IM_Kathy

Buffalo Skipper

yes the webelos II did participate in a troop activity - they went on an outing with the troop in our town. Long story cut to really short explanation... when we switched troops it was due to some very valid reasons and it upset a lot of the parents that this small group of boys were leaving the troop... and these boys have been given the cold shoulder by the adults and the boys that are still in that troop. So to keep from causing problems that could arise my son did not assist, help plan, or attend that event. Those 2 webelos II ended up crossing over to a totally different troop - not the one in our town and not the one my son is involved with.

you may ask why my son ended up being a den chief for this den... because he really wanted to do it and the DL wanted a den chief and the troop here did not supply any. Last I heard they still don't have any helping their feeder pack.

shortridge

it can actually be a lot harder than you would think depending on the situation. My son served as a den chief last year and did an exellent job as far as the DL he helped said, but he did fall short on earning the award.

from the ones you listed:

Advance one rank - ok this one he did

Serve as a staff member of a Cub Scout special event - he helped attended all but 1 pack event and that was due to it being held at same date as a troop campout.

Assist three Cub Scouts to become Webelos Scouts? Assist three Webelos Scouts to join a troop? We was working with a den that had 5 Webelos I and 2 Webelos II... so he only had 2 boys to help cross over

Help to plan and carry out a joint pack-troop activity? my son is in a troop in a different town, he was working as den chief for the pack in our town that feeds to a troop in our town... so while the parents loved to have a boy scout help their sons learn their skills, they didn't want to participate with an activity with my son's troop.

- Recommend to your Scoutmaster, Varsity Scout Coach, or Venturing Adviser another Boy Scout,Varsity Scout, or Venturer to be a den chief? yet this one is easy and he did this too.

I forget what the other ones were, but he fell just 1 short of earning the award. To him, it doesn't matter, he wasn't in it for the award. He wasn't even doing it because he needed it for rank POR - he did it because he enjoyed his time as a cub scout and wanted to go back and teach them skills and get to do some of those fun "kid" things again.

when the 2 webelos II crossed over the Webelos I became Webelos II and joined the new Webelos I'd den and they already had a den chief. He was asked to take on the job of historian and really enjoyed it. He was just elected SPL and is excited about that, and is hoping to get to be historian again after this term.

we ran into an issue with that requirement when my son was a tiger, mainly due to the rules of these places and the ages of visitors. However, one of our local news channels has a set up at the local science center for their weather department. they got to see how a green screen worked, and see the weather part of the news done. It was the only way we were able to complete the requirement. The boys then spent a lot of time with their adult partner looking at all the other parts of the science center.

when my scouts were webelos they went back there again as part of their scientist pin, and were amazed at how much they still enjoyed all the things there - was also interesting to see what they liked more this trip compared to last.

the pack my son was with had one each year... it was also done as a cake auction to raise money for the pack. There were different catagories each year - I saw someone already mentioned a bunch. We got a local auctioner that would donate his time for the evening and we brought in a few adults that were judges and would pick top 3 for each catagory Judges were often Mayor, Police Chief, BSA SM, COR, CC...

the biggest rule that we put in was that everything on/in the cake had to be edible... and we gave each boy/adult pair a card where they wrote on it "type of cake" "type of frosting" and "other ingredients" the auctioner would list those off and buyers would get that at time of check out to verify no allergy issues.

I always bought several of the cheaper cakes that would go for $10-$15 and take what my family wasn't going to eat to the police station, fire station, care center, and the like. We also made sure local businesses knew they would often send a person to buy a cake for their employees.

oh, and our rules said "Favorite Related Older Guy" or "Male Role Model" due to not all the boys having dad living near by and we had at least 1 boy who's father had passed away.

my husband started off as a den leader back for Tigers and Wolfs... his work then got busier and started to travel more, and I was the only one willing to take over for him so I was DL for Bears and Webelos. When the boys crossed over I did not want to be a SM, I do like the idea of boys at this age to have good male role models - though if the only male isn't a good role model then would prefer a good female. Once we settled into our troop (we were with 1 for about 6 months before switching troops) I did get asked to become a committee member. Our troop has 1 SM and 2 ASM and then tons of committee members. For campouts we will have any number of the SM, ASM, CM, and some just parents come along depending on the number of boys attending.

The women need all the same training as the men for their position... and in Youth Protection Training they will learn that a woman can only share a tent with their own child (though I don't know many boys that would want to tent with their mom) I am often the only female that camps with my sons troop though that might change in a year when one boy crosses over and his mom isn't always doing cub events.

