Some of our squirrels in our first ever Drey!

Squirrels

The Squirrels section of the Scouts caters for children aged four to five years old. It is the first Section of a Scouts Group, and therefore the beginning of any child's Scouting experience. We currently have one Squirrel Drey.

In the Squirrel section all activities are age appropriate, and the first few months are all about settling in and making new friends whilst doing fun activities. For some children this can be the first time they have been left alone without a parent present, and so they find the experience a bit daunting. We will work with you to help your child settle in, and it won't be long before they are joining in and gaining confidence as they take part in games and activities.

In Squirrels, activities are generally Leader-led rather than child-led, and the idea is to learn #skillsfor life in a fun, friendly, and inclusive way. Being a keen teaching environment for camping and pioneering skills, there will be some activities which will use fire; cutting tools; or have a greater risk of injury. All such activities are risk-assessed and suitable mitigation is put in place to avoid accidents. We teach children to respect the dangers inherent with such activities and to develop the ability to assess dangers for themselves.

Each Squirrel Drey contains Nests - which are made up of small groups of Squirrels. Each Nest has a Nest Leader who is responsible for making sure their Nest pays attention when necessary and behaves correctly. If your child is selected to be a Nest Leader, they will be given a special badge to sew on to their uniform.

Badges

Within the Squirrels Section there are three types of badge Squirrels can earn:

  • Activity badges - There are 12 activity badges ranging from Be active to Superchef. They are light green circular badges with a blue border
  • Staged-activity badges - There are 16 staged activity badges. A staged activity badge is one on a particular theme, but there are different levels that can be awarded. For example, there is a Swimmer staged activity badge, which at level one a child has to be able to swim 10m, but at level five it goes up to 1,000m. They are blue circular badges with purple border
  • Challenge badges - There are four challenge badges for Squirrels to earn. Challenge badges are designed to encourage children to step outside their comfort zones and try something new or that may scare them - such as giving a talk to the Drey. They are blue hexagonal badges with a yellow border

Awards

If your child completes all four challenge badges and a number of the activity badges (including staged activity badges) - they can earn the Cheif Scout Acorn Award, which is the highest award a Squirrel can get.

To find out more about badges and what your child need to do to achieve them, please visit The Scouts Association.

Below is an example screen shot from OSM showing a child's badges and their progress on them so far. Badges start off "greyed out" and "fill-up" with colour as activities are completed so you can easily see how they are progressing towards completeing a badge. To find out more about OSM, please see our (see our FAQs page).

A example screen shot of OSM showing a child's badge progress from a Beaver's Colony

Investiture

After a few visits to meetings your child will hopefully want to keep coming. If this is the case, your child will then be invested into Scouting in a short ceremony at the end of a meeting. It is at this point you will need to buy your child the Squirrel jumper (see our FAQs page for details on where you can purchase it).

At their Investiture, your child will be asked to recite the Squirrel Scout promise (see side bar) and then they will be given their Neckerchief, and three "starter" badges: The Scouting membership badge, the District Badge and the 6th Farnborough Scouts Group name tape badge.

Jumping up to Squirrels

At around six-years old, if your child wishes to continue in Scouting they will attend a special Jumping up ceremony and move into our Beavers Section. At this time your child will be offered the chance to attend both Squirrel and Beaver meetings for a few weeks, to help with the transition and to give them a chance to make new friends in Beavers. For the ceremony you will need to purchase the Beaver sweatshirt. Your child will "jump" from "tree" to "tree" carrying a stick. When they reach the river they place the stick on the Beaver Dam, and then take off their Squirrel jumper and put on their Beaver jumper - emerging from the "forest" a Beaver. They will then be greeted by one of our Beaver Leaders who will welcome them to the Beaver section.