howarthe

We are going to the pool.

The practical problem has nothing to do with protecting children. The practical problem is all about appeasing scouters who don't want homosexuals anywhere near their children. The REASON they don't want homosexuals near their children varies from scouter to scouter, but many believe that homosexuals are more likely to abuse their children than heterosexuals. They are not wrong, however, the numbers do not match their level of concern. I've never read a case of a homosexual scouter sexually abusing a scout. Every case I have ever read about was always a heterosexual scouter, and often a Latter-day Saint. i can think of no practical reason to exclude homosexual scouts. Do scouters really believe that homosexual scouts might abuse heterosexual scouts? or that homosexual scouts might use scouting to find each other like the YMCA? Today I read the article in the original post which included this statement: "The Boy Scouts of America has a long-standing policy of discrimination against LGBT people." Is that true? I thought the discrimination policy was created in 1991. Is a twenty year old policy equivalent to a long standing tradition? Chartered organizations have always had control over who they choose as their scout leaders. I think it is a terrible shame that national chose to write a policy where none was needed. It seems to me that this policy has helped no one and harmed many.

I think it is generally a bad idea for cub scouts to have pocket knives, but my son can't wait. I told him that he has to earn the whittling chip card first. I've read that the whittling chip card is for Webelos. I think that's a fine idea, but today I am reading the requirements for a Wolf scout to earn the Outdoor Activity Award. The requirements include: "Assemble the "Six Essentials for Going Outdoors" (Wolf Handbook, Elective 23b) and discuss their purpose." So I turned to Elective 23b in my handbook to find out what these six essentials are, and I found a list of "eight essentials." 1 first aid kit 2 filled water bottle 3 flashlight 4 trail food 5 sunscreen 6 whistle 7 rain gear 8 pocket knife I could forgive the writers of the outdoor activity award pamphlet for getting the number of essentials wrong, but I'm flabbergasted to think the writer of the wolf handbook think its a good idea to take a den of 8 year olds on a hike armed with pocket knives and whistles! What are your thoughts?

"In September 1913 Capablanca secured a job in the Cuban Foreign Office. He had no specific duties but to play chess." Awesome! I like this guy, too.

My son is working on the Chess pin. One of the requirements is to read about a famous chess player. Bobby Fischer is famous enough that I have heard of him, and I don't even like chess. Does anyone have any books they could recommend for a second grader who doesn't like to read.

I read "the summertime award scouts receive should match their current rank rather than the rank they are working on" at merit badge.org. I's a wiki, so I understand its not an official source, so that's why I decided to ask here. I often get really good advice here ~ lots of experience to draw on. I'm sure the confusion is all the result of the fact that most packs recruit in the fall rather than the spring, so few packs have any tigers in the summer, but I'm glad we had a recruitment drive this spring. I think it was very successful. Last year even our fall recruitment went badly, and we didn't get started properly until winter.

Yes, I was able to sign them up. The council made a big deal about spring recruitment this year. Everyone that was able to sign up six new tigers or six new wolves by June 10 won an ice cream party for the pack. We didn't get six and we didn't get them by June 10, but we found several people very eager to sign their boys up as soon as possible. Kindergartners are eligible to sign up on June 1, just as they are graduating from kindergarten. The more I think about it, the less likely I believe I am going to award the pins as described above, not only because it sort of leaves out my new tigers, but all the scouts got their new neckerchiefs last month, and I just don't imagine the the new wolves will want tiger pins or that the new bears will want wolf pins. I thin k they will want the pin that matches their new rank. If they already had pins, then I would feel more compelled to follow the pattern already established but I haven't seen anyone wearing one of these, so I think we will award them in September like this: * the summer after kindergarten grade, boys receive the tiger pin. * the summer after 1st grade, boys receive the wolf pin. * the summer after 2nd grade, boys receive the bear pin. * the summer after 3rd grade, boys receive the Webelos pin. * the summer after 4th grade, boys receive another Webelos pin. * the summer after 5th grade, boys are already in their boy scout troop.

As I understand it, there are four different National Summertime Awards for Cub Scouts. They are metal pins with different colored borders. I read that "... the summertime award scouts receive should match their current rank rather than the rank they are working on (ie, boys who have attained the rank of Tiger will receive the Tiger pin even though they are in a wolf den and working towards the wolf rank)." * the summer after 1st grade, boys work on the tiger pin. * the summer after 2nd grade, boys work on the wolf pin. * the summer after 3rd grade, boys work on the bear pin. * the summer after 4th grade, boys work on the Webelos pin. * the summer after 5th grade, boys are already in their boy scout troop. But I have just signed up five new tigers during our spring recruitment drive. They only just graduated from kindergarden. Can they earn a pin? Can I give them the tiger pin? Will they have the opportunity to earn the tiger pin twice? I think I would rather give out the Webelos pin twice.

