Every year, on the last day of April, the Swedes come together to celebrate ‘Valborg’- essentially ‘Walpurgis’ – and the ‘burning away of the Winter, the welcoming of the Spring’.
As is our annual tradition, we went to our scout one, where this year, Alfie and I worked on the fishing pool (fiskdam), and Maya on the chocolate wheel.
Thus, the photos I have, are courtesy of my husband…. 😊
I spent a wonderful evening watching our scouts (8 – 10 year olds) building bridges with ropes and wood across our stream…
In this first picture we have Alfie and his friend Douglas who had “a great technique” – to simply throw the sticks in one place in the river! 😂 In the fifth picture down you can see how their bridge progressed – and, yes, it actually did work to walk across – and a couple of us grown-ups did try! 😄
In the rest of the pictures, with slightly older scouts, you can see that their techniques are a little more ‘traditional’. Each bridge worked as it should, and all the kids showed amazing teamwork…
Incredible what young kids can do without an adults help when they are given the chance! 👍
We are so lucky to live so close to the lake….
On Wednesday evening we were joined there by 22 young scouts, where we spent the next (almost) two hours learning how to be safe on the frozen lake, drilling holes in the ice, doing a torch lit quiz about the stars, grilling bananas with chocolate on an open fire, and just playing, playing, playing….and I was so glad Alfie joined our group this evening…it was truly wonderful…. 😊 
Every year on St George’s day, the scout group has the giving out of the annual badges in a local church – an extremely old, and very beautiful church.
Here is Maya’s group ‘fiskarna’ (the fish)….
Maya is on the left hand side – she is one of the smallest, and as she is going through a phase of not having her photo taken, it’s often hard to catch her…but I took a sneaky close up here….
😉
Happy St George’s Day!
On Monday we joined one of our older scout leaders with a mission – to make 30 boat shapes for the younger scout group….we got to work…
I say ‘we’, but the kids did it all! How wonderful to have the chance to learn to use both an electric saw and a drill. I have a feeling we may have at least one carpenter among us…. 😉
There’s been a lot of snow this week.
A snowman kind of week…..
…at home…
….at scouts….
….and back at home again, in the kitchen…
Of course, by the time I took the above picture, half the snowmen had already been eaten up! 😜⛄️
We had a magical time at scouts this week, making snow ‘lanterns’, and cooking ‘pinnbröd’ (stick bread) over the fire….
What a wonderful experience for the scouts! 🙂
How very proud I was of Maya and her friends, who stood with me for six hours helping out with the children’s lottery at the scout Christmas market…
…and how very proud Alfie was when lighting the first candle of Advent…
In all our business we havn’t had time to take the Christmas box down from the attic – these candles will have to suffice for the moment! 😉
Happy Advent everyone!
Another wonderful scouting weekend – with amazing weather. Not many photos – but lots of fun with some fantastic kids! 😉
The tent – 14 kids and 3 adults slept here…
Many activities were enjoyed – here are just a few (and really only a few!) of them.
Nature memory..
Following the trail…
Waiting in the forest for the kids to find me…
Here come the first ones…
Making dandelion chains…
…and garlands…
Creating a zip-line for cuddly toys (after riding the big one built for scouts..)…
Experimenting with a homemade sundial..
Making pizza…
Creating a theatre piece…
…and as always, a campfire….
Just a few of the things we did. 🙂
Yesterday evening at scouts our task was to build a bridge – Maya wasn’t in my specific group – but I wanted to share with you the task, because it was just so much fun!
The scouts were shown how to tie, in several ways, two branches together to make a basis for a bridge – and then, after a big box of thin rope pieces was brought out – they were told to go off and make a bridge for the stream.
Yes, real stream. Real water!
Collecting of the branches took a while – the kids had to drag heavy branches from various areas around the forest, and think of ways to get them over to their bridge area.
The kids were amazing! They organised a way of working together to transport the branches – one dragging them from the pile and throwing them across, in to the stream, and another two dragging up the branches from the stream, and transporting them to others who were at the place of building the bridge.
They also used their initiative to tie some rope between two trees as a ‘handle’ to help themselves across another part of the stream….
Of course, the risk of falling in the water made it even more exciting….
And yes – we had quite a few who got wet feet! 😉
But in the end, after over an hours work, most kids got together a bridge that was crossable..!
There are two things that I found fascinating about this task….
1) That the kids (mine was a group of 5 boys, between 8 – 10 years old), were able to work together, organise themselves, come up with ideas, and succeed, in a task that was potentially quite difficult – all on their own! I made sure to mostly just observe, and only help when really necessary.
2) That we allowed the kids to do some ‘heavy’ work, over a real stream, at huge risk of falling in – and it all turned out ok. I wonder how many children get this chance to take such risks these days? And you know, the kids loved it!
I think the fact that the kids had time and space to wonder about, and complete this task, without an adult standing over them and telling them exactly what to do, and without anyone telling them to be careful, and not to do this or do that, made it such a successful evening….Again, how often do we make time for such risk taking, problem solving tasks, without constantly worrying and warning children about the risks? Just a thought. 🙂
Squashed Tomatoes 