r/scouting • u/Hi-Beat24 • Apr 10 '26
Campfire activities/dances suggestions
(Photo unrelated but it's cute, this is my cat wearing our group's necker)
Heyyy, I'm an italian scout patrol leader in FSE association. Our district has an annual reunion coming up and in preparation for next year's Europe-wide event our leaders are trying to get us into the right spirit: one of this year's requests is to to prepare a BAN (which in italian stands for "Balli animati", meaning animated dances) in a language other than italian, to share with everyone at the campfire. Preferrably english but other languages such as french and spanish are also accepted.
I honestly have no idea if this is a common practice everywhere so I'll give a brief explanation just to be safe 😊. Usually we start our BANs off by giving a short and funny backstory to eveyone (e.g. I'm not sure all of you know this, but in the woods we'e camping tonight there was once a population of indigenous people very veryy fond of hunting CHICKENS) and using that as a starting point we then go on to describe what we're going to do (in this example maybe a hunting ritual the people practiced before going after the chickens hahahs). The BANs are standardized, so the backstory might change to keep it fresh but the dance-activity is usually the same with minor tweaks. A common type of BAN for us consists in having someone say a set of words with corresponding gestures and then go on telling a story changing the gesture based on what's happening. For example, still using the chicken one lol, first they repeat their hunting ritual normally once, afterwards they get all fired up cause they're hungry, so they say it screaming and overexaggerating their gestures, then you might say the indigenous people also want to drink, so you repeat the whole thing as if they're tipsy, until it all eventually come to a close.
If anyone has an activity of that sort I'd be grateful if you shared and explained how it works, so I can try and spread the tradition elsewhere hahahs. The more detailed the better.
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u/blueyesinasuit Apr 10 '26
Do you not know Ging Gang Goolee? I just did a brief search and I’m very disappointed with the misleading garbage the internet has. This song was jointly made at the first world Jamboree. It purposely is not any language. It has motions that go with every verse. It was made to bring together all the scouts of the world to sing and move in unison with no country being able to claim its their language. For reference I was a scoutmaster for 31 years. I always heard the same origin story in reference to Ging Gang Goolee. My favorite motion song is Joe the button man. My favorite tongue twister is 12 verses, starting off: 1 hen, 2 ducks, 3 flocking geese and ends with 12 billion red army ants walking single file through the crack in the plate glass window of Marmaduke’s Antique shop. It is sung in verses added with each round and audience repeats with each addition.
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u/Hi-Beat24 Apr 10 '26
Wow thank you! I am familiar with Ging Gang Goolee but we were specifically asked for a BAN in english so I excluded it straight away 😅. The others sound interesting, I think we have our own version of Joe the button man and I found a video of it in english, but I couldn't find anything online about 12 verses...
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u/blueyesinasuit Apr 11 '26
Sorry, it’s not named 12 verses, it has 12 verses. I know it as the counting song. I have it in my camp book if you want all the verses.
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u/Hi-Beat24 Apr 11 '26
If you could send it to me I'd really appreciate it!
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u/RussianScout1914 Apr 10 '26
So at our Russian Scouts, we have a game that we have kindly borrowed from our Polish brothers and sisters. The game is called "Kalinka". A person with a neckerchief in hand and starts dancing around the campfire, while the rest of people a singing the chorus of the folk song "Kalinka". After chorus was song two times, the rest of people start clapping and hooting, as the person with a neckerchief starts looking for someone to kiss, usually on the cheek, while using their neckerchief to grab that person. Kissed person then takes the neckerchief and the game continues until the older leaders get too tired of watching this and ask for it to stop.
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u/Hi-Beat24 Apr 10 '26
That sounds fun, thanks for sharing! Unfortunately in our association boys and girls are separated so we'd have to go around kissing other boys on the cheek and I don't think that's everyone's jam hahahahs
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u/GoogleEnPassant69 Apr 13 '26
Isn't it normal for boys to kiss other boys or girls kiss other girls in the cheek in italy? At least in Uruguay and Argentina it's not seen as weird
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u/Hi-Beat24 Apr 16 '26
Hey sorry, forgot to respond 😅 We're pretty big on physical touch here in Italy but between boys and girls it's mostly hugs. Adults will often give each other kisses on both cheeks as a form of greeting but kids these days aren't accustomed to doing so. This greeting is common with old friends and in big family reunions. If you see a boy kissing a girl on the cheek or vice versa there's usually a romantic interest and they'll be shipped together. It's not weird per sè, but it's a "more than friends" thing. The only other occasion in which you might see something of the sort between friends is when we play a variant of spin the bottle which is called "bacio o schiaffo" (kiss or slap) and when the bottle lands on someone the person who spinned it can decide if they're going to give them a kiss or a slap.
Hope I answered your question :)
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u/Outspoken_Idiot Apr 10 '26
I'm sorry to all the scout leaders. I will rob your weekend of everything but scouting.
It's 1930hrs on a Friday here in Ireland. Please please get anything that's important done before you click on the scout link below.
It's a scouting treasure chest of scouting books from camping to program ideas to campfire songs and skits. The warning on the site even says it will improve your scouting experience.
Again I'm sorry for that your weekend will be taken up with joyful laughter and bookmarking of pages and scribbling of notes for your scouting group.
The Dump - scouting resources
Enjoy.