Scouts BSA Troop 222 for Girls

Tag: Scout Skills

  • Have you been Orienteering? Let’s see how it goes…

    Orienteering is a fun activity that lets you use a map and compass — or a compass and instructions — and your pace to follow a course.

    Once you learn the distance of your particular pace, you can start to learn how many steps you take per foot — and you can then, by counting your steps, walk a certain distance. Why learn to do this? For orienteering as an activity — it’s fun to challenge yourself to work through a course and see how well you did. But what if you’re trying to give someone directions? You will get better at estimating distances through orienteering.

    Additionally, there are orienteering activities required for advancement — to become a First Class scout, you need to follow a one-mile orienteering course.

    The Scout Handbook has instructions on how to measure your pace, as well as how to estimate the height or width of something, to get you started on orienteering. But then — how do you find a course? I hear there’s a great course at Camp K — and when I get it, I’ll let you know.

    But in order to make it a little easier — we have a few courses for our troop. Mr. Reising, our Chartered Organization Representative, and his son Zach set up a short course at Bethel that hits all the Eagle projects on the property. We have a beginner course and an intermediate course set up, so you can try them both.

    I expanded that to make a full one-mile course, but it’s hard in a square piece of property and gets pretty complicated. So I made one through Downtown Noblesville — this includes more than a mile walking, and lets you see the sights of town.

    Thanks to a ton of construction, a few things have changed, so I went though and updated the course — and now we have a brand-new orienteering course in town. Be sure to stop by local businesses while you’re on the Square — I love to buy locally made gifts at NobleMade, a coffee at Noble Coffee and Tea, or ice cream at Alexander’s. And who doesn’t love to browse the booths at Antiques on the Square or Logan Village Mall?

    How do you find these amazing Orienteering courses? Check out our Resources page, and scroll down to download them.

    Have you tried one of these courses? Are you ready to try? Let us know how they went!

  • Let’s Go Fishing: Working on the fishing merit badge

    Working on the Fishing Merit Badge by Historian Hannah

    We went fishing on Sunday, June 5.

    Ellie caught some algae. She’d catch an actual fish later.

    We had four scouts go to the fishing event. They were Ellador, Charli, Ellie, and Hannah.

    Ellador watches the fish steal yet another worm.

    We all caught fish!

    Hannah prepares her pole

    We went to a Carmel park to fish.

    Charli points out the fish she caught.

    Grandpa Marv, Scoutmaster Jenny, and Mr. King also had fun fishing.

  • Welcome to the Stone Age — Our first Camporee was a Smash!

    Troop 222 “rocked” the Stone Age with Oog and friends at the Fall Camporee

    Scouts BSA pose in front of trailer
    Showing off our loaded trailer as we head out after a successful weekend

    We headed to Ransburg for our first Fall Camporee, and this trip included our troop trailer for the first time!

    The Stone Age Camporee was organized by Troop 202 of Carmel, and featured scout skills activities with a Stone Age theme. We arrived in time to check out our campsite before the sun set — but we had to set up camp in the dark. This was a new challenge and proved a little difficult — be everyone managed to get their tents set and ready for a chilly night’s sleep.

    Girls set up a tent in the dark
    Setting up a tent in the dark is a little more challenging, but we got the job done.

    Our morning started quite early because we wanted to make sure we were up and breakfasted before flags and the activities — which meant it wasn’t light yet when we started setting up our kitchen and cooking. But the chill in the air didn’t slow us down — and we made it in time!

    Scouts cooking breakfast at sunrise
    Scouts worked on breakfast as the sun rose

    We visited stations in the morning and afternoon to test our Scout Skills, including lashings, casting, orienteering, knots, construction — it was such fun!

    We painted t-shirts to remember our stone age weekend
    We used lashings to put together a Stone Age car, then raced it around a track
    Each scout used one hand — one left and one right — to complete some basic scout knots
    We dressed our SPL as a Stone Age person — or at least a representation of one

    In the evening, we enjoyed a fun campfire program with skits and songs in Stone Age style. Then we went back to camp for a long-awaited treat — stuffed bananas. We’ve meant to make these for a couple of campouts and finally got to do it! Each scout made one, and they all enjoyed eating them, too!

    We stuffed bananas with chocolate, marshmallows and graham crackers, wrapped them in aluminum foil and then cooked them over the fire. Then it was delicious snack time!

    Pretty sure everyone slept really well after a long and active day — and someone’s scoutmaster overslept by almost half an hour Sunday morning! (Whoops!) Breakfast, Scout’s Own, and awards — a chance to celebrate success for the troops in the games and activities. It was especially nice to have First Year Patrols recognized in each activity!
    And what a success! Our troop WON the First-Year award in “Lend a Hand” — the activity where two scouts were paired to tie knots, each using one hand. Adult leaders got awards, too! Our adults were awarded for the Monkey Fist Festivities because we ALL made Monkey Fit knots. But then! The big one! Our Adults were awarded for Adult Participation in the adult stations (all of us did all of them — a memory game, the monkey fist, the Lend a hand knots) and (drumroll please) our troop received the Top First-Year Patrol award!

    Stone Age Camporee was fantastic! What’s next?