JerseyScout

For the nighttime, we were big into Capture the Flag and Manhunt, with an occasional game of Kick the Can. Once in a while we played a game called Ships in the Night, which is more or less Flashlight Tag combined with Run the Bases. Ten years after I left the troop as a Scouts, nothing much has changed at night on trips. During the day, the games of choice for us were football, steal the bacon, buck buck (if you don't know it, ), spin the doughnut, soccer, and baseball. Nowdays, the parents get really upset when the kids try to play Buck Buck (they heard me an another former

We do this every summer, the sky is the limit. In the past we've: - Backpacked and canoed through the Shennandoah Mountains - The same through the Smokies - Done multiple day biking expeditions through Maryland - Gotten a houseboat in Western Pennsylvania - Camped next to Lake Champlain in Vermont. Our trips usually revolve around two or three "crews". The one crew goes out and does the hardest, multi-day activity (3-5 days of canoeing, biking, or backpacking), a middle crew does a mid-sized outing (2-3 days of canoeing, biking, backpacking), and a base camp crew does sing

Buffalo Skipper beat me to it. If a kid is dropped off for a trip, I know he has permission to be there. When he needs stiches, the hospital doesn't know that. The permission slip gives the troop permission to seek medical attention for a boy who is hurt, but who does not have a parent there. They also work when we need to fill out legal paperwork for something like going whitewater rafting, canoeing (when we need to rent some) kayaking, rock climbing, etc, anything where we are working with an outside organization. I feel safe signing off on the paperwork under "parent/guardian" for

Unless I am very mistaken, Daisy Scouts are 1st grade, not kindergarten, so would be on level with Tiger Cubs. Lion Scout is a terrible idea, I also have the sneaking suspicion that they are created to increase enrollment numbers. If you don't have experience with working with groups of that age level of kids, most people are in for a rough ride. The same goes for Tigers. Sadly, I'm also starting to think more and more that Cub Scouts is a terrible idea. Half the kids I work to recruit into Boy Scouts reply, "Oh, I already know how that works. I was a Cub Scout and all we did was

AvidSM ~ Can you come run our roundtable? That sounds like EXACTLY what I would like to see at my own roundtable.

President Obama (who serves as head of the BSA as well as some place called the United States of America) called the legislation "odious". At the "million-man march" to support the legislation in Uganda yesterday (actual attendence: about 500), they were holding signs up that said "Barack Obama Back Off, Homosexuality is Evil." Therefore, I think the BSA has it covered. Yay!

I used to get hung up on including another adult in with all of my e-mail conversations with Scouts. Then I realized that e-mail has a paper trail, so I am pretty well covered. I compromise now, older Scouts I will e-mail directly, new Scouts I will e-mail and include their parents. Two deep on the phone is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard.

Great set of questions. We are still in transition from "adult led (into the ground)" to "boy led", but we're making progress (to the point where my CC wants to kill me, which I started a thread about a few months back). The list of questions Beavah provided was a great way to check that progress. No one needs to see me type my answers out, but we are a little further on that I thought, although we still have many things to work on.

I am taking the Physical Wellness training now offered on the BSA Online Training Center (because otherwise my training coordinator will hunt me down and badger me to death), and in the spirituality section they mention Humanism as an acceptable form of spirituality. In the same section, they talk about the connections between spirituality and reverence. Unless I'm mistaken, many humanists (most?) consider themselves to be agnostic, and none are thrilled with organized religion, when did this slip into the program? Not that I have any problem with Humanism, Humanists are some of

Thanks Eagle, I'll try to find that and approach the training coordinator for the district. A combined ITOLS/BALOO course would be excellent, as people who have attended both in our district said the courses were very, very similar. Why not get a WEBLOS leader set all in one place?