Here's a link to the image I refer to in my post above. http://products.culturenik.com/img/products/detail/182-201.jpg

I read somewhere that no uniform is ever out-of-date, that is, any official uniform is always an official uniform and you can wear it as long as it is serviceable even if they come out with a new style, which they seem to do about every ten years or so. I am a cub scout leader, and I wear the gold blouse with the blue pants because that was the "new" uniform when I joined up. I was out of scouting for a few years and when I came back all the women in the pack were wearing tan and olive. I like the blue and gold uniform. I think its pretty, but I like the idea of everyone wearing the same uniform, too. It's more "uniform." Anyway, I also read somewhere that you can't mix and match the uniforms. I can't wear the gold blouse with the olive pants, but yuck, who would want to? But I also read somewhere else that I CAN mix and match head gear. I think the baseball caps look stupid on me. I hope I don't offend anyone with that, but the scout catalogue doesn't even picture the women leaders with hats at all. Most of the year we are indoors, so I don't really want a hat anyway, but I like a hat outdoors. Keeps the sun out of my eyes. Keeps the rain out of my hair. So, I found a den mother hat on ebay from the 1950s I guess. It is rather reminiscent of the flat military style hats that the boy scouts used to wear. I think it will look great my blue and gold uniform-just like Norman Rockwell painting. I guess I'm posting here because I wanted some opinions from fellow scouters on mixing and matching uniforms and hats from different eras. What do you think?

Does anyone have a ceremony they use when they present belt loops at the pack meeting? Currently, I just call the scout up to the front of the room, tell everyone which award he has earned and hand it to him. Then he goes back to his seat and shows it to his parents. We also award tiny segment patches in our council for participating in various activities during the month, and I usually award these the same way.

Our pack doesn't seem to have any trouble getting outdoors in June, July and August. We usually meet in an elementary school. The school isn't available in Jun, July and August, so we meet in local parks. We do the rain gutter regatta, bicycle rodeo, day camp, and a day at the local pool. What we have trouble with is May, September and October. Around here, the weather is still good enough that we really ought to be outdoors because the weather will not be good enough Nov, Dec, Jan, Feb, Mar and Apr. Anyway, I would love for our May pack meeting to be around a council fire, but I can't think of a location. A camp ground has a lot of fire pits, but not a lot of room for seating. A picnic area has a lot of seating, but no fire pits. I think we ought to do a sports tournament in September. It might make for good recruiting, too. People are crazy for sports around here. What should we do in October?

I think a recharter ceremony sounds like a great idea. It would be another chance to make a connection with the chartered organization and you could take the opportunity to let everyone know how old the pack is. I was surprised that no one wears the veteran unit bar in our new pack. It's 60 years old! That seems to me like something to celebrate.

I noticed that the leaders in my pack don't wear neckerchiefs, but most of them don't wear the pants or hats either, so I figured it was just sloppy, half-hearted uniforming that is common in most of the packs I've been associated with. But then I went to a big meeting in the city sponsored by the council with leaders from lots and lots of different packs, and I only saw two people (including myself) wearing neckerchiefs. Actually I wear a scarf, but I didn't' even see any bolo ties. There were plenty of people who were completely uniformed with the exception of neckwear. Why is that? Any ideas why the cub scout leaders in my area hate neck wear?

A complete person must develop physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. Boy Scouts of America supports a boy's development in each of these areas, and they do so in the most inclusive way possible, if not the most balance way possible. Spiritual development makes a small portion of the curriculum, so I can see how many might see how scouting would change very little if spiritual development were eliminated all together.

That's really beautiful, but according to wiki quote, it might have been Sitting Bull or Crazy Horse that said those words. http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Tecumseh Here's another quote I like very much: Brothers, we all belong to one family; we are all children of the Great Spirit; we walk in the same path; slake our thirst at the same spring; and now affairs of the greatest concern lead us to smoke the pipe around the same council fire! Brothers, we are friends; we must assist each other to bear our burdens.(This message has been edited by howarthe)

Do I need one of these if we are meeting at the school to arrange carpool to the state park? Do I need one of these if I am driving the den up to day camp every day for a week?

I read somewhere that the Boy Scout organization of the UK was forced to allow girls to join, but that did NOT decrease the enrollment in the Girl Guides program. I think it is a tragedy that the BSA and GSUSA were founded independently rather than cooperatively. On the other hand, girls are more likely to take the lead when there are no boys in the room, so GSUSA is better at training up female leaders than a coed BSA would be, so I don't care to see the two organizations merge. I would like to see them get together on things every once and awhile. I would love it if the troops were connected in some way that made it easier for parents to find them. When I put out a recruitment message for my cub scout pack, and a parent asks me where the girl scouts meet, I really wish that I could tell them, but i think that would require the Girl Scouts to adopt the chartered organization model. I don't know, but I imagine they left that model for their own very good reasons. It seems to me that Scouting for Food would be a service project the two groups could do together. Scoutcapades and Pinewood Derby also come to mind. I don't think they should go camping together.

