Process for dividing dens

We had a good School night for Scouting the other night, and had 15 boys sign up. Eleven of those are Tigers, and at least two more Tigers are expected to join at next week's pack meeting. So that makes 13. There's another boy we were expecting to sign up that we haven't yet heard from, so it could even be 14.

I'm the new Tiger Den Leader, and am thinking about how to broach the idea of splitting into two dens. Our pack is at a Catholic Parish/School with one classroom per grade, and all but one of the Tigers go to that school. Our pack traditionally hasn't divided dens, although the largest den in recent history (that I know of) was 10 boys. The other leadership has downplayed the need to divide the Tigers, saying that they don't like to split them up, since they're all in the same class together, etc.

I don't like the idea of splitting them up either, but I also don't like the idea of such a huge den--that's potentially 26+ people for a den meeting!

The biggest challenge in my mind right now is figuring out how to decide which boys go in which den? I'd like to know what systems others have used for that.

(I was glad to hear when talking to one of the dads in my den today that he thinks they should be divided up, too--I don't see him volunteering to be a den leader for the other den, but at least there might be support)

Sprocket,

We had a pretty good recruiting night as well and now it appears that we'll have 17 Tigers. Our plan is to split into at least 2 dens, but the other potential den leader is now talking about just keeping everybody together if all the parents are there. We have two fairly large rooms that we can use in the church if it heads that way. I'm not sure that it should, I'd rather see two dens but he's been down this road before (DL all the way through CM) and doesn't want to do it on his own.

One of the problems is that his boy, my son and another Tiger are all friends and don't really want to split up. My perspective is that even though there will be two dens, the Tigers will more than likely do a lot of stuff together and they won't be apart like they think.

Fortunately we have until October to really decide how to split things up as next week's meeting we will be in the gym and will probably play wiffleball. (There's not really a large enough grass area outside since it's a downtown church and the parking lot gets pretty full.) The following meeting is the pack meeting and we'll all be together anyhow.

My suggestion would be to let the boys figure out the dens with some guidance from the adults on the sticky choices. I may be giving first graders too much credit here, but I don't think so. This might be the way we do it, or we could go by application date and make the cut at 8 or 9 boys to start the second den. I got to admit I am kind of partial to my first 6 Tigers, but one of them is the new DL's son and the other is the best friend, so I'm sure we'll have some new boys to replace them.

Don't know if this helps at all, sort of thinking out loud I guess.

John

Good luck. Try and watch all the boys when they are together. They might just naturally fall into groups. That might make it easier.

Before you start dividing up the boys, you have to have something to divide them into.

Between now & your next committee meeting, get to know the Tiger Teams in your den. See how the boys work/play together. See how the Adult Partners work with the boys & react to Shared Leadership.

By your next committee meeting you should have a pretty good handle on the folks in your den. Talk to your CM & CC about splitting the den. Have a list of possible leaders for the 2nd den. Get feedback from your committee & den leaders. They might know some of the families personally & have some insight for you. After that, it is the responsibility of the CC to find a den leader if they decide to go with splitting the den.

Once a den leader is found, you can get together & decide on how to do the actual split. If it comes down to it, pulling names from a hat is a good, impartial way to go!

BTW - I have 10 Tigers this year, with a possible 14 (by the time the slowpokes who have older sibs already in the Pack get going). Even though we already have a Wolf leader on deck for next year, I do not think I will split the Tigers with him. At this point, I just do not know enough about the rest of the Tiger Teams. They seem a good group & historically speaking there are lots of meetings where we are missing a few Teams. So, I think the volume of people will not be such a problem for us very often.

Have FUN! Tigers is pretty easy & laid back. Get them outdoors as much as possible. Meld them into a group. Have FUN! Get the Adult Partners excited with what their Tigers are accomplishing. Get the boys comfortable with Cub Scouts. Did I mention to have FUN?

You should hear our rafters ring & see the smiles on the Tigers faces when they do our Den Cheer! TIGERS ARE G-R-R-R-R-R-E-A-T!!!

Our Bear Den rapidly grew from 9 boys to 21. Parents wanted to keep the Den together if possible. To manage this size of a Den, we decided to divide the den into 3 groups of 7 boys with a Den Leader for each group. The Den Leaders use the same meeting program. All groups meet on the same night at our Charter Organization and we are able to keep the Den together but keep it manageable. We also have 3 Den Chiefs that help out.

So far, it's working pretty well and we're having fun learning where we can make improvements. The key is to make sure you have a large meeting space.

Split them up! Let me repeat that....Split them up! My twins are currently in a den of 14 boys...it is caotic!!!Plus I We have had numerous injuries from them running around etc. Typically when their den formed last year it would've been into two dens, however our pack strongly believes in the two-deep leadership, and we were not able to get a fourth leader, so we had to keep them one den.

The other aspect of this, which I think is a really good one, is that the den leaders really don't get the chance to know the boys the way that they should. The den leaders become the "teachers" instead of the mentors.

One way we have used to divide up boys is by location. Those south of this side of the street or West of this street form one den and the ones North and east form the other. This way they are still with other boys that they normally would play with on their free time.

Good luck

Jens3sons

I second that. Split the den. 6 to 8 is the ideal size. Anything larger than that leads to chaos and, as was the ultimate result in our Pack, high dropout rates. (Our tiger den had 10 and the leader absolutely positively refused to consider splitting the den. This year they have zero!)

As for how to split, when we've done it, we let the boys decide how they want to be divided up.

Split the den! Really! I had 7 tigers last year and that was a great size. 1 more would have pushed it over the top, given the size of our meeting space. Don't let thoughts of next year influence you much, it's this year that needs to be FUN for the boys and easy for the parents. That's a lot harder to pull off when the group is so large. +1 to all of Jens3sons comments.