jc2008

I have seen cub scout lions for 5 year olds on this site a few times. Is this a BSA program or is it just being tested in a few places? My youngest son is only five but he wants to start cub scouts now after watching his older brothers get to do everything.

 

IMHO, this is a horrible idea. Just too young.

 

Guess it all depends on the children too. For me it would be wonderful as it would give my younger son something to do since he's was introduced to scouting at 2 via his brother. On the other hand, I know some 5 year olds who would not be able to participate in something like this (without going into specifics, you just know they are too young.) But then again the same can be said about some Tiger cubs (I have a few that are very attached to their parents, wondering how it'll go this year as Wolves when most of the parents won't stick around.)

According to meritbadge.org they are having 2 "den" meetings a month, one den meeting + one grand adventure (think go-see-it). They don't attend all pack meetings, just special ones and they aren't camping. Its basically the program taken down the levels it needs to be for kindergarten.

Tot lot needs to be there so that parents can volunteer. With our tot lot the parents had to bring in a box of capri suns and enough snacks for 12. Each parent sending a kid to tot lot that is.

The most we had in tot lot this year was about 6 so it was just one mom and a girl scout in there helping with the kids. Our day camp runs around 120 cub scouts so that was way little in the tot lot for the amount of kids we had at the day camp. Also, the mom running it was about 7 months pregnant. So running the tot lot was one of the only volunteer duties she could have as it was WAY too hot to let her run around outside safely. Our tot lot is in a room with an a/c.

Our camp requires every cub scout attending the camp to have a parent volunteer for at least one day. Its mandatory. So it gave the expecting mom something she could contribute while not getting overheated. We had another 8 month pregnant mom come in for one day and she worked over in tot lot as well for the day.

No Electronics in the tot lot? I know why no electronics for the rest of the campers, but tot lot is not doing the day camp program, it is more of a day care as a service to the volunteers.

No Electronics in the tot lot? I know why no electronics for the rest of the campers, but tot lot is not doing the day camp program, it is more of a day care as a service to the volunteers.

our tot lot has crafts, board games, toys and a tv with dvd player in it so the kids usually watch cartoons in the morning and in the afternoon and do crafts and games inbetween.

Just pinning a normal small balloon to the target and letting the kids shoot at it worked great at ours.

Nothing fancy inside of it, just a big pop when they managed to hit it.

I was really wondering who exactly the Girl Scouts would send to a Collection Agency. The Troop leader going to get annoying calls 3 times a day from someone trying to recover the debt?

It just doesn't make sense that there is no oversight, and like someone above said, someone at the girl scout council not saying hmm this order is unusually large, better check on it.

No, our leaders have not been trained. I did all the online training (leader specific, youth protection, fast start, and even the LDS scout training) the evening I was put into the position. I have brought up training with the rest of the leaders several times. They admit they haven't even done as much as the youth protection training. I brought it up with the bishop and he claimed he thought it was very important, but I have yet to see anything done about it. I work a lot with the wolf leader, seeing as how she's too spacey to plan anything, so we do bears and wolves together and we do talk a lot. (I've been trying to get her to help out a bit more and make decisions.) She knows she should do the training and that it's really easy, but she really doesn't get around to doing much on her own.

I mean one of the key things is the 2 deep leadership. You are never alone with a boy.

People without training seem to believe that this is so no one abuses the boy or does anything improper. But the other side of the coin is so that the kid can't say "So and so did this to me!" and there is no second adult around to say, "That didn't happen".

If a kid claims abuse, you tend to err on the side of the child for safety reasons rather than the adult.

Just curious after i saw this article:

http://www.kens5.com/news/Donor-save...tml?hpt=us_bn8

If someone doesn't sell their popcorn/cookies who exactly is responsible for the bill if they don't have enough money to pay it?

For BSA is it the charter org? Can't imagine the charter org wanting to be responsible for however many cases of popcorn someone orders....

I know if I went to pick up my popcorn order and saw 12 times the number of things I had ordered, you wouldn't get me to sign the accept form lol..

