DofE
Hello!
For the skill section you can do almost any skill from puppetry to glass blowing to cross stitch to snail farming. There is a huge range of skills and you have to choose one to try and develop. I chose baking. I wanted to give it a theme so I decided to do a Great British Bake Off based baking challenge. I am baking something every weekend and at the end I will create my own cookery book with all the recipes. I am going to make the book appealing to young people to inspire them to bake. You have to pick some goals for each challenge when doing D of E. For this challenge my goals are to develop my baking skills and to use my designing skills to create a book. You also need assessors to state that you have done what you said you were going to do. I have asked my neighbours to taste my bakes and give feedback along the way. So far I have been really enjoying baking. I used the Great British Bake Off theme with my baking by selecting 4 categories: cakes, biscuits, bread and desserts. For each category, I chose 3 things to bake: a signature, technical and showstopper. It has been quite fun choosing recipes for each of the 4 categories. For cakes I made dorset apple traybake, marble cake with chocolate icing and dark and white chocolate layered cake with chocolate ganache. For biscuits I made pinwheel cookies, biscotti and a party biscuit selection. For bread I made a Mediterranean loaf, cinnamon tear and share rolls and pretzels. I haven't started desserts yet but I plan to make a salted caramel chocolate tart soon. The skill section has been my favourite because as you probably know, I love baking! Some of the bakes I mentioned have been featured in my blog before so either click on the links or look in the blog archive to find out more about the recipes.
Volunteering
I thought that I would do a blog post about something that I am doing this academic year in school. I am doing my bronze duke of Edinburgh award (D of E). The award consists of four sections: skill, physical, volunteering and expedition. I am going to write about you need to do for each section what I am doing for each of the four sections.
Skill
For the skill section you can do almost any skill from puppetry to glass blowing to cross stitch to snail farming. There is a huge range of skills and you have to choose one to try and develop. I chose baking. I wanted to give it a theme so I decided to do a Great British Bake Off based baking challenge. I am baking something every weekend and at the end I will create my own cookery book with all the recipes. I am going to make the book appealing to young people to inspire them to bake. You have to pick some goals for each challenge when doing D of E. For this challenge my goals are to develop my baking skills and to use my designing skills to create a book. You also need assessors to state that you have done what you said you were going to do. I have asked my neighbours to taste my bakes and give feedback along the way. So far I have been really enjoying baking. I used the Great British Bake Off theme with my baking by selecting 4 categories: cakes, biscuits, bread and desserts. For each category, I chose 3 things to bake: a signature, technical and showstopper. It has been quite fun choosing recipes for each of the 4 categories. For cakes I made dorset apple traybake, marble cake with chocolate icing and dark and white chocolate layered cake with chocolate ganache. For biscuits I made pinwheel cookies, biscotti and a party biscuit selection. For bread I made a Mediterranean loaf, cinnamon tear and share rolls and pretzels. I haven't started desserts yet but I plan to make a salted caramel chocolate tart soon. The skill section has been my favourite because as you probably know, I love baking! Some of the bakes I mentioned have been featured in my blog before so either click on the links or look in the blog archive to find out more about the recipes.
Physical
For the physical section you can do pretty much anything again from archery to ping pong. I decided that I would go for a run each week on Sundays with my sister and I would lengthen the run as I progress to be more capable of going further. I am doing about 4 kilometres for each run at the moment but I hope to make the distance a bit longer as I progress. I am using my mum's fancy running watch which records all sorts of statistics like altitude, average speed and even calories burnt! I am enjoying the running and I feel that I am getting fitter! I am using my old PE teacher (and family friend) to assess this challenge. My goals are to improve my time and work towards doing a run for charity.
Volunteering can include anything from helping out in an old people's home to working in a shop. Whatever you do, it has to be unpaid. I am helping to run the Year 7 book club at school and this involves running activities, games and discussions about the book. I was a bit shy at first but I think that I have developed good leadership skills and I am starting to really enjoy it. My goals were to successfully lead the sessions and develop leadership skills. I hope to continue this volunteering because it is really fun. The school librarian is assessing me as runs the book club. I have come up with some interesting games to play such as speed dating books. I might write a blog post about some of the book related games I have come up with.
Expedition
The expedition is what it says on the tin, an expedition! You are split up into groups and you have to plan your route, stopping at marked checkpoints, for a two day long expedition. I don't know much about it yet apart from the fact that you have to carry your tent and stove and you have to cook your own food before staying the night at a campsite. I have done a training weekend and I'm looking forward to my practise expedition that is coming up this spring. I will do a post about my experience when I have actually done it.
That's all for now about my D of E experience so far but I will keep you posted about how I am getting on! Meanwhile, I would love to know if any of you have done or are doing D of E and how you got on. Leave a comment or send me an email.
Bye!
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