Cubs/Beavers Activity Badges.

I quite like the non specificness of the physical rec badge and sports enthusiasts badge. DS wants to do both , his main sport , cycle racing, is not a team game at his age level. He can do his cyclists badge but that has nothing to do with his sport of cycle racing. The generalist nature of phys rec allows him to use racing as his sport.

oh yes - sea scouts have their own silly hat as well :)

And a hat

our local scouts group happens to be a sea scout group - not quite sure why - historical reasons lost in the mists of time I (probably something to do with whoever started the group). We live nowhere near the sea (about an hour) and no real river close by - so no real emphasis on water activities.

Just a typical scout group with a different uniform as far as I can tell :)

Air and Sea Scouts are only for 10+ age group, and there aren't that many groups in the UK but you could ask your District if there are any nearby if interested.

Air Scouts and Sea Scouts

If offered the chance, yes, I'd vote. Not necessarily for a football badge though. As I said earlier the majority of our Cubs are in local and school teams, they get plenty of recognition for that already. We're also defending champions, 2 years running, of our district football tournament [smug]

I love the new Pioneering and Backwoods Cooking badges, can't wait to get started on these. To me, they represent what scouting was all about. Our Cubs love trying to tie knots and make fires, we've got an outdoor (pizza) oven at our District campsite and they get to make pizzas and eat them afterwards. I can't wait to commandeer it at camp for some kleftico ours self to anyone in District that's on here

Well, football and netball are both team sports, whereas skating and equestrian are single participant sports. I'd imagine that is part of the criteria for deciding whether they merit an individual badge or not.

Don't forget a lot of the air and boat scout badges are for air and sea scouts who already have the facilities similar to cadets.

Yes, sorry, had moved onto looking at Scout badges at that point which are somewhat more involved!

wow im at your cub groups, they sound brill.
ours mainly do games in the hall, sometimes have visitors/speakers in to talk about stuff. the highlights of the yr are a woodland walk (often cancelled due to weather) and a (expensive) 39hr cub camp!

bitter. much lol. doesn't help I did brownies/guides and we did loads in comparison and our camps were 4/5 days long, so cant help but compare.

No flying in the air activities edu we visited the local plane museum, made and flew paper planes and DH gave a talk on flight recorders, with examples (he works in the industry) and how planes fly and their various essential parts. Cost a couple of quid per head to go to the museum, from their subs so no extra cost.

And if we're talking expensive activities, surely the flying one tops that score!

Generalising here, a lot, so forgive me but out of 32-36 Cubs, I'd say roughly three quarters of ours, regularly play football, rugby, cricket, tennis with other clubs. We have a few that are not sporty at all but by trying sports like volleyball, dodgeball, table tennis, etc.. they can gain fitness challenge badges. We don't fill in the blanks with stuff they do outside of Cubs so they all start with a level playing field as it were. I'm sure some groups do do this but we don't tend to. If a parent approached me saying my child's captain of the local footie team and plays every weekend and they want me to add that to our badge records of course I would but that rarely ever happens. I think our parents are overwhelmed with the amount of badges they earn already without asking for more to sew on to be honest.

We could do the martial arts badge for the whole pack by getting an instructor to give demos for a couple of sessions. I know I have Cubs that do martial arts, I've yet to award a badge for it though. Maybe one to try in the new year :)

We only do taster sessions of all these activities though, it's very rare we have a Cub get signed off on Badgework done outside the group to be honest. You may get a couple of readers but it is very, very few and far between. Therefore it makes no difference if you're doing judo, football, cricket or riding, if you haven't told your leaders and brought proof in that you've covered everything required, you're not getting the badge.

When working on the pet or fitness badge for example, we give the Cubs a diary that they need to keep a record of what they've done and ask the parents to monitor it.

I think the idea behind badges is to get them to try something new that they wouldn't otherwise do. As you point out OP every Tom Dick and Harry does football and those that do it regularly get the public recognition of that when they play a match.

Scouts and Guides badges are really recognition that the young person has tried something out of the ordinary, that wouldn't otherwise be recognised, and have managed to learn the basics.

Everyone sees little Jonny when he scores for Bash Street under 10s, but no-one sees him skating round his back garden for hours on end learning a few basic tricks.

That was my reasoning too. I couldn't afford to send my boys to lots of different activities but the Cubs/Scouts managed to get them to do lots and lots. That's why DH and I stepped up as Leaders when our pack needed us, DS1 is now a Beaver Leader and DS2 has just joined Explorers and comes to Cubs to assist as a Young Leader.

If you have a local Riding Stable ask them to cost you for a group lesson, doing the things laid out in the badge requirements. Work on a 60-80% turnout of Cubs for your costings, it's unlikely they'll all want to go or may have other commitments. If it's reasonable your Cub leaders may go with it. :)

We do Equestrian Badge with our Cubs maybe once every three years. We take a group of them, as many as want to do it for a small charge, we subsidise it from Cub funds, to the local Riding School. Those that want to do it can, nothing elitist about it. Those that can't afford to do the badge but really want to, we can cover costs for them. We don't like anyone to miss out.

We're really lucky to live on the coast and have some great water activity venues locally. This term our Cubs have had great fun raft building and testing them out, the 6ers and 2nders have tried scuba diving (in a pool) and been kayaking. All our Cubs get these opportunities and for the majority of them it's about having fun, not collecting badges that's for the parents to worry about

I'm just surprised how much easier the Cub badges seem to be compared to Brownie badges. The Brownie ones seem to have a lot more clauses!

Yes, EduCated - it's the same for cubs.

I am a Scouter Misfitless but not a cub Leader - I know about this from having dc go through cubs. Why do you ask?

EduCated has put it better than me - they are 'groups' or sports if you like and all the Team Games comes under phys rec. Swimming is separate, but all the martial arts get grouped under that badge. I don't know anything about equestrian tbh, but maybe there are different disciplines within that? I know you can get a 'paddle power' badge which starts with the basic skills across a wealth of different boating skills, again, all lumped into one. I suppose you could put a case for 'racquet sports' which might make sense, but I think they tend to be more likely to be played by people older than 10 more than the other team games ?