Written by Dr Ann Limb CBE DL – Chair, The Scouts
I am the first woman Chair of The Scouts in the 112 year history of the movement. Scouting is about ‘doing stuff’ – we call it skills for life – learning all the things that there’s no room in the curriculum and no time in the school day to do. It’s about having fun with your friends – and crucially it’s about being outdoors and with other people. So how do you run your local Beaver, Cub, Scout, or Explorer group when the government enforces a prolonged period of lockdown and imposes social distancing requirements. Our answer – go digital.
Our response to Covid-19 has been to help nearly three quarters of a million young people already involved in the Scout movement – and maybe to attract some who are not – by pulling together some inspired indoor activities and ideas to keep young people entertained while access to schools is barred or restricted. We have devised a whole range of activities that help the learning of new skills and enable people to have fun as well as saving parents from hearing the ‘I’m bored’ refrain every 30 seconds. We have grouped these programmes under the heading #TheGreatIndoors – ideas and activities to inspire young minds at home and we’ve made all these free to anyone. You can get a steady stream of new ideas of things to do with the kids delivered daily straight to your inbox – and kids can get their badges too.
Everything is on offer from learning Pixel Art that helps kids create and code their own paper pixels and find out how computers display images to doing clever stuff with lighting in a programme called LEDs celebrate in which children and parents are shown how to combine some common household items with an LED to make lovely, light-up greetings cards. We also tackle some big emotional issues too like How to talk to your children about racism and empathy .
And finally, there’s #TheGreatIndoorsWeekender because graduations and trips out with friends are not possible at the moment, young people have missed out on all kinds of things this year. They deserve something really special – something for Scouts and non-Scouts, all around the globe – so we’re holding The Great Indoors Weekender what will be the UK’s biggest digital summer camp from anywhere in the home or garden. Why not join us?