You might also try engaging the parents. If the parents don't care whether or not their boy earns the rank, then I wouldn't bother so much. If the parent does care, then they ought to be willing to help.

I've had good experience using the immediate recognition badges in my tiger group. I don't like the look of them. I would rather see the temporary patch on my son's pocket, but I realized that the three different colored beads actually helped my son understand what I had been trying to explain to him for weeks: you need to do 15 things: 5 den activities, 5 family activities, and 5 filed trips. When he saw the beads on his shirt, he finally understood.

I love the idea of cooking them a meal or giving them the opportunity to take a nap. I'm always grateful when someone offers to teach my boy something new. If you want to give them a trinket, I like the photo much better than the certificate. I always seem to receive certificates which look great in my scrapbook, but a photo would look even better. Be sure to include names, the date and the place on the back of the photo or the frame. Signed tshirts are a great idea, and don't forget patches, scouters love patches. I received a small leatherman tool at the last leader meeting I attended. The scouter who organized the meeting worked for leahterman, so he was able to get some small tools donated. He had invited a couple hundred cub scouters to a presentation designed to inspire them regarding a spring time recruitment drive.

Welcome, Lisa! I'm a new tiger, Mom, too! It's March, so I feel like our tiger year is almost over. We only got started in December. The pack sort of fell apart last fall, and it took me awhile to realize that they were not going to put themselves back together on their own, so I jumped in with both feet. I think I got my best training from the tiger cub handbook. There were only two tiger cub scouts, so I quickly dispensed with the shared leadership portion of the program. Since then we have added two more tiger cub scouts. Their partners are great! They come to all the meetings, and one even accepted an invitation to serve on the pack committee. Keep trying to get yourself to those pack committee meetings. I've read lots of tiger programs are rather overlooked by the pack committee. Find out what the pack needs and fill that need for them. They won't be able to ignore you after that. With my pack is was recruitment. I wasn't satisfied with a den of two boys, so I asked the principle if my son could invite all the boys in his class to join cub scouts. The school lets the students do that sort of thing when inviting classmates to birthday parties. The principal said no, but he offered to run the invitation in the school newsletter. I knew I wouldn't be able to limit the invitation to first graders, so I let the pack know what I was going to do. I remember they received the information with a bit of indifference, but we had seven new parents show up at our next pack meeting. I felt quite proud of myself, and now they always pay attention to me in committee meetings. I can't really complain about the pack leadership. They have been very good to me. But I want to get the next tiger cub group off to a stronger start. I'm planning to invite all the interested kindergartners to our May pack meeting, and whoever shows up with get an invitation to an orientation meeting the first week in June. At THAT meeting, I plan to explain the shared leadership portion of the program, and pass around a sheet where they can sign up for which month they want to be in chart of. I will also let them know that one of them needs to volunteer to be the den leader and there are several vacant positions on the pack committee that they could volunteer for. I wish you a lot of luck. Don't give up. Next year you'll be a "real" den leader.

In my limited experience, the first two things were: (1) How much does it cost? (2) What sort of time commitment are we looking at? But they very soon got around to Do I have to stay? I have a tiger group, so the answer was yes.

No, I don't think BSA should own the units. I like the chartered organization system, but I have been disappointed in the absentee nature of the chartered organization. A representative did show up for our blue and gold banquet, but they don't involve themselves when we choose pack leaders. In the past I have volunteered in LDS packs, and they take a great deal of interest in choosing the pack leadership. My current pack is chartered but the local Kiwanis, but they don't even give us space for our meetings. I think they just fill in the line on our charter. While i was surfing around the Internet I did find a pack once that was chartered by an organization with a name that suggests that their only purpose is to charter the pack. Something like Parents of Scouts in Smalltown, USA. I suspect they had to incorporate themselves as a non-profit. I don't know how difficult or expensive that would be, but if they could do that, I wonder if the parent-teacher organization could charter a unit. I don't think schools should.

I'm a woman. No one ever asks me either of those questions. The pack committee chairman did ask me how many children I have. She saw on my registration form that I had been a den leader several other times, and she guesses (incorrectly) that I must have other older sons to drag me into those packs. Nope, I just volunteered to serve in my church pack. Ironically, I had to give it up when my baby was born. I just couldn't manage it, but now that my son is finally in first grade, I'm back, and I couldn't be happier about it. To answer the question: why do we ask each other for our resumes when we meet, I can't really say, but its like that outside of scouting. People always start with the same questions: what do you do for a living, how old are your children, etc. etc. etc. It happens to kids, too. How old are you? What's your favorite subject in school? What grade are you in? I suspect we are just trying to find something that we have in common with each other. But the judgements that some people have faced are deeply unfortunate.