Cub Fun Day 2018 - Our 5 Senses

The Cub Fun Day is an annual event run by the Scouts Head Office which always promises to be a day filled with fun and adventure for our region's Cub Packs. This year was no different.

Each Pack was asked to run their own activity base as well as bringing as many plastic bottle tops as possible to be donated to Operation Smile to raise funds for cleft lip or cleft palate operations.

This year's Cub Fun Day was held at the Gilwood Training Centre on Saturday 26 May and the theme was Our 5 Senses. This ties in nicely with our advancement work and those who attended achieved this advancement. Each Pack's activity base was in keeping with this theme so there were lots of activities that kept the Cubs busy!

We had a great time, playing various games at bases run by each of the 19 Cub packs that attended the event. Some of the bases ran memory games, others required the Cubs to pick up sweets with chopsticks or with a toothpick held between their teeth, or put their face in flour to find the sweet! Others had mystery boxes where you had to feel for a specific item without seeing what you were touching. At another base, Cubs were blindfolded and had to feel for different items in a potjie full of flour, and then remember each item and write it down afterwards, for a prize.

We definitely had the most exciting base as Assistant Pack Scouter Martin (AKA Kaa) brought along his birds and snakes to show the Cubs. We met Daisy & Daphne the corn snakes, Sweetie Pie the boa constrictor, Terrible Terence the ball python, Penelope the yellow Burmese python, a milk snake, Mr Jaffer the Owl, Lady Jane the Harris Hawk, Nandos the chicken and a tortoise! The Cubs were able to touch each animal and the highlights were the chicken (amazing how many children have never seen a chicken in real life), the Hawk and of course the 10kg boa constrictor! We are so lucky to have Martin in our Pack!

As the event's main speaker cancelled at the last minute due to illness, Martin was asked to put on a show at the end of the day for all the Cubs which was also a huge hit. He was able to educate them on the importance of understanding and protecting all these amazing creatures, as well as understanding how important each animal or bird is in the wild.

Owls, hawks & snakes eat rats and mice which cause havoc on farms and in gardens, eating all the plants. It is therefore essential to protect these birds and snakes so that the rat & mouse populations are kept under control.

It is also important to know where your food comes from. Some children don't know that their KFC comes from chickens!

There is also a great fear of snakes which the Cubs realised is misplaced when it comes to non-venomous snakes. Learning what each snake looks like and knowing they are not dangerous is important knowledge for a child. There were many questions of "will it bite me" when the Cubs were given the opportunity to touch and hold the various snakes that Martin has. Also knowing that venomous snakes are just as afraid of us as we are of them. If you leave them alone, they will leave us alone.

There were also Cub fun day badges to order which we will be adding to our campfire blankets as a memento of the fun we had! I know once particular Assistant Pack Scouter who adores buying new badges for her campfire blanket :) (hint: she's a black panther :))

All our Cubs who attended, as well as the parents & younger siblings, had a fabulous time and we look forward to the next one!

Thank you once again to Scouts HQ, to Martin for providing a great activity base for us, and to our parents who brought their Cubs to the event.