Welcome to Parbrook Cub Scout Pack

Programme : Reply slip : Parent's rota : Painless fundraising

Our next pack meeting - Tuesday 31 January. Duty six - Blue
As the hall is now closed we have moved our meeting to the United Reformed Church. Please note that parking is available behind Barclays Bank (mind the narrow entrance). There is no parking at the Church itself.
We continue our run of the collector's badge and invite members of Green six to bring in their collections for us to see. We'll also look back to the RSPB Garden Birdwatch to see which birds were most popular in our gardens.

RSPB Garden Birdwatch
The annual birdwatch takes place this weekend. Take an hour on either Saturday or Sunday (early is best) and make a note of the different types of bird that visit your garden. You can download recognition guides and record sheets from the Birdwatch website. Remember that you aren't counting every time you see a blue tit, it is the highest number that you see in the garden at the same time that should be recorded. This activity counts towards your challenges.

District Quiz
The quiz takes place on Friday 3 February. We're pleased to be entering two teams - Parbrook Wolves and Parbrook Foxes. See the District Quiz page for more information.

Diamond Jubilee badges
We're wearing special badges to commemorate the Queen's Diamond Jubilee which takes place this year. It goes above your moving on award or “joining in” year stars (see "where the badges go" – where it is described as an “occasional badge”). The cost of these badges has been met from our "Parbrook Cashback" so thanks to all of you that are raising money for us with our Painless fundraising. The badge replaces the jamboree badge which should now be removed. We gave them out to all our Cubs in their Christmas cards and would like to see them sewn onto uniform. Although originally funded through our "Parbrook Cashback", replacement (or extra) badges will cost you £1.

Building work at the hall
The final phase of the building work has now started and is likely to continue for 3-4 weeks. This phase will deliver an insulated roof with sound deadening tiles (long awaited by Raksha) plus new heating and lighting in the main hall. It will also include lining our cupboard and fitting a new door but disappointingly not replacing our shelves or fitting tiles to the small hall. The finished hall will be decorated and include new notice boards. That should almost return us to the position we were in before the asbestos scare started in November 2010.
We think it is important not to miss any weeks because of the building work and so will be meeting in the United Reformed Church on 31 Jan and 7 Feb.

Weekend camp at Walton Firs
We'll be visiting Walton Firs in March for our weekend camp. For more information please see our Walton Firs page and if you'd like to come with us please return the reply slip.

Arriving at the hall
We try to provide a Cub leader at the hall by at least 6.15pm and Raksha is often there earlier than that. However, the Beaver leaders have asked that Cubs arriving early wait outside the hall until their meeting has finished. Please note that in the gap between Cubs and Beavers, you need to remain responsible for your children - we cannot expect the Beaver leaders to look after them as they are clearing up the hall in preparation for our meeting. For child protection reasons, it is not acceptable to leave one Cub with a leader in the hall on their own so please stay with your Cub until another leader arrives.

Active Kids & Tesco vouchers
In 2011 you collected a large number of Sainsbury's and Tesco vouchers for us. The equipment has now arrived, in some case to replace things that we had to destroy in the asbestos clear out at this time last year. Thank you to all that brought us your vouchers.
In 2012 the group has decided that it will run a central collection. This means that we will not be collecting vouchers this year.

Badges
We're delighted to see that so many of you have been working on badges at home (but do see our questions page for one or two restrictions). We need to go through the requirements with you before we award them and sometimes have to hold things over until the following week.

Facebook
General information about us (mainly links to our Twitter feed and this website) are now on Facebook - just search for us at "Parbrook Cub Pack" and click the "like" button.

Bronze, Silver & Gold challenge
We're still challenging our members to carry out some tasks to help other people for which they will receive a £5 donation. If you complete 2 tasks then you'll earn a Bronze badge. If you can complete 5 tasks then you will earn a Silver badge and 10 tasks will earn you a Gold badge. You'll also pass part of your Promise challenge. You can download the task sheets to record your challenges. Well done to those that have completed challenges - Parbrook is second to the Scouts for the number of challenges carried out and you have already raised £230 this way.

Online shopping
By clicking through to your shopping site from http://www.spendandraise.com/parbrook/ we get commission on your purchases. It doesn't cost you more so please try and remember to click through. We call it painless fundraising and it has already raised more than £800 for our funds.

Previously called buy.at, our shop has recently changed to Spend and Raise bringing over 1000 shops into our scheme. They include Marks & Spencer, Sainsbury's, Camping World, Halfords, Thompson & Morgan, Carphone Warehouse and many more. You can also earn money when you book your holiday with sites like Expedia, Hotels.com, Hotelpronto.com and lowcostholidays.com but you must remember to click through from www.spendandraise.com/parbrook before you pay. There are already over 1000 merchants in our shop so keep up to date with the latest top offers to see what bargains are about.

If you register your Subs payment for Gift Aid then we can claim back the tax - so your Subs go further. It's easy money for us so if you haven't registered for Gift Aid please complete the Gift Aid e-note and hand it to your leaders.

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