allow you to hold 40-minute meetings with 100 people.
A few days before the meeting, parents were sent a link to zoom and a time to logon. The night opened up by welcoming all the scouts in and catching up with what they had been up to. We watched a video from a recent camp and shared some stories on the best bits.
To keep scouting going at home, we got the scouts to vote on the badges they wanted to do. This Easter we are going to be artists and work on the Skills Challenge badge!
Then it was onto the games. We had a few set and ready to go but what worked really well was a scavenger hunt for things in the house; red, edible, metal, wobbly. The winner was the first Scout back with all the items. We also did a round of Pictionary using the annotate tool in Zoom. Private messaging in the app was used to send the Scout who was drawing the word (knots, campfire, tents etc).
The night went really well, and facebook posts from the parents afterwards said how much they enjoyed it and was a little bit of normality in a strange time.