OwntheNight

My Asst DL in our pack is the CM for his ward's pack. His son chooses to be in our Non LDS pack because he wants to stay in his den with his friends from school. Even when he turns 8 this year, and is eligible to join the ward's pack, he still wants to stay with our pack.

It certainly is whatever the boy chooses.

I saw this the other day. Excited about it being here in the Good ol' US of A.

I'm just thinking that Wolfson is going to be pretty dissapointed, because he's going to be seeing his older brother go to Japan in 2015. Wolfson would have just attended National Jambo in 2017 at the same spot. What's that saying, "Beggars can't be choosers"

Certainly will help on my pocketbook, though!

Last year in August, we took our TTFC group on their last campout as TTFC patrols. We were hiking through a boulder range on our way back to the park entrance. One of the boys was walking up hill and lost his footing and ended up doing a face and body plant on some local vegetation we like to call a cactus.

Myself, and the 2 other ASM's got to the boy and found him covered on one side, from head to hips, in needles.We were able to get the needles off of him, but at the cost of 10 of the 13 bottles of water I had been carrying in my backpack. That scout ended up walking out of that park in nothing but his boxers and boots.

Our big problem, came when we started back on the trail.Once we had started back out on the trail, the other boys had been stopped for about 40 min. With the combination of heat and rest , the boys' bodies had gotten out of energy burning mode. They were all tired and hot and had used up their water supplies. Since we used the water I was carrying for the cactus, we didn't have much left for the boys. We ended up rationing the water to the boys who were more symptomatic of Heat exhaustion.

About 1/2 mile from the trailhead entrance, I was recognizing the symptoms of heat stroke;the mental acuity was diminished, my left arm was going numb. Pretty scary feeling.

We got all the boys out of there without further incident and got them back to our campsite to get them cooled down. After a couple of hours, they were ready to tackle another mountain, this time, we drove them to the lookout point on top of the mountain.

What did we learn from it?

Boys needed to be better hydrated by carrying a camelbak or a couple of nalgene's. Carry Duct tape for cactus. Schedule this hike in April instead of August.

We also learned that over half the boys exceeded our expectations and didn't have any issues at all. They were ready to find another trail when we hit the camp parking lot.

I'm just glad she actually did the anthem live, instead of pre taping it , and then lip syncing it during the performance. Within a couple of years, we'll have forgotten about it, and every now and then we'll have one of those "Oh,Yeah, that did happen" moments. I thought that Lea Michele did a great job on "America the Beautiful"

Now,as a North Texas resident, I am so glad this media circus is over! Last week was just one kidney punch after another. Between the bad weather, and the constant barrage from all the media, local and national, I'm ready for a little peace and quiet.

One of the few good things I heard consistently, was the outstanding work and spirit of all the volunteers who helped out around the area. Leave it to the volunteers to make a good first impression.

YES,YES,YES (Yes I'm shouting!)

Absolutely, Start calling them and inviting them to your B/G or other functions where the boys can interact with them. What a great opportunity for a Cub Scout to listen to an Eagle Scout and his tales of perseverance or even what Scouting meant to them growing up.

Last year, at our B/G, we invited 2 eagles that were Cub Scouts in our pack. Our boys were getting a little restless until these Young Men stepped up and started talking about their Scouting experiences. You could have heard a pin drop in the place. Our boys were absolutely enthralled by the fact that these 2 young men came from the same pack they were in and look at what they had done since.

You have a precious and valuable resource, Use it.

Tradition is a big part of it.

In the packs I've served, B/G has always been a huge celebration or "the formal banquet" for Cub Scouts. And now with this new Delivery method, meeting all the requirements for Rank can be attained by B/G.

Is it getting ridiculous? Absolutely.

Some of our boys, and their parents, are starting to get stressed out about finishing up by B/G. I've told them that they do have until the end of the school year to complete the exercises they need. Even have a couple of boys who still haven't decided about the Troop they want to go to. I've told them they don't have to decide until they're comfortable with their decision. B/G is just a public forum that has everybody there to see what's going on with the pack.

