Beaver ‘Camp’

Last weekend I went to camp for my first full weekend with our Beavers. I’ve visited them while at camp before, but never stayed for the whole time.

Now I have to mention here that I wasn’t in ‘full Leader’ mode as such while we were there, as Carol and Rachael (wife & daughter) were there as well, so a lot of my time was spent chasing after an 18 month old little girl who was enjoying being out in the open and playing in the mud and puddles! The other Leaders knew it was going to be like this!

We all went out on the Friday evening to prepare and the Beavers came out on the Saturday morning.

Beavers are only allowed to stay away from home for one night, which is why they came out on Saturday. They can now sleep under canvas, but it was decided that it’s much easier for them to stay in a building – they are only 6 – 8 years old!

The theme for the camp was ‘under the sea’ so the Beavers had fun with all things water based (luckily it had stopped raining by this point!).

Of course, we had a campfire which was great fun.

The thing to bear in mind with a Beaver camp is that there is virtually no downtime for the Leaders. There are things going on all the time and the Beavers must be kept occupied while they are awake! This could well be the first time they are away from Mum and Dad and not with family members so there is the possibility they could get homesick. So the fact the kids are only at camp for two days is quite enough for Leaders. Having said that, EVERYONE on the camp had a brilliant time and really enjoyed themselves. This is of course down to the dedication of the Leaders and the huge amount of planning by the Beaver Leader.

As a personal aside, we bought Rachael a pop up tent with tiger stripes for her to play in (first tent I’ve ever bought!) and she loved it. Not too long before she can sleep in it, rain permitting, I think!