Maybe its just me, but this whole thing sounds a bit nuts, how could one person, or even a committee be expected to do all that? And why would any Pack or Troop worth its salt leave its recruitment to a district committee? Why in the world would a District Membership Chair run a recruitment table at events that troops attend? I was handed a stack of recruitment flyers from district for "the Scout Zone" to pass out at schools. It took about thirty seconds for me to look over the flyer and throw the entire stack out. One of my co-workers saw them and asked how I was involved in the Comp

Guh, that means that local better start announcing schedules for ITOLS more than a month and a half in advance. ITOLS conflicts with our camping trips every single time, and dates get thrown out way too late... That's the last bit of training I "need". In reality, I teach a camping course myself (outside of Scouts) that covers almost all the same material, my time between "Scout" and "ASM" was less than four years, and I never stopped camping on my own, thus the skills never had time to get rusty. I very much understand training requirements, but I long for a get-out-of-jail-free card

Sounds awesome.

Been here, done this (although not quite that bad). After a few ridiculous camping trips with more adults than Scouts (and these were not "busy, sit back and let the patrol system work" adults, they were "the patrol system is not effective enough" adults), some of the young guys banded together with the very old leaders and put a cap on it, because the troop was not-so-slowly dying because of it. The kids that were in the troop didn't want to go camping anymore, because it was easier to stay home with only two adults yelling at you then to go on a trip with 10 of them doing so. New

I'm amazed, apparently none of my crossovers from last year (11 of them from two different packs) earned their whittlin' chip. It seems that the parents didn't think it was safe for them to have a knife. This only came up because a mom came to me concerned that her son had come home excited that he could learn this next camping trip, she thought it wasn't right for her son to use a knife, let alone a saw or ax. This boy is now 12 years old!

Is paintball now an sanctioned Boy Scout activity? I know that it was not sactioned when I was a Scout. I had heard through a District fella last year that the new head honchos at National were considering sanctioning it, but never heard anything more. I assumed that, like it is with anything National considers (other than medical forms), nothing had changed. Anyway, the Girl Scouts challanged the troop to a day of paintball. I told the girl scout boss (Scoutmaster? I'm not sure what her title is) that Boy Scouts did not allow it. The Scout nearest me (our ASPL) overheard me and

Rebels of Boy Scouts here, we're going to New England to camp by the water with only the patrol method to guide us. No sign-ups for merit badges, no "rush to 1st Class programs", just hiking, swimming, kayaking, with whatever else the boys come up with. The advancements and merit badges will come when they come.

You have to love filling in another adult application FOR EVERYTHING.

That must be some Cub Scout pack that they can afford to turn away two volunteers. 'round here its nearly impossible to find anyone - straght, gay, or otherwise - to volunteer.

Not much one for giving out that much information online, but I can answer the general info here: Our current troop site was built by a boy in 7th grade who acts as webmaster (he did this before there was any such leadership rank). He was not elected, he volunteered for the job. I'm not sure how you would elect a troop webmaster. We mostly use the council site to get access to the training pages from national. Its won an award for one of the best sites in the country, but its still a pain in the neck to use. We do use meritbadge.com Troopmaster is swell.

Thank you both for passing these on

Summer camping! Canoeing, swimming, backpacking, swimming, mosquitos, manhunt, swimming... On a personal level, I work a different schedule in the summer, so I can go camping every other weekend if I want to. When it comes to Scouts, the summer is the time that we get to camping for a week straight. When I was a Scout, I couldn't wait to escape my parents for that week and (if we had an extra good trip) be somewhere that the leaders would have trouble finding us too. Now that I'm a leader, its great because there are no sports excuses, no "its too cold" excuses, and even though I'm o

Alright, here is the background for this one, I could use the advice of some folks who may have been here before. I have a mother in my troop (her eldest son is most of the way through his first year of Boy Scouts) who wants to jump her son from being a first year WEBLOS right into Boy Scouts. I had pretty much ignored this when it was mentioned a few months ago in passing, as it was maybe two or three sentences ending with a half-joke that "it would be nice to simplify the kids schedule some!" I feel for the mother, who has three sons and a husband who travels for bussiness most of the

Oh, The Onion...

We brought this up at our Committee meeting tonight (I sent out an "Anybody interested?" e-mail two days ago) and managed to get adults on board to be counselors for three of these merit badges. I guess I'm learning morse code and semaphore! One of the men who volunteered to do Pathfinding (he already does Citzenship in the Community, so its not much of a stretch) popped over to the council office to ask some questions about the program ("do I have to fill out a whole new adult application again to do this badge, or can I just fill out the easy paper?"), no one there had any idea what he