I think B/G has turned into a bigger than life production, because it is a time for the extended family to see what the pack does. My sons' Grandparents don't come to Pack meetings, but they will attend B/G to see the accomplishments of the Pack, especially their grandchildren s'.

As far as the Troop is concerned. I do believe that boys coming in early( Dec-Feb) aren't put into such a chaotic situation, as the one coming in right at the end of school. The ones coming in early do get some experience with the Patrol method and can be better prepared for the rigors of summer camp. They've had a few campouts under their belt, and they're learning how the Troop functions as a whole, and what their place is in the patrol. Besides, our summer camps do offer an early bird price for boys that are registered by late March, Early April.

We are trying to change B/G up this year, by making it just about the boys. Last year we spent an hour and a half on our B/G program..Way too much time for the kids to get restless and bored. We've toned the program down and hopefully are done in about an hour.

Jz,

Glad to help, our pack had a great time with this.

When you spend half a night on you tube looking up Star Wars related videos. Just found this one.

You might see this Sunday!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R55e-uHQna0

We started this last year at Blue/ Gold and will continue the tradition this year and keep the spirit alive for years to come. Every boy brings a shoe box to a den meeting and we wrap the shoe box.

We then fill the shoe boxes with toiletry items (Toothpaste, toothbrush, brush, etc.) These become our centerpieces for our tables at B/G.

After B/G we give these to a local charity that takes them to homeless shelters and distributes them to kids. We usually ask the parents to contact their family dentist to donate sample toothbrushes and toothpaste to the cause.

Here is the list of items we sent out to the parents, for what we can put in these boxes.

Toiletry items:

Combs/Brushes

travel size shampoo

soap

Purell

Tissues (purse packs)

Washcloths

Toothbrushes

Fun Stuff:

Yo-Yo

Hot Wheels

Playing Cards (These come 2 decks for $1) Can put one deck in each box.

Colored Pencils/Crayons/Markers

Pens/Pencils

Drawing paper/plain paper/Small notepads

Modeling clay type stuff

Sidewalk chalk

Flashlight

Glow Sticks (Dollar Store)

Marbles

Tech decks

Something I'm probably going to try for next year, but will take a little bit of planning, are the Christmas Jars project.

You hand out pickle jars, peanut butter jars, whatever, and you collect your spare change throughout the year.

At the end of the year, have the boys pick out somebody randomly who they feel could use some extra financial help at the end of the year. They could do this anonymously or however they want to do it.

I plan on buying a copy of the book and giving it to all my den leaders, hopefully to inspire them.

www.christmasjars.com(This message has been edited by OwnTheNight)

You would be surprised how much energy those kids have. It becomes a competition for them, to see who can get to the next house with bag in hand!

Ask your SFF coordinator for the master map, find your area and either make copies of it or go to google maps or mapquest and magnify the field of view to show all the streets in that area. Have one boy go up one side and the other go on the other side. Create a starting point and an ending point, unless you run out of bags.

Now if your subdivision has 500+ houses in it, you might consider breaking that up amongst other dens. In 2-3 hrs you should be able to cover your service area pretty cleanly.

I always remind my boys to say "Thank You" to every person who answers the door, whether they give food or not, and I encourage them to use the sidewalks, instead of running through the yards.

Something else to think about. SFF can be a great opportunity to recruit boys into the pack. Print some cards up with your name and phone # or the cubmaster's info to hand out to residents who have elementary school age kids that aren't in scouts.

I think the first thing you do is, "If you're going to talk the talk, you had better be walking the walk"

I try and be as open and honest with my boys as I can without being condescending or ugly about it. Sometimes, you may not like the answer you get from me, but you'll get the truth. Kids know when they're being lied to, they also know how to be brutally honest too. Sometimes too much so.

I have a hard time being a smart aleck with the boys in the troop, with the exception of a few boys who I've spent the last three years with from Webelos. They get my sense of humor, but they also understand that if they come to me with a serious question, they will get an honest answer and if I don't know the answer, we'll go find somebody who does.

Lying.....The Gift that keeps on