STEPS TO
PROGRAMMING FOR A YEARS PROGRAMME
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1. Get as many of your
Leaders at the planning meeting as possible.
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2. Get yourself
a Year Planner with the Cub nights highlighted and the school holidays
and any other public holidays highlighted.
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3. Enter in all your
Seeonee meeting nights, Group Councils, Training weekends, Pack holidays,
District Events, hikes etc.
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4. Fill in any of the
Pack nights you already have special plans for. Don’t forget the
meetings the week before Mothers Day or Fathers Day can be a special night
with mums and dads, a craft night to make presents, etc. Remember
about your New Chum investitures and going ups, too. * A good time management
practice to get into is to only take new chums in 3 or 4 times a year in
batches. This way, they can go up to Scouts in a small group too,
which is better for the children to cope with.
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5. If you have a hike
planned where cooking and compass work will be required, fill in the meeting
nights preceding the event with tests # 4 and #5. The hike itself
should be where the skills learned at the meetings are put into practice,
not where they are first encountered. Use this as an example of how
other tests can be shuffled into the year.
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6. Brain storm for year
theme ideas indiscriminately and write them down on a list.
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7. Decide on a theme
– one you all like and one you appear to have related topics to from your
brainstorming.
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8. Brainstorm as many
activities (indoor, outdoors and weekend) as you can think of. They
don’t have to relate to the theme at all. Write them all down on
a list. Slot in about 2 weekend activities per term. This does
not include District or Region events.
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9. Choose 4 sub themes
relating to your main year theme. These are your Term themes.
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10. Go through your
Packs Boomerang progression sheets and see which tests need to be done
in the immediate months to get the pack up to their correct levels.
Write the numbers of the tests on your Year Planner. If the entire
Pack is behind in all the levels, then just go to the next step.
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11. Write the numbers
1 to 7 on seven pieces of paper and put them in a paper bag. (These
represent the first 7 compulsory Boomerang tests). If you have already
written on the Year Planner some test numbers as described in point 5,
then take those numbers out of the bag. Write numbers 8 to 14 on
another seven pieces of paper and put them in a separate bag.
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12. Draw out a number
from the 1 – 7 bag and write that number on the first available meeting
of your Year Planner in pencil. Only work with the first 6 months.
When all 7 tests have been randomly placed on meeting nights for the first
6 months, take out three of the numbers from the 8 – 14 bag and place them
in the blank meeting nights. Then do the same procedure for the next
six months.
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13. You now have your
year planned. You have covered all of the Boomerang tests twice in
the year, which allows for those Cubs that, for example, have almost finished
their Bronze Boomerang and complete their Bronze test 1 in the first six
months. They then get their Bronze Boomerang and start their Silver.
They only have to wait a maximum of six months before they do their Silver
test 1.
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14. You may need to
take two meeting nights to cover one test. The rest of the unplanned
6 months can be slotted with fun nights (which can include tests, of course).
Remember to do heaps of knotting and compass nights as these skills are
the hardest to learn and are best remembered by repetition. (For
both Cubs and Leaders ?).
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