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Lynda J

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Everything posted by Lynda J

  1. I agree Mike. I close my repair shop on scout nights at 5:00. I go home wash the grease and oil off and get into my uniform. I hit WHatABurger feed Kevin and me and then pick up two boys that have no way to get to the meeting. I get to the meeting at 6:30. If I am running real late sometimes Kevin and I don't eat until after scouts. But I accept the fact that on scout nights we aren't going to sit down at the table and have a big meal. It is just reality. If I can clean two people up feed us and pick up two other kids in 1.5 hours it shouldn't be a problem for others. We don't have this
  2. Several problems with this idea. It will take you at least a hour to serve, eat, and clean up. So this means you will have at least a 2 hour pack meeting. What do you do when a kid or parent gets sick from the food served. Who will pay for this. Pack or parents. It is much better to let people eat on their own. The only time we did food as Cubs was for B&G. We do cookies now with the troop only at COH. You need to keep Pack and Troop meeting short and to the point. Adding food into the mix will simply make the meetings longer. You probably won't get people there a
  3. First, have both of you taken training? If not get Esentials and Specific ASAP. If is surprising how much you will learn from training. And I don't mean the online ones. Also get with your Unit Commissiner for help. Remember there are people out there that will help you.
  4. Hunt. Even the court systems give kids a second chance. Kevin, my foster son's, half sister got in trouble at 16 for stealing. She had never been in trouble before. The judge gave her 200 hours of community service and told her that he would clear her record if she didn't get in trouble again until her 18th birthday. She didn't. She is now 22, married with two great kids. She also has a job that she could not have gotten with a criminal record. I don't think we need to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Each and everyone of us deserves a second chance at some point in our lives.
  5. I agree with OGE. He had been punished. Plus it his troop members who elected him SPL. It is not up to the committee to remove him. Kids will make bad choices, but in this case I don't think he should be punished again. Let him learn from it. I would agree that signing a behavior contract is a good idea. I would also talk to him possibly about putting him on a probation period. Let him be part of that decission. I know to many kids that have made mistakes when they are younger and turn into really great adults. But most were lucky enough to have an adult that was willing to wor
  6. Lynda J

    Dues

    Our troop charges $60.00 a year. This covers supplies, & advancement. Boys can pay half up front and then 5.00 a month after that. I am a firm believer in dues. A leader ends up spending enough out of pocket. If you make them buy all the supplies for the den or troop you are going to lose them after a while. We have one boy that there is simply no money for him. Now don't get me wrong there is money to smoke and drink with but no money for him. We have him a sponsor that gives the troop a check each year to cover his scouting expenses. Does it cover everything, no, but he ne
  7. If we don't respond to posts from trolls we stop giving them a platform. Unless they have someone talking back to them and responding they will simply have to respond to their own posts.
  8. When my now 33 year old son was 16 he was working for us during the summer. I knew he was drinking thought not a lot. A good friend of ours owned a body shop. There was a car came in in which 4 teens were killed. All had been drinking. It was a really messy car with lots of blood and tissue. Our friend needed some help tearing the car down. We sent Steven up there to help him. It took about three hours and he got so sick at his stomach he had to leave. Guess what he does not drink at all. Of course he probably helped that two years later one of his best friend was killed when he wa
  9. We do a JTL training within our troop. Then we send a couple of boys twice a year to Twin Arrows training. Most of the time with Camporees the boys want to be doing really fun things. I am SM for ours in Oct. We are doing Pioneering. The boys will have a catagory of lashing projects they can build from. They pick a catagory and then are judged on their project.
  10. I see no problem with pushups as long as it isn't over done. Know one troop that handed out 15 for not refering to an adult as sir or mam. To me that is a little much. We told our boys that we were going to start doing 5 pushups for this. It has been funny the past month. The boys will start speaking to you and will start to call you by name and suddenly you see the brain click in and it is mam or sir. So far we haven't had to have any pushups done.
  11. Like scoutldr. we sell what we can. Popcorn sales always hits us at the same time band booster sales hits. Plus sorry but as good as the popcorn is it is simply to expensive. The only year we did show and sell we set up outside Lowes. Everyone that came out was very nice but we got the same comment. That's just to expensive. Kevin has been lucky so far. He has sold $4-500 every year. But he works very hard at it and has people that know when it is going on sale and want the microwave corn. I personally think they should target popcorn that is $5-10 a package. Instead of
  12. If you are looking for Eagle Projects check with your American Red Cross. They have several youth program. Our local one has a program where they come and teach what to do if you have a shooting at your school. I know we all say "it won't happen at our school" But guess what it happens every day. They also have disaster programs for schools. Like MADD has a program where they come to the school and pull kids out of class to represent the number of kids killed in DWI accidents. The biggest hurdle is that you have to get the schools approval.
  13. I don't know if your Boy Scout and Cub Scout Rt. are held at the same time or not but ours are. It got to the point we were losing the Cubs. We finally told the RT Commissioner that they had to keep the joint meeting short and sweet and not make any announcements that didn't relate to both groups there. To talk about Camporee and such only in the breakout sessions. When we finally convinced them of that we started getting Cub people back. Now the joint meeting is limited to 15 minutes and then we split.
  14. Like others a large troop can be just as good as a small troop. I do think that kids get more one on one treatment in a smaller troop. I have 19 boys in my troop and I know in my head almost exactly where each and everyone of them are as far as advancement.
  15. I would go to your districts Round Table meeting and ask point blank what the policy is. Talk to your District Exective. It could be that something happened and the council simply does not want the libality. But I wouldn't take the word of the SM when he doesn't even know who said patrols can't camp. Like when I started in Tigers. The CC at the time told us that ONLY THE COMMITTEE CHAIR WAS ALLOWED TO ATTEND ROUND TABLES. This was because she wanted to have total control. And knew if a couple of us ever got there she would lost control. I was at the scout office one day and ran in
  16. TRAINING, TRAINING, TRAINING. The boys in your den deserve having a well trained leader. It also makes it so much easier on the leader. Attend Round Tables every month. Great ideas out of there. Also check with your council and see when they are having a Cub Pow Wow. Some conbine it with University of Scouting. It is an entire day of training. But it is special skills. Skits, songs, craft ideas. You can chose from a long list of classes.
  17. I agree with better binding. Kevins book is 2 years old and has come apart. If a boy really uses his book it simply destroys it.
  18. What we do is when a boy comes into the troop we start them a blue card for Camping. This way every camping trip we go on counts.
  19. Like others have said. "PATIENCE". One other thing is to always stay calm when dealing with ADD kids. If they sense you are upset it will upset them. When I work with these kids I sit down in front of them, take their hands in mine and make them look me in the eye when I am telling them something and them make the repeat what I said. One of my biggest challenges with them is knot tieing. It takes a lot of time working with them. But what a payoff when they get something and you see that light go on in their eyes and their faces glow with success. So many of them have little succ
  20. Big Ft. Worth Howdy. Welcome to the group.,
  21. I might suggest that you write to Boys Life and Scouting magazines. You could ask if anyone has any information about the missing cars. You might also ask for anyone else with missing cars to contact you. You might also offer a reward.
  22. Kevin passed his BOR for Star on Monday before we went to summer camp on Sat. Our SM talked to him and explained that there would not be time to get his new rank badge before camp he was still officially a Star Scout. That is what mattered to Kevin. He also stated to the SM that once he passed his BOR that he could start counting time for Life. Kid knows where he wants to go and how to get there. We recongize a scout three times on advancement. Announced to the troop on the night of BOR. THem at the next meeting he gets his new rank patch. The received his card at the next COH.
  23. I was at summer camp in Texas. It was HOT and though we as adults reminded boys to drink plenty of water we still had several boys become sick from heat. One boy that I helped had a full water bottle hanging around his shoulder. But told me he hadn't drank any water all afternoon. IMHO there should be no sodas sold at any scout camp of camporee. Most boys will drink the sugar filled sodas before they will drink water. At our summer camp each table received two pitchers of water at each meal. Each table had 8-10 chairs. In order to get "bug juice", or tea those water pitchers had to
  24. I think one of the purposes is scouting is exposure to different people. I think that my isolating home schooled, Sanish speaking boys you take that part of scouting away. I do see a problem with BSA in that they do not truly target Spanish speaking boys. Two boys left the pack that feeds our troop because though the boys spoke English the parents did not and we could not get spanish language books for them. We contacted National and were told it would be 6-12 weeks before they could get us Wolf or Bear books in Spanish. Sad when every other group is busting rear to print everythin
  25. Kevin was tapped out at our Mountain Man Camporee this past spring. And they actually tapped them out. The OA advisor came to us and gave the adults each a hat. And for each member being tapped out there was an adult. Of course the boys didn't know they were being tapped. It was beautiful. THe best part was when our SM was tapped out just after his son had been. I wish I had a picture of his face when the OA member walked up behind him and put his hands on his shoulders and said "You scout, come with me now" I have seen the calls outs and they simply aren't as impressive as the tap o
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