Baking evening

Vision Rangers

Wednesday, 9th October 2013

Baking Evening

So on the third meeting of Rangers this year, we all enjoyed an evening of making cupcakes and coloured icing in the leadership of Beth, who organised the whole meeting. Firstly, we all arrived at the hall and were told about the innocent smoothie, knit a hat charity which we all agreed to contribute to by knitting miniature hats in the future meetings. As soon as the first part of the evening  was over, Beth divided us all into three groups, two groups of four and a group of three. Each group was given a recipe for the cake mixtures and one for the icing. So we all got occupied with making the mixtures for these cakes, some handled this task quite well and didn't leave a mess at all, and others ended up getting covered in flour!

When we all finished making the mixture, we took turns in placing them in the oven for 10 minutes. Whilst we were waiting we had a time to catch up with other rangers and have some laughs. Once the mixture was cooked and the cakes were all golden brown our group took them out then it was turn for the other group to place theirs in. Once they were out it was time to create colourful glacier icing, Beth brought in a mixture of food colours including red, pink and yellow. We all chose our favourite colour and proceeded to make the icing to go on top of our cakes. We also had sprinkles and malteasers to cover our cakes in to give them a sweet touch. After this was all completed we couldn't resist eating them! They were really nice, and over all an enjoyable evening. Beth was helpful in guiding us too and made a fun evening for us all. Personally I think we all like baking and cooking and I think we all would like to do some more evenings like this in the future.

below are some pictures of the cupcakes and icing we made.

Rangers' Photo Hunt

In our second meeting of rangers this year, we didn't know what we would be doing, we were just told to bring a torch and a camera phone and to meet on Sea Road.  Assuming that we were going to be left with just a map and compass and told to walk to Bexhill or somewhere, we made our way through the wind and rain to the seafront. When we got there we were put into two teams, one group of 3 and one group of 4.  We were given a set of 27 photos of various different things along the promenade from the Azur to the Scout hut and told to take a photo of them when we found them.  The photos ranged from obvious brightly coloured beach huts to sections of walls and hidden Banksy paintings.  The challenge was to see which group could recreate the most photos in an hour and a half.

Being the one person who had forgotten a torch, wasn't wearing a coat in the pouring rain and had agreed to take the photos, this was quite a challenge for me. Our group started off near the scout hut, in almost pitch black darkness. We found some of the photos quite easily but searched a long time for other ones.  It was a fun activity, especially in the dark, and we would definitely do it again in different places.  Overall our group won with 17 photos. 

So this week, we had our first meeting of the term. After discussing and sharing stories of our summer holidays, we began to look at the recent changes to the guiding promise.We discussed reasons for the changes and what those changes were. We had previously completed activities based around the promise and what we thought of it. After reading through and discussing the current promise, we were asked to give our opinion on each section of the promise and suggest what it meant to us. We were also asked to suggest any changes we thought should be made.

Our meeting this week was similar to the previous; we were evaluating the new promise and trying to realise what it meant to us. We completed an activity to show us the reason it had been changed. The original promise included the phrase, 'to serve my God'. Due to the nature of England being a cultural diverse country, it was felt by the majority that it was appropriate to remove the mentioning of God. It was replaced with the phrase, 'to develop my beliefs'. This means that no particular religion is referred to. The new promise is also a lot more open ended, so if you follow no religion at all, you are included.

To help us understand the need for change, we participated in an activity designed to show discrimination. The group was split into three subgroups. Each took turns to be either: the discriminator; the group being discriminated against, and the group who were shut out completely. This helped us to understand how it would feel to be a victim of any kind of discrimination, and is also useful in a much broader way than guiding.
         
We look forward to enjoying the rest of the term's busy programme!

Below is a picture of us enjoying our evening!