Henry Park Pelican (Cub) Scout

Written by: Claudia Kong, Assistant Sixer and Scribe Today is a special day especially for the recruits. It is INVESTITURE DAY! Investiture is a day when the new recruits receive their scarf and woggle from Akela and this marks the begining of their scouting journey. After today, they will no longer be called a recruit but a cub scout. A simple yet important ceremony was held in the pressence of the recruit's parents. This ocassion was also graced by our new Principal, Mr Chia. During the ceremony, Sixer and the Assistant Sixer of each six will take turns to march forward with their recruits to Akela. Akela will ask the recruits 2 questions, then the recruits together with their Sixer and Assistant Sixer will have to place their left hand on the Singapore Flag to recite the scout promise.. Finally, Akela presented the scarf to each new cub. It is such a joy to see the recruits receiving their scarf and woggle joining the big scouting family. Senior Sixer getting the St...

Written by: Justin Kong, Senior and Scribe Leader and  Claudia Kong, Assistant Sixer and Scribe Kaa, together with the sixers; assisted by Mr. Peter and 2 parent volunteers, we held our 2 nd scout meeting for the recruits. After the formality of horseshoe, we gathered in Indian files. Kaa then divided the recruits into 4 groups namely Ant, Bee, Cockroaches and Dragonfly. (The recruits from group Cockroaches ‘protested’ to the name. After much ‘protest’ they were renamed as Centipede.) The first highlight of the day was a quiz for the recruits to recap what they had learned last week. Kaa asked questions like the name of the sixers, the name of the sixes (The 10 animals) in Henry Park Pelican Scout, the characters in the jungle book and even a challenge of drawing the Singapore Scout emblem. All 4 teams did very well and points were allocated to the teams. Next, Justin & Jihn Shenn led the sixers and recruits in singing some of the all ti...

Written by: Justin Kong, Senior Sixer and Scribe Leader Today was a very special day for all our new recruits. It was their very first scout meeting of their scouting life. Today there were only Mdm Kerina, Kaa, the Sixers and three seniors. Sean Daily came to join us to support his sister who was joining as a recruit. Once attendances were taken, Mdm Kerina made us do a brief introduction of ourselves. It was very important to pay full attention because the very first game depends on how well we remember all the names. In the “Who is behind the curtain?” game, our new recruit, Gautham, surprised everyone by being able to name each of every Sixer. No problem at all! We had an exciting game of “Fixing the animal puzzle”. The three teams raced each other to complete the puzzle of animals and name each one. Surprisingly, the puzzles formed the 10 animals of our scout group! All three teams managed very well to complete the challenge. Sixers fired que...

Cubs turned out in full force for the first scout meeting of theyear. Akela started the meeting by welcoming all cubs back from their break.He then encouraged all cubs to get their Progress Badges and then asked the Sixers to agree target dates with their cubs. Each Sixer now has a record of what Progress Badge each cub has attained, and the target date for achieving the next higher Progress Badge. After that it was all fun - making paper aeroplanes and seeing which Six could fly theirs in the shortest combined time! The cubs were dismissed early as Akela was holding a Recruitment Talk for parents interested to enrol their child into our Pack.

Written by Justin Kong, Senior Sixer and Scribe Leader Was there a scout meeting? Nope! Don’t worry none of you missed a meeting. But to some of us, today would be the most memorable day in our cub-scouting journey. Having fulfilled all the given requirements, we joined 142 other cub scouts from all over Singapore in a simple yet significant ceremony to receive our Akela Award - the highest award a cub scout can achieve. 8 of us arrived in school at 1:00pm in our neat and tidy uniforms. After putting on the national scarf and a final check of our attire, we boarded the bus to Raffles Institution, where the award ceremony was held. Upon arriving at Raffles Institution, thousands of questions bombarded our mind. Will we pass the attire check? Is this the correct thing to do? Must we give a full salute or a half salute? We were clearly anxious. When entered the cold auditorium, we tried to find a row to sit together as we did not want to be split up in that giant place! Finally...

Written by Eugene Lim, Sixer 2011-2012 and Guest Scribe It was yet another awesome day. The P6 scouts were going air rifle shooting at Nanyang Technological University. For some it was their first time in the range. We were greeted warmly by the NTU Shooting Team members when we arrived at the range. It was my first time shooting and all the equipment in the range were unfamiliar to me. We were first given lessons by the student instructors about the safety and the proper use of the weapons, then we were allowed to shoot them (I mean the weapons, not the instructors). We were split into 4 teams (a,b,c,d). After all the groups were done, we all participated in a shooting competition. There were various competitions for everyone and the objective was to score as many points as possible. After I was done, Akela asked Brendon,  Jeremy and myself to get some snacks and drinks for the P6. After we came back with the food everyone rushed for the chips and in a matter of ...

Written By: Justin Kong, Senior Six and Scribe Leader 5:00pm, Singapore, HPPS Pelican cub scouts strolled into school from many directions. I was one of them. As soon as I got to the General Office, I could feel the excitement of the gathered cubs. The reason was clear: It was many cubs first night hike! At about 5:15, Akela greeted us with a smile. He sure looked excited too! After the usual administrations, we boarded the bus with miles of smiles and reached our first stop, Henderson Wave, after a joyful 20 minutes. We started the hike all eager to see what we could experience that very Saturday. We moved quick and swift in a not-so-single file until we reached a point where we had a quick toilet break before continuing on the journey. Soon enough, we reached the Hort Park gate. By then some cubs were already grumbling over their sore legs so we took a much-needed short break. After a while, we continued the hike. The trail was turning dark so Akela asked us to be ca...