When they get to Boy Scouts every troop meeting will begin and end with a flag ceremony. Pack meetings should as well, but often do not. In wolf each boy was to Lead a ceremony. So in a den of 6 that is at least six ceremonies. In direct response to your question, yes the purpose is to reinforce what thay have learned and to take it a step further. Many requirements are repeated each year, usually it is expected to make them more complex or fine tune their skills. The flag ceremony requirements are in Webelos also. Even in Webelos it is hard to get the boys to stand still, march in step and not horse around. Unless you have exceptional children I am sure the flag ceremony they performed did not look like a military honor guard at Arlington. Not that that level is the goal, but improvement is. Did the wolves actually get the flag folded up into 13 perfect triangles. Not likely. You dont teach your kids to swim and then expect them to pick right up where they left off 3 years later after never seeing the water. One thing that has helped me tremendously is reading large parts of the Boy Scout handbook. I have a much better understanding why cubs do many seemingly silly "make work" exercises in the requirements and electives. Example in wolf one elective is to measure the span between your thumb and index finger. Seems silly in a vacuum, but knowing that measurement is used in Scoutcraft skills to measure distances of far away objects. All the job chart exercises year after year are direct training for the family life and personal management Eagle required Merit Badges. The WHY things a re done in cubs is not explained very well, and if they tried to do that it would make the leader guides and handbooks to large and comlpex. Sure there are mistakes here and there but for the most part you just need to trust that the developers of the program know what they are doing.

My son takes swim lessons every summer, I dont expect him to just need one swimming lesson, be taught the basics then never get a chance to practice what he learned. You don't need to make a big todo about the ceremony, getting boy scouts and everything, if that is too difficult to arrange. Like I said, a tall pole in your front yard with a rope they can hoist the flag up with is all it really needs.

The Flag ceremony should not be something you do once and checkbox off. We actually have a makeshift flagpole in our front yard made up up a tall plank of wood and some rope and when the meeting is at our house we do the outdoor ceremony. We have done it multiple times this year. The flag ceremony is not a one and done thing for our Den. In fact the kids actually don't need to be told very much at all when doing the flag ceremony now since we do it so often. If we are inside we do the entire indoor flag ceremony too (honor guard marches forward and presents colors etc).

I mean surely your kids are able to do it one time per year just to make sure they actually learn how to do it. Doing it one time isn't exactly learning it very well.

hmmm

 

My district....bunch of fellows sitting in meetings and there is never any results. They meet every month various committees and nothing ever changes.....Finance committee...what in the world do they do????

 

District Commissioner, typically a business man and not a scouter....He is key to raise funds for the council....Spends his time setting up golf outings and skeet shoots.

 

Membership committee.....the guys the DE yells at and trys to hold accountable for missed recruiting numbers. Not much else.

 

Activities Committee.....they do nothing, we haven't had a district event since I was day camp director 4 or 5 years ago.

 

Advancement committee...Send a rep to the troop eagle boards. They spin stories of bad eagle projects and terrbile scouts.

 

Roundtable commissioners....Run the round table. He does a pretty decent job.

 

Finance committee/????? is that the Friend of scouting guy????? We never have any money despite Golf outings and skeet shoots that raise lots of camporee.

 

Unit commisioners.....are supposed to fill out reports on teh health of units....The are the go between the De and unit, answer the units questions about operations.

 

 

 

So with all of the meetings, I don't see any results...No camporees, no cub events, we do have a roundtable.....nothing else.

 

we just ran it identical to our pack's pinewood and it worked out fine.

Every district is different. I can speak for our district though since my husband is a Unit Commissioner. Our district has 11 packs and around 13 troops, and they have 2 people as Unit Commissioners. My husband does 3 cub scout packs and the other guy does 2-3 troops. There are not enough people atm to cover all the packs/troops. 2 of the packs my husband is in constant contact with are very healthy and large. The third pack is a new pack and we have been a constant presence for them at their leader meetings, pack meetings, events like pinewood and campouts. It gives the new parents confidence in the program to see people around who "know what they are doing" when all of the new parents are getting their bearings on scouting.

He helps where he can and I cannot see giving more than one "new/needy" unit to a commissioner, especially one that is heavily involved in his own Pack. We give a lot of time because we want to see scouting thrive in our community.

The trick is to find more crazy people like us who will go above and beyond the program that surrounds our son and reach out to other units and help them make it. Its not an easy task to find, identify and recruit these people.

