Beaver Scouts are our second youngest members of the Scouting family. They learn those early life skills that put them on the road to becoming a skilled scout. Our Beavers are in "Lodges", a small team of young Beavers who learn to work together. Beavers make new friends, play fun games together and learn to love their community, respect their friends and their seniors, in and out of Scouting.
We had the privilege of taking the Beavers on a guided tour of the beautiful Waltham Abbey Church. The children gained new historical insights about our local church and engaged enthusiastically with many thoughtful questions.
We love making the most of our wonderful outdoor space at Waltham Abbey Scout Hall, so on summer evenings we take the Beavers outside to enjoy the fresh air. We’ve gone on bug hunts, had fun with the parachute, made colourful fruit skewers, and talked about healthy eating.
During the hot weather, we treated the Beavers to a fun evening of water play! We set up a slip-and-slide, and everyone had a fantastic time cooling off and enjoying themselves
The Beavers have been working hard, exploring a variety of fun ways to earn their Experiment Badges.
During one of our sessions, we set up different activity stations focused on magnets. The Beavers tested various household materials to discover which were magnetic and which were not. They used magnets to move a paperclip to the top of a bottle, went “paperclip fishing” to collect as many fish as possible for points, and played an exciting magnet string game.
In another session earlier in the year, we played “What’s in the Box?” — a fun guessing game with five boxes, each containing a mystery item. The Beavers had to reach inside and guess what was hidden inside each box. That same evening, we also made lava lamps using oil, water, and effervescent tablets. To finish off the night, the Beavers used the same tablets in film canisters to create their own mini rockets, which was a big hit!
Our Beavers were very excited to receive a special visit from the local police. During the visit, the officers spent time talking to the children about a variety of important safety topics, including how to keep themselves and their friends safe at home, when out and about, and while using the internet. They explained the importance of being careful on the roads, understanding how to cross safely, and knowing what to do in different situations to stay out of danger.
The highlight of the visit was when the police officers showed the Beavers their patrol vehicle. The children had the opportunity to look inside, explore the equipment, and learn about how the police use their vehicles to help people in the community. To make the experience even more exciting, the officers brought along some of their protective clothing and allowed the Beavers to try it on. Everyone enjoyed the visit, learned something new, and left with a better understanding of how the police work to keep everyone safe.
Sounds dangerous, but young Beavers benefit from adult tuition. They learnt how a fire is started, the 3 elements that "fire" needs, the dangers and being a responsible Beaver, preventing accidents and what to do in an emergency. We were lucky to have an adult from another section join us for the evening, and explain all this to our Beavers.
At Elphwood we have our own Beaver Scout garden. This is to encourage our Beavers to learn how to plant and look after flowers. Currently its is blooming with wild flowers like Poppies, which will also help the local wildlife including our flying friends, like bees and dragonflies and the bugs. This is an ongoing activity that the Beavers will receive a badge for.
our Beaver meeting fell on the day before Shrove Tuesday, and because of this, we decided to treat our Beavers to pancakes with a variety of toppings to try. Our Beavers worked so hard on badge work recently, so we rewarded them. Surprisingly, the toppings list contained a lot of fruit rather then confectionery items. They all thoroughly enjoyed the evening and were sent home happy and with full tummies.
We gave the Beavers dried spaghetti, mini marshmallows, and normal sized marshmallows, and asked them to work together in Lodges to create the tallest and strongest structure to hold three different objects. These were - a Biro pen, an empty plastic bottle and an empty cardboard drinks cup. They all worked really well together, but to make it the tallest, a couple of the Lodges only used one strand of spaghetti, which wasn't strong enough to hold the objects!!!! but they all learnt what to try differently next time. No marshmallows were wasted :-)
