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Tube Duel - Cardboard Tube Fighting League (CTFL)

I came across the Tube Duel - Cardboard Tube Fighting League site whilst preparing for a knights themed birthday party. As long as the Scouts adhered to the rules, I think this would make a good activity / competition to bring to the UK. The prize swords on the site look great, particularly given their back-story! There's space to make this activity as theatrical as you like, create cardboard armour, get someone to play the bagpipes and get everyone psyched up! (Braveheart's freedom speech?)

Washing Line Turks Head Woggle

A lot cheaper than leather, we used washing line to tie Turks Head Woggles with Scouts this evening. You need a 1m length per woggle and a short piece of dowel or stick of a suitable diameter. Plus copies of the instructions to tie the knot, which you can find online.

Scarf Marionette Puppets

Having seen the videos below, and others in the series, I decided that our Scouts could probably manage to do something similar.

We put trestle tables on their side to display scenery and the Scouts dangled their puppets over from the back to perform. Each patrol made about 3 puppets, the scenery, along with a script / storyboard after having come up with a concept for a story that they wanted to re-enact. We used recycling materials, tape, cotton, carboard, stapler, bamboo canes, etc.

Outline instructions for making simple puppets:
http://www.magicalmoonshine.org/scarfpuppet.htm

War Memorial Tour on Remembrance Day 2011

I could not get access to the Scots American War Memorial in Princes Street Gardens or the Scottish National War Memorial at Edinburgh Castle on the evening (despite asking), so here's what we did instead...

We walked the Scouts up from where we meet, into central Edinburgh and then stopped at various war memorials along Princes Street (above the one in Princes Street Gardens), on to the Kings Own Scottish Borderers Memorial on North Bridge and then up to the War Memorial at the City Chambers, discussed here.

At each stop I read something out that I had got from the internet, either some information or a relatively well know poem. In Flanders Fields, or the one with 'we will remember them' in it.

At one of the early stops I gave them each a slip of red paper and asked them to carry it to the next stop and then at the next stop while I read a poem they passed a pen around and were invited to write on their paper 'we will remember them', then they carried it to the next stop and while I read another poem my Assistant Scout Leader stapled all the bits of paper in loops around a black circle of paper to make a poppy which we laid at the City Chambers memorial.