Like anything else, if the UC is done right, it really is a benefit to the entire scouting community. But like anything else in scouting, you only get out of it what you put into it and in some areas volunteers who have that much time and energy and enthusiasm to give are few and far between.

Glad you are taking a positive attitude towards this whole thing. I have seen Dens fail and fall apart because the Den Leader has a life event happen and are no longer to effectively do meetings etc. You are lucky that you had this woman, however annoying she is, step in and take over to make sure your Den is still going.

She might have more stringent standards than you would or your leader would, but they are not unreasonable. They are just more strict and closer to the textbook.

Look at the positive things she is doing for your Den (ie her time and effort in actually caring that the boys are doing the awards correctly and making sure your den doesn't fall apart).

Glad you are taking a positive attitude towards this whole thing. I have seen Dens fail and fall apart because the Den Leader has a life event happen and are no longer to effectively do meetings etc. You are lucky that you had this woman, however annoying she is, step in and take over to make sure your Den is still going.

She might have more stringent standards than you would or your leader would, but they are not unreasonable. They are just more strict and closer to the textbook.

Look at the positive things she is doing for your Den (ie her time and effort in actually caring that the boys are doing the awards correctly and making sure your den doesn't fall apart).

Not meant to be a knock against LDS Packs, but I thought your leaders were assigned by a church official. You should not have wolfs and bears in the same den meeting, they are working on different stuff. You need another den leader. Keep in mind that very few of the requirements need to be done with the den. I know the Wolf book states most of them are to be done with the family or by the cub himself.

I am not a wood expert but I assume maple is a hardwood and therefor denser. I think the major difference would be if you required using the slots vs. allowing custom holes. It could also allow for better alignment if I using a narrow body design. I wouldn't take the boys trophy away. I would shame the parent who did this as it wasn't the cub's idea. Never punish a boy for the mistakes of an adult. You could give a 1st place trophy to the 2nd place winner, I suppose. Get the movie Down and Derby (2005). You can show it at a pack meeting. It is really funny. I think it is on Netflix right now.

Yeah we aren't going to do anything about it, just for next time. Its in our rules that the block must be the one from the kit. But we had volunteer leaders checking in cars, I personally wouldn't even know what to tell them to check for to make sure the block is the official block of wood.

I'm sorry but I can't see how a organized Pack can effectively operate with Dens meeting once a month. We meet weekly with Pack meetings every other month. Between pinewood derby work shops, weekend outings, overnights and comunity service projects we have an extremely busy year and that not counting the summer event and Parents Meetings (Pack Commitee Meetings). We have a busy year ( 12 months) and we have about a 99% den meeting attendance and about 70% outing attendance so our parents understand the commitment. All our boys meet rank requirements and end up with other awards that we have time to perform through the year. One example this summer we will meet as a group and do the World Conservation Award. I've also found if you make the meetings fun for the parents along with the kids you get more family involvement which equals better attendance. I have had numerous parent tell me they look forward to meeting nights.

The issue that I know units have with that is that they need someone to come up and actually put on these fun events for the kids and parents. Its second nature to us, but I have seen where its sometimes very hard for people to step up and take charge and make the program more than just following a pre-written script all year.

Regarding meetings: Once monthly meetings work if you only want to complete the minimums for rank advancement.

 

My youngest son's den met once monthly during Tiger, Wolf and Bear. He doesn't have any gold and silver arrow points on his shirt nor has he ever asked to earn one. Sure, we had longer meetings, but we had near perfect attendance and got it done. I am taking over as the Webelos leader this fall. The boys are attending summer resident camp and will earn/almost complete 4-5 activity pins. We plan on meeting monthly and we will easily finish all the required Webelos and AOL activity pin requirements during 4th grade. During 5th grade, we will work on "Scout Rank" requirements, troop activities and their SMC and finish up early. We found we have better success with attendance if we aren't competing with sports, church, drama club, etc. and filling up the parents' schedules with tons of scout meetings--only to pick the ones they were not going to attend. An organized den leader can make it work. And yes, it goes against the JTE 2013 Silver Level recommendations, but it works for our families.

If they were Boy Scouts it would be a different idea, but Tigers and Wolves are still young and I don't want them to lose out on the bling that they have earned just because their parents aren't going over the book with them.

But in an ideal world, yes you are correct, the parents should be doing it already.

"Dens only meet once a month"...is there some reason the den leaders can't meet once a week, as the program is designed? I am always amused at those who don't follow the program, then ask for solutions when it doesn't work out. The others are correct...once a boy is advanced to the next level, he can't go back and work on badges he didn't complete.

I had one parent come to me last summer concerned that their child was going to miss a lot (if not all) meetings in the fall due to their practice schedule. And I just reminded her that Scouting is a year round activity and we will be doing this with our kids for X amount of years until they are finished with Boy Scouts. Missing 1-2 months of meetings isn't as large in the grand scheme of scouting as it would be to miss a month of practice for football when you only are playing football for 2 months out of the year.

I believe cubs does get a little long. The problem is there is to much "school" work involved and not enough fun. It also gets hard for den leaders to come up with the supplies and tools to do some of the activities. The How To book is hopelessly outdated. There are only so many birdhouse kits you can build and in the more northern states you get stuck inside for most of the program year. I did the wolf secret code elective last week and it was a HUGE hit. I never would have guessed. Shows you how much I know. My old council in a smaller city had TONS of lockins at museums and such. Those went over big. St. Louis unfortunately has none of that stuff. Our yards were bigger and we did lots of backyard campouts to change things up. Honestly in my opinion the best thing to do at the kindergarten age is to hit the learning to read hard and heavy. Introducing a second language while their brain is still receptive is also a big one. Leaf rubbings can wait a year.

But not every cub scout leader has time to do that sort of thinking and planning. There should be a guide to doing cub scout meetings that meet the requirements for rank that are all fun and games instead of busywork or crafts. Unless its a really cool craft, most of our kids just were not that interested.

I really wish the BSA would start a kindergarten age program, my youngest son is 5 and in Kindergarten and he sat in the Tiger Den all year and there was not a single thing he wasn't able to do, he knew the law and promise by his second meeting and was better then some of our bears. We gave him a certificate for making all requirements and he will get his bobcat at out welcome back Pack Meeting since he will officially be a tiger. We did a membership drive at a Vol Fire Co open house and you wouldn't believe how many Kindergarten age kids are looking for activities. The BSA is really missing out

http://meritbadge.org/wiki/index.php/Lion_Cub_Scout

Skits? Really? I find that most skits are poorly rehearsed by den leaders and MANY boys are too shy to speak loudly eneough to be heard.

 

Bears and Webelos can maybe do skits reasonably well, but I avoid them for Tiger Cubs and Wolves in particular.

 

Songs are better and can be done more reliably. But the key is usually to choose a simple song with a familiar melody, and often a poor choice of song leads to a poor performance. A lot of den leaders don't have much skill at leading songs and do a poor job, which doesn't help matters.

 

Small art projects--- I like to make decorating pretty much any project a den does a part of the program. Some boys really like that and others couldn't care less. The problem is that if you make an art project the OBJECT of a den project, the boys that don't care about such things rapidly become bored.

 

As an example, we made paper airplanes and then decorated them and had contests flying nthe planes, with a boy receiving a sticker for their airplane each time they won one of the numerous contests. Boys were welcome to take as much time decorating their airplanes as they wished, or they could ignore that part and go on to flying their airplanes.

I think something that is missed is at the Cub Scout age, the repetition is important for the kids. Sure we all know "Row row row your boat" but we have to remember our kids are just learning these songs that are classic to us. So repeating songs we have done well with before is not a bad thing, because the kids get the practice at them.

You just have to hopefully identify someone with a great energy who isn't scared to stand up and use it! Not every Den Leader has that energy or ability.

Not meant to be a knock against LDS Packs, but I thought your leaders were assigned by a church official. You should not have wolfs and bears in the same den meeting, they are working on different stuff. You need another den leader. Keep in mind that very few of the requirements need to be done with the den. I know the Wolf book states most of them are to be done with the family or by the cub himself.

The den I know the leader of has 2 tigers, 1 wolf and 3 bears.

There is a whole program guide written to deal with that type of den situation

http://www.scouting.org/filestore/multicultural/pdf/523-006_web.pdf