Cubbing During Lockdown 2020

Zoom Meetings

Cubs has always been about outdoor activities – games on the field at the Sea Scout base, cooking on fires, hiking, camping, visits to the beach. When Lockdown hit in March, we didn’t quite know what to expect – would Cubs stay interested when all they saw was an emailed programme and little pictures of the Scouters faces on Zoom calls?

The first thing we did was enable our Cub parents WhatsApp group to allow messages to be sent from parents to us. Before it had only be used for emergency messages from us Scouters to the parents. This would prove to be an important communication tool between us and the Cubs.

Then we started sending out some programmes via email & WhatsApp. They were fun activities to relieve boredom and keep the kids busy while they were stuck at home. Some included advancement, some were for interest badges and some were just fun experiments or challenges. We received a few programmes from Scouts South Africa Head Office that we used, a few were shared by other Cub packs and the rest we planned ourselves. We experimented with different ways to get the information to our Cubs – weekly emails with a long programme of various activities to be done over 2 weeks, or daily challenge WhatsApp’s for one specific activity, or a combination of the two.

Some parents wanted an emailed programme and some wanted it on their phones so we did what we could to share the information and keep our Cubs motivated to continue to earn Advancement challenge

badges as well as Interest badges. We were pleasantly

surprised at the enthusiasm of some parents to help their Cubs to achieve – and very impressed with the photos, videos and drawings sent through to us.

It’s been tough to keep the motivation going, especially since there were some Cubs who didn’t enjoy attending online Zoom meetings or doing advancement work alone at home. Some were restricted by time issues or schoolwork pressures as well. We relied heavily on parents to give the information to the Cubs and encourage them to actually do the work and this wasn’t always successful for various reasons. I have to remind myself that not all kids are created equal, not all lockdown experiences were the same and not everyone enjoys Cubs without other Cubs with them doing the fun stuff.

However we have seen many Cubs do the challenge activities with their parents & younger siblings and it’s wonderful to see what can be accomplished at home if the parents buy in to the importance of Cubbing and the life skills it teaches.

In total, our Pack of 26 invested Cubs & 6 Chums (visitors who are not yet invested as Cubs) earned the following badges from March to September:

Advancement badges:

Awareness Challenge – Silver Wolf x 1

Community Challenge – Silver Wolf x 2

Outdoor Challenge – Silver Wolf x 3

Aptitude Challenge – Silver Wolf x 2

Silver Wolf x 2

Awareness Challenge – Gold Wolf x 1

Community Challenge – Gold Wolf x 3

Outdoor Challenge – Gold Wolf x 3

Aptitude Challenge – Gold Wolf x 3

Gold Wolf x 4

Interest badges:

Covid19 awareness x 26

Water Champ Challenge x 13

City Nature Challenge x 4

Athlete x 11

Cooking x 3

Drawing x 3

Artist x 2

Conservation x 2

Scholar x 1

Gardening x 1

Handcraft x 1

Family Camping x 1

Photography x 1

Civil Emergency x 1

Outdoorsman x 1

Swimmer x 1

We are very proud of all of our Cubs and hope to see them all soon at a Face to Face meeting at Lakeside Park!

Yours in Scouting,

Akela