As Scouts we love to get outdoors and try new things. But with winter and everything going on, we know its hard to think of ideas of what to do right now. To help you deliver great online Scouting, we’ve pulled together our list of places to find great ideas.
These two sources of activities are much newer so you may not have heard much about them yet. Both of them are prepared by Scout leaders for Scout leaders and you can pick them up and run them with your section without much planning or adaptation needed.
Press Play and Go activities are made by HQ and have a video activity you can share with your Zoom session directly with the video doing all the work. New activities arrive every week and there are activities for Beavers/Cubs and Scouts/Explorers.
1st Digital Scouts is the new kid on the block with videos by Scout Content. These videos are nice and short, follow a good structure for zoom sessions, and give you up front what you’ll need. There are weekly videos for Beavers, Cubs, Scouts and Explorers ready to go.
Across the UK there are loads of other leaders looking for ideas and sharing what they’ve found in various different Facebook groups. 1st Virtual Scout Group on Facebook and 1st Facebook Scout Group are the big ones. The posts in these groups are easily searchable and linked together in topics.
There are lots of activities out there including PowerPoints for activities, games, escape rooms and links to more external resources. Lots of charities are offering activities that can work over Zoom, the RNLI being a good example, and there are many guest presenters that leaders can invite to show off their skills or animals or whatever!
So you may know about the new Scouts Activities tool already – it replaced the old Programmes on a Plate and is linked to the Programme Planning Tool that HQ is building and adding to. Throughout this weird time, the Scouts and the partners have been adding to this Activity index and adding new filters to make it searchable – so you can look at just online activities for example.
More usefully though, these activity listings can also be found on the pages for different badges on the Scout websites. At the bottom of these pages, below the badge requirements, is a box with activities that can be used to tick off these requirements. While some might need tweaking, there are lots of activities that you can use to get things started.
Scoutadelic are a YouTube channel run by Scout leaders and they make great videos teaching lots of different scouting skills from first aid to campfire songs.
Chester Zoo have made lots of resources and activities to support people at home, with fun activities, spotting the signs of your animal visitors and more practical experiences pitched at lots of different age ranges.
Scout Adventures have long made resources to support leaders with practical Scout skills and their page also has some smashing recipes as well.
The Scouts have put together some virtual programme support webinars, to help with the basics of running a putting over Zoom if you're feeling unsure about how it will all work.
Do you need help with getting your section to meet and take part in activities or can you offer support to another group? Please do reach out and contact our programme team, who are always happy to help provide support!
