Museums Victoria School Holiday Activities

Being Prepared

As a team of Leaders in your Section, there are a few things to do NOW:

1. Choose your platform for online meetings.
2. Practise it. A meeting with fellow Section Leaders? A Section Council?
3. Read up on any security issues that you need to be aware of.
4. Check you have current contact details for all your youth members, eg preferred family email, mobile numbers.
5. What are you doing as a holiday activity to keep your Section connected?

Child Safe Scouting at Home

Nothing is more important than the safety of the young people in our care.

Child safety in an online meeting is similar to regular meeting in the hall.

We follow the same protocols.

Parents are always welcome. Nothing is a secret in Scouting.

Parents will be curious to sit in on early online meetings. This is good!

One-on-one communications between Leaders and youth members are not OK.

Technology

Learning new skills is exciting – for adults as well as youth.

There are many options:

• Zoom
• Google Hangouts
• Or whatever else you choose to use

Zoom

Across Scouts Victoria, Zoom has quickly become the standard for meetings across a range of formations, including weekly Section meetings, as well as Group Councils, District meetings and more.

Zoom costs US$14.99 (about AU$25) a month for a Group to set up an account for the weeks or months ahead.

Activity Sheets

A week before each meeting, Scouts Victoria plans to email Section activity sheets to Leaders.

It’s your task to share it with your youth members at least a few days before your online meeting.

This email reminder to your youth members could include:

• The date and time of the next online meeting.
• A reminder on how to join your meeting.
• Anything they will need to have (an orange, pen and paper, a meerkat).
• The latest activity sheet.

The activity sheet is:

Regular Program

This is what a weekly Scouting at Home program might look like in Term 2.

First, let’s dress for success.

Uniform? At least a scarf? This is program as usual!

Program Name or Theme

Opening

Welcome

• flagbreak?
• roll call
• any news or highlights to share (like birthdays)

During this challenging time, it is vital that Scouting continues for our young people. Scouting provides:

• social connection
• support for positive mental health
• supervision (Scouting and schools are better than shopping centres)
• a degree of normality in difficult times

We offer a number of things that schools can’t – more fun, leadership opportunities for all, etc Many other activities like sport, dance and cheer are fully shut. We’re not. Here are some thoughts on: