MattR

They got rid of all those worthless pockets! Good for they. Now all I need to do is leave off all the patches and it could be useful outdoors. I'd be happy with the floppy shirts while camping. I went and read some of the comments. It sounds like they're all a size too big.

Since the theme is no cleaning, how about a cast iron skillet that just needs to be wiped out?

Welcome to the forum, @PinkPajamas. As for which training to do, which might be more useful after the webelos den leader leaves? Or just plan on doing both of them over 2 years and have fun picking.

I think the requirements are referring to "the written word" and not "the written word." Maybe "in writing" would be better. And this requirement refers to the spoken word as opposed to a famous speech written down. You have to admit, given that the requirements are about understanding language, it sure shows how complicated that can get.

@qwazse, that's brilliant. Not sure about gps count. I could mark the corner of each section and then the scouts could go from there using a compass and pacing it out. Not real accurate but gps's have their issues as well. One scout wanted to do something at night. They could set it up at night or the next day. @Eagledad, that's hilarious. It will have to be in there. It could be radios. Or it could be semaphore. Semaphore would match the steam punk theme. You will get full credit. You'd like the weapons I had in the clue-like murder mystery game: cotton, an outhouse, burnt pancakes, dull

I have a great idea for a patch. Alien wearing a cowboy hat riding a meteor like a bucking bronco. Yeah, the 100 stations sounds crazy now. I could see putting a 100 long ribbons in trees and the scouts need to organize and find them. If only I can give them some incentive to make it more fun. It can't be get all you can, they need to work together. So ribbons need to have value to do something later. Each patrol needs to find their 3 ribbons in their sector to do something later in the day. It could be their ticket to the rifle shooting or a way to lower their race time or ....

Yes, but that means you only get to eat salad the rest of the day But you do get to add probably 5 slices. And that's the only way I could handle grits. Well, a lot of butter works as well. I'm sure peanut butter would work as well.

A guy in our troop went backpacking with us and convinced me that daily protein is an important number when going for more than a weekend. I felt much better on that trip at the end. For a strenuous trip the recommended amount is 1 gr per kilo of body weight per day. For normal activities it's 0.8. The difference between the expensive and cheap dehydrated foods are the amount of protein.

I just got back from klondike and at 6am I was thinking about an idea for our Spring Camporee in May. A scout I was talking to yesterday wanted to have a really big event rather than the usual go from station to station thing. The overall theme is currently a meteor collides with an alien space ship and there's debris all over camp. Debris means a problem to solve. That supports things like emergency mobilization, first aid, and wilderness survival. So, aliens that need first aid or shelter, radioactive alien space ship parts. Other ideas? The unique part of it would be to have all the patrol

Small town in the middle of Minnesota? It could be the post office knows everyone. It could also be a polar vortex froze the poor lady's fingers. Or it could be a rural route that doesn't start with a number. I suspect ebay has a way to contact the buyer. Kind of a measure twice, cut once kind of thing. They won't mind, they're probably used to dealing with them city folk and will get a good laugh. Just use some word that spells differently over there and you'll make their day.

I just got back from our Klondike. The theme was zombie snowpocalypse. Half the events had patrol winners and half had other kinds of patrol challenges. There's no doubt that a lot of scouts absolutely thrive on competition and some don't. One competition everyone liked was the sled race. Each patrol brought a sled that a scout could stand up in while the rest of his patrol pulled him (they had to build them). We ran two patrols at a time so they could compete against each other but also timed them. Then we took that top four and had a play off. BTW, the ones that don't like the patrol vs

How about making a neckerchief slide out of the WOSM patch? Then just have the slide and necker until the rest of the uniform is ready.

Hi everyone, There was another request for a sub forum today and I'd like to suggest another way of doing this. The problem with sub forums is it's slower than you might think to set them up (mainly because the moderators can't set them up). Further, while there are several sub forums many are not used very often. At the same time, the advantage of sub forums is that you can quickly find threads that you're interested in. Here's a suggestion on how to get nearly the same benefit as a sub forum with little help from the moderators. Any thread can have tags added to it (and moderators

I understand the phrase teachable and, more importantly, unteachable. It has little to do with gender. There's an ASM in my troop, male, that just can't let go and allow scouts to learn the hard way. It was incredibly frustrating dealing with him. We'd talk, agree how to do things, and before you know it he chucked the whole thing and did things himself. It was easier, more efficient, nobody would be inconvenienced, if the scouts just didn't have to take responsibility. He's great at doing committee stuff and the only reason I didn't remove him. But ASM? Ugh. As for the phrase teachable f

I guess it depends on who is teaching the course and where they put the emphasis. Some of those topics do sound like a lot of fun. Besides, just because the email said "kayaking" it doesn't mean they're going to talk about what everyone does at summer camp. In another thread someone mentioned kayaking the Apostle Islands (oh yeah, that was you ). Maybe they'll talk about that. I'd think they would if they can find someone to cover that section. Have you ever considered helping teach that course?

Biking is fun. That said, with 200 people doing it at the same time there are issues. You do want some training about riding in groups on roads with cars. If not around cars then off road. You don't want everyone doing the same ride at the same time (but by patrol, staggered would work). I have noticed that a lot of scout's bikes are in poor shape. Bad brakes, rusted chains, derailleurs miss aligned. A great opportunity to learn some bike maintenance before the campout, and it would also help sell the campout.

Those mid westerners might not know beans about chili but they know cold, so they might not be that far off. Besides, I married a mid westerner so I have to be kind to them. Either way, I think I'll try your recipe. What do you do when you don't live in Texas and don't have 18 chili powders to choose from? My local grocery store has "chili powder." This is kind of like curry. Hmm, maybe that's why those mid-westerners add underwear, they only have one chili powder! Got any chili powder recipes?

I'm not sure people have changed so much as the technology has made "think first, open mouth second" harder to do. Remember the old days when we had editors for newspapers? Now it's a bunch of kids/folks with cell phones posting on social media and the news media playing catch up. There is a lesson in here for our scouts. Those two stars on the scout badge mean something important.

An old copy of the Handbook for Patrol Leaders. And by old I mean a printing stemming from the 1929 version (eg, 10th printing is from 1941). Also, an old copy of the Handbook For Scoutmasters. I just have volume 1 but the original printing is from 1936. These books are dripping with enthusiasm and common sense. Hillcourt wrote them both (and likely the 2nd volume for SM's). For more information about Hillcourt, go to the home page.

I knew there was a catch. But back to your JLT course. How did you come up with a course that, I assume, was not in compliance with the standard JLT at the time? Or was it in compliance. I always wonder about that with training. I mean, the idea of having the scouts create their own training sounds great and also not at all what the syllabus suggests. Or maybe I'm missing something.

If a volunteer asked me I'd say yes. Well, wait a minute. What does the council training committee do? (and that is pretty much how I get involved in everything, jump in and then start asking questions.) I'm already on a council committee (camping) and I never go to the meetings because they're always the same night as my troop's meetings. As far as I can tell they don't really have much of an impact because they can't control any money. They create lists of things to be fixed at camp and lists of fantastic ways to spend all the money the council doesn't have.

Those stories are great. I saw one about a guy that completed eagle and then promptly went off to WWII. Something like 10 years ago he finally received his medal. I've told a few scouts these stories because they think there's a time limit on that because they mostly have been fighting with time limits to get everything done in time.

I see both sides of this discussion. Nobody wants to volunteer if they're going to be tested and quizzed and have to fill out reports. The other side is we have little improvement in scouters, a few that bring horror stories to this forum, and a continual erosion of the methods of scouting. There is always a tension between a teacher and student. What one wants and needs is not always the same thing. The same thing applies to SM and scout. But there's no teacher for the SM as student. (I suppose it should be the commissioner but in reality it isn't.) But maybe the teacher-student dyn

Well, long story short, once upon a time I told someone to put the gun down. He said why, it wasn't loaded. I replied that I was taught to always assume a gun was loaded. He said, let me show you that it isn't. It was. That grumpy old RSO I had as a scout just might have prevented a disaster many years later. Knowledge is a good thing.

@dkurtenbach, this is probably the closest to what I was thinking about. A bit vague but a place to start. The sad thing is I'm on the district committee and my sense is the commissioners are mostly fighting fires. Financial irregularities, people not getting recharters done in time, CO's enacting revenge on SM's. They don't have time to improve the quality of units and there aren't many of them. But I agree that there is no formal method to continuously improve quality. That's what JTE is supposed to be but it seems to miss the mark. @Chris1, while that's not the case in my district (SM'