Weekly Challenge

Whether you’re a seasoned Scout looking to learn new skills and continue Scouting fun at home, or not a Scout at all, you can take part in our Weekly Challenge!  

Each week, we’ll introduce a new set of five new challenges for you to complete – each based on the following Challenge Areas.

Keep Score

  1. Download a Score Card to keep track of your progress.
  2. Complete the challenges set out each week.
  3. When you’ve finished your challenge(s) for the week, fill in the form below to log your activities. Note - you only need to complete at least one of the challenges!
  4. You'll receive an email with a certificate and snazzy virtual badge to show your friends! 

Ready to get stuck in? Discover the challenges for Week 14 below. You can download the Week 14 Challenge Chart here.

 

Week 14 Challenge

Pulse Check

Ages: Joeys and Cubs (5-11 years)

Number of People: One

Your heart is a pump which pumps blood out around your body through your arteries. You can feel the blood pumping where the arteries are close to your skin. These are your pulse points, and if you feel gently with your fingertips you can count how fast your heart is beating.

The idea of aerobic exercise is to get your heart pumping faster, which will exercise and strengthen your heart as well as the muscles that you are using in your body. This activity encourages you to learn how to take your pulse and see how different types of exercises impact your pulse rate.

What You’ll Need

  • Paper
  • Pens or pencils
  • Timer
  • Calculator

Instructions

  1. Practice finding your pulse, using the first two fingers of one hand to feel the pulse on the opposite wrist, just below the thumb. To measure the resting heart rate, take your pulse while you are relaxed and sitting down. Take the number of beats you count in 10 seconds and multiply them by six. Write this figure down on a piece of paper.
  2. Plan a walk around your neighbourhood, with the aim of measuring your heart rate. Identify areas on the route suitable to skip, jog on the spot or do star jumps, to see how your resting heart rate
  3. compares with your target exercise heart rate.
  4. At the chosen points on the route, assign appropriate exercise for an allotted time, for example, 10 minutes of running on the spot. At the same time, check your pulse rate after one, two and five minutes of activity, and at the end. Just count the number of beats in 10 seconds then multiply by six. Write down each of the results.
  5. At the next stopping point on the route, choose a different exercise and repeat the process, stopping to measure your pulse and record the results again.
  6. Also, measure your pulse after each stage of your walk and see how it compares with your pulse rate at the start of the walk, during the middle and at the end.
  7. When the walk is finished, have a look at your results and see which exercise produced a higher heart rate. You will find that 10 minutes of hiking, which is moderate exercise, results in a lower heart rate, while a burst of star jumps will increase the heart rate because it is more intense.

Reflection

Planning a walk around other forms of exercise to measure and compare heart rate will reveal the science behind exercise and show which forms of exercise are best to keep your heart healthy. By recording your results, you will see that different activities affect heart rate differently. The activity shows that a short burst of vigorous exercise bumps up the heart rate, whereas you would have to do moderate exercise, such as walking, for a longer time to achieve the same result.

A Note on Safety...

If you are aged 18 years or under, you must have your parent's permission or supervision before you begin any activity.

As always, be sure to abide by the Scout Promise, whether engaging in online conversations through email, virtual conversations with other Scouts or on social media, and by phone.

Visit Kids Helpline for best practices on internet safety, or click here for more information on keeping safe online.

More activities to do at home

On the look out for more challenges to complete? Luckily for you, we've created an Activity Pack full of them!

Check them out here.