My husband HATES camping... which means if our troop was a "man only" troop then they'd loose out on an adult that is heavily involved including being one that will winter tent which is where we often have the most trouble getting adults to attend.

as a parent with 1 boy and 1 girl and being involved with both BSA and GSUSA... I do not see all troops being co-ed being a good sell, but I would love if we could have both boys and girls involved with cub/boy scouts. I like the BSA system so much better and am counting down to days (okay a little over 2 years) when I'm done with Girl Scouts.

Pack would have 2 dens (at least) for each level and have 1 for boys and 1 for girls... I do think this age it does work better to keep them seperated, but then bring them together for pack events.

Troops would be set-up to either be all male, all female, or co-ed... parent and child(ren) would pick the troop they would prefer to be in.

As a parent I would love to have my kids in same troop - would love an extra night off each week. But I'm not sure how much my kids would like it, and since it's not an option thus far it's not a subject to bring up to them. I have asked my daughter about joining venture crew - she wasn't all that interested until she saw a few of the boys who were participating at call out ceremony and she thought they were really cute - she didn't like it when I mentioned that scouts wasn't the place to pick up a date.

GS-CS_leader

ever since I started in scouts be it Girl or Cub I always got them a small something(s) for the holidays. When my son and 2 of my former cubs and 1 other boy decided to swith troops we had a final "4 some campout" where I gave the boys the neckerchiefs their new troop used as well as the correct numberals... I then handed each of them a seam ripper and they removed their old numerals, I then handed them a needle and thread and they sewed on their new numerals. 1 boy did an excellent job that his needed no touch up, another boy got them on pretty good but were a bit loose and lost 1 of the numbers after about a month, and the other 2? well lets just say if it were for a merit badge they would probably still working on it LOL My son got his thread going in and out all wrong and so thread was going in and out of sleeve... when we got home I fixed them with him watching me and seeing how it is suppose to go. But even if they struggled those 4 boys took real pride in their work regardless of how well it turned out. Now my son "can" sew, but he still isn't the best at it and prefers his patches to look "great" on his shirt and sash so I do them, but only when he stays and watches and continues to learn.

my son loves scouts and is proud to be in it - the only time he doesn't like to wear his uniform is in our town because he is no longer a member of the troop in our town but rather in another town. when he heard that at 18 he could no longer be a boy scout he was bummed because that means he couldn't be a boy scout during his senior year (September birthday) but when I told him he could always become an Assistant Scoutmaster and work with the troop as an adult he got really excited and thought that would be cool.

my daughter loves girl scouts, but her troop is the first troop in all the years we've been involved (so 11 years) that has stayed a troop with active girls in high school... she doesn't broadcast that she's a scout and won't wear her vest until she gets to the events. However this way of being does suddenly change when it becomes cookie selling time. Being the only few girls in the high school they sit down and divide up all the teachers to hit up and hit up all their friends and suddenly word spreads and kids starting bringing in their parent's orders.

my advice - visit as many different troops as possible have the boys discuss with their parents and then let each boy pick out his own couple of troops he is interested in and go camping with those to make final choice.

we went with the troop our pack feeds and the boys were miserable. we then went to search out another troop and found one and the boys are having a blast. But we had to deal with a lot of headaches and issues before we switched and with getting everything transferred over!

trust me stosh - the ones I was venting about don't do a thing whether they are there or not... don't attend PLC, don't inform patrol of what's going on, don't help plan campouts regardless of attending or not, don't inform other boys when they can't attend to get APL or another boy to officially fill in for him... it is typically the couple of go-getter boys that will just do it because they know it needs done, and these are the boys that never get elected because of who is friends with who. But these go-getters since they don't get PL often take on another troop position like quartermaster, historian, and the like and basically end up doing 2 POR

Stosh I would prefer to hear that too... but what I hear all to often is from a boy that is highly active and working hard on advancement coming through for his BOR and telling me how often they've had to step up and fill in for they're PL or QM or whoever because they don't show or don't want to do the work... and then I see the mentioned boy go for his BOR but with other committee members and him getting his next rank.

when I hear from the boy doing so much to help out I always ask why he felt the patrol voted the way they did and it's always because he has more friends in the patrol and that the boy said he needed it for rank.

I don't know how you can give advancement to a PL who never attended a campout during his time and made it to only 1/2 the meetings and often left them early.

sorry, turning into a vent...

I did have 1 boy that had to miss a bunch due to football that came up to me and said he felt bad that he missed so much and had to have another boy fill in... I had a task that I knew of that was really needing done and related to his POR and mentioned that if he could pull it off I could see that filling in for the time missed... and boom he got it done and was glad that he did it - made him think he wasn't just sneaking by with an "in name only" POR. Him doing that and actually coming forward made me look at him as a boy that really was grasping the idea of scouts, teamwork, and responsibility.

here our fall camporee is always smaller than the spring camporee. Main reason is other activities that take a larger cut of the boys. Friday night is football night here so all the boys who are on the team are booked with that and some even have Saturday morning game films to watch. Along with football if it's a home game you have the boys in the marching band booked... and then the marching bands have compitions on some saturdays. and then there's the boys in soccer that are on a fall club team.

In the spring marching is over so the only real conflicts are baseball and soccer and often ours is scheduled before the full swing of games.

Our troop will have double the boys at the spring camporee compared to the fall... but our troop always goes.

I would think it would depend on what positions you have in your committee and who all is in attendance.

We have our SPL give his report on what the boys have done since our last meeting and things that are coming up between meetings.

Adult committee:

Outdoor Cordinator follows up on SPL in upcoming camping trips.

Treasurer gives status on funds and if there are any concerns

Fundraiser Cordinator reports on upcoming or past fundraisers.

Advancement Cordinator doesn't usually discuss much unless he's noticing several boys are missing a couple things that need assistance in completing.

Quarter Master Cordinator reports from what the Quarter Master turns in - like needing to replace or buy new equipment.

COR communicates needs, concerns, or projects recently done or in future need

and of course the Committee Chair just makes sure the meeting goes smoothly

with all of that our SM really just sits and takes it all in - shares any concerns he has and lets the committee know if he's recently done a bunch of SMC and therefore needs the committee to make sure we are getting plenty of people available for BOR's

it is best to rotate through the different dens giving each a turn or two... when my son was in cubs there were 2 pack events that were set as who would do the flag ceremony and that was that webelos II did the flags at blue and gold and the webelos I did the flags at cross over (our webelos didn't cross over at blue and gold) These were the 2 biggest and very important pack events so it was always seen as important for boys at that level to do them.

back when my son was a wolf and my husband was the DL he had a huge den because they couldn't get another leader... so he split his den in 1/2 and had some boys come from 6-7 and the other 1/2 from 7-8. It did make it a long day for him, and I had to help with shuttling my son so he wasn't there for 2 hours, but it did work.

later when my husband had to quit being DL due to traveling with work I stepped up when they Bear's and Webelos - I also had a girl scout troop. I had them the same day the boys went from 6-7 since they were younger and the girls went form 7-8. When my husband was out of time my kids knew they'd have to behave and sit quietly during the other's meeting.

That's one way I use to get volunteers for leading or coaching - you get final say on days, times, locations. That's how my kids have been able to do scouts, soccer, basketball, t-ball, football, and the school things (band, choir, colorguard) we now have we don't have control over we work around.

the biggest issues that many leaders have had with the jouney program is, as someone else mentioned, the way it was rolled out. Girl Scouts is not Boy/Cub scouts and it is something I've had to force myself to remember as I too have 1 in each.

I personally love how the cub scout program works - here's the book for this age level you have to do a,b,c, etc... and you earn these beads along the way and eventually this badge.

Where as girl scouts is - here's the books for this level, do what your girls want to do from them... and they earn these badges for each of those... and it doesn't matter what badges they earn at this rank.

there are pros and cons for each of these...

cub scouts is a set thing they do - every boy that was a Bear did basically the same thing... but if you have a boy that is more interested in crafts or sports or whatever and never gets to do that then he may not enjoy cub scouts.

girl scouts there is no set thing they do - so a junior in one troop could be out camping several times a year, or could be in a troop that just stays inside and learns things and does crafts. as long as a girl can find a troop that is geared to her wants/needs then it's great because we can please everyone. but if you're in a small area and there is only 1 troop per level it is hard to please everyone all the time.

GSUSA's biggest hope was that these journey's would be something that would generalize all the troops around the country - so that all daisy's would do a,b,c. so far that I have seen the journey's have not been well recieved by leaders and girls... last year I had senior level (HS freshmen) and they hated the journey and didn't want to do it... this year I have Juniors, Cadettes, and Senior level girls... they are still not sold on the journeys - the cadettes will work on it though because it's now a prerequisit for the silver award - my seniors are grandfathered in with the old requirements for the gold, and the juniors have already earned their bronze.

I see the journey's staying around for a while, but eventually will fall away like the studio 2B did.

as for the unit events... this really depends on the unit you are in. I'm the service unit manager for our unit - we do something every month except September (sign-ups) and then June or August is off (and this depends on my schedule as I'm so far the only tent-trained person in our unit and we do a family campout and I have to be there for it to take place) We are a small unit with just 7 troops and so our unit runs very similar to a cub scout pack. But I know there are some huge units out there that have 30 some troops in it and when they get that big they often require troops to sign up as a troop with their leaders attending and some leaders opt out of attending some. You can ask your daughter's leader to give you info about who the unit leaders are and find out more about all the activities are going on and which ones your daughter can attend even if her troop does not.

one of the activities my son's pack did that all the boys enjoyed was painting with mud... we used some really cheap fabric, then made mud in 5 gallon buckets (take dirt, add water, and mix well), and the boys went out and found things to use as brushes (sticks, leaves, pine cones, anything nature)

we also always put in a group-cooperation activity - taking wood pieces to get everyone from point a to point b type things

it can be as simple as taking the right heighth piece of pvc - drill holes in where flag gromlets are use either string or those roung clips that work like the ones in a binder... for stand take a piece of 2 foot rebar and hammer into ground then just slide pvc over.

being on the other side of things as being the wife involved in the world of scouting and my husband being the one that stays home - it really does depend on your family values and view of scouting.

with girl scouts I'm service unit manager and troop leader... with boy scouts I'm a committee member and over see the quartermaster to make sure all supplies are refilled as needed.

my husband HATES camping so he's happy that I'm the one out doing that. I would've really rather been coaching my daughter in softball and cheering my son on with wrestling or soccer, but my kids fell in love with scouting. I look at it this way - had I been coaching or having my kids in a sport my time would actually be more stretched.

our biggest problem is that I have another activity that also takes a couple of nights of the week away - so I'm basically home wednesday night and then the weekend it just depends on who's camping as to if I'm around.

we have had campouts geared toward different rank requirements - time where the older scouts will be teaching knots to the new scouts... the new scouts get the knot down and then come show off their work to an adult and get it signed off. We also have boys that know they are just missing X and that he can do that at the next campout and let's his PL and one of the adults that he'd like to complete requirement X during free time.

as to doing it with another troop... I'd simply say "that's great that you learned those skills, but for us to sign that off in the book you just have to demonstrate those skills" when he says "why I've already done them" you reply "great then it won't take much time, lets get started with x"

with my son's pack it was based off of "We'll Be Loyal Scouts" and the S painted on the W2 crossing over and did the snake Ssssssssss

a troop in our unit is just finishing their bronze award project and they have worked very hard on it. Our council has bridges that troops can reserve and take to their bridging ceremony to use, BUT none of them were handicapped accesible... this troop drew up plans and has constructed one - all that's left to get done by end of the month is to paint it. I'm looking forward to them completing it, it will be the first troop in a long time in our unit to earn a higher award.

the ideas the previous poster mentioned were very good too!

as a mom my response to my kids... yes I know you still can be in scouts, but I'm sorry you now have a child to care for you need to finish school, get a job, and take care of day care before you even begin about thinking about having fun. And that goes for both my daughter or my son if they (or their girl friend) decided not to do adoption. Being adopted as a child, my husband's sister adopting a child, and several other friends have adopted I would highly push for that.

as a scout leader my response is... ok this is a sensitive issue (girl scout term) and will need to be discussed among the girls as well as the adults in this troop. If everyone is okay with her participating in scouts while pregnant or once a mom she will have to still follow all troop rules and that would include no tag-a-longs which means that her baby will not be allowed at an meetings or functions.

when my son did this they strung a few ropes - 1st line was where the boys shooting would line up facing the targets the 2nd line was for boys to stand waiting for their turn.

if you have coffee cans (metal are the best, but hard to find any more) we used those as targets had them on another line dangling done just took a small hole and strung them onto it that would be the 3rd rope LOL.

Basementdweller

since you also posted in BSA section I'm assuming you also have a boy in scouts... so my question to you is:

If the young man who was with her in getting pregnant were a boy scout, should he be told to leave boy scouts?

I personally don't know how I would handle this if it came to be in my girl scout troop... and with having senior and cadette level scouts it could very well happen. I've been reading this thread hoping someone who come out with what National or their Council says. I do believe that this would have to be something that would need to be discussed with the parents and then with the girls to get their opinions. I see pro's and con's for both the girl involved as well as the other scouts, but with it being such a "touchy" subject it would need to be shared to all and please as many as possible - though I know something like this could vary well split one troop into two.