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i have been asked by the scout troop that i help with to teach them some tricks for a badge but i can decide what some thing easy that needs no gimmicks like coin in roll as it needs to be quick cheap and fast


Cheers


give me a P give me a C give me a W give me an I give me a Z give me an M give me an E

What does it spell PCWIZME

Is it scouts or cub scouts or what? What age range is it?

they are scouts aged from 10-14!

Pcwizme

Go with Professor's Nightmare / Equal-Unequal knots then

Being Scouts they'll have rope readily available (have I made a huge stereotype assumption there) so any rope magic would be superb.

A chat with the group leaders could bring the session round to a 'knot' session anyway.

At just over £3 on amazon, Karl Fulves Self-Working Rope Tricks book would give you a few pointers.

I'll bet they'll love tying knots with one hand and pop-off knots etc.

If rope isn't your thing, then show and teach them any self-working tricks, and, if possible, once they've learnt these, show them similar tricks that you know with sleights used, but don't reveal the secrets of the sleights. That way they'll leave entertained wanting to learn more.

cheers zack
but of course your right at last count there was about 5 miles of rope.


Pcwizme

We've managed to lose all our rope!

Personally I'd go for self working card tricks and gambling demos, I've never met a scout who was not interested in fleecing everyone he knows.

Just out of interest, which badge was it 'cos I've been thinking of doing something similar.

okeydokey.
cut and restored rope....knot badge.
change bag, trafic sign, tubes of allah, changeing banner and drum tube all can be easily made and personilesed for a craft bage.

then a magic show for performers badge and stage craft.

pm me for details.

And there's a crazy thing, the whole awards system has recently been reorganised and, as far as I can tell, none of it includes any need to learn knots which I feel is a very useful skill for a Scout to have.
It also ruins at least one stereotype!

You simply must have the Chinese Sticks - Scouts rubbing two sticks (or two cub scouts) together to make fire is another stereotype which can't be ignored - unless they use disposable lighters these days!

Well they tried rubbing sticks together at a recent camp and failed miserably. since they were allowed to use a gas stove anyway the whole thing was a bit pointless. The whole movement seems to be going down the toilet, I was never allowed a gas stove when I was a scout, it was open fires or cold food.



Mutter, mutter, gas, mutter.....

It's like Maths exams - sometimes calculators are allowed! In my day it was Log Tables, fingers, and a large quantity of thinking.

exactly why i failed maths, and what with the health and safty and the i'll sue you if i get wet brigade all the fun has gone out of being a cub or scout, bring back the pointy sticks and 15ft high rope walks please.

Ah but you can't expect young people to think. If they had to do that and then came out with the wrong answer it would be psychologically damaging to them. It is much better if they can say they put it into the calculator wrong rather than that they are thick.

Damn right. Darn this cotton-padded society we live in now.

No room for real nitty-gritty honesty anymore. Not without drawing attention to yourself anyway.

mandrake wrote:It's like Maths exams - sometimes calculators are allowed! In my day it was Log Tables, fingers, and a large quantity of thinking.

It was still Roman numerals then, right?



I had one maths paper that you could use a calculator in (where you'd have used log tables, Mandrake) and one where you had to do all the working yourself.

Seems like a reasonable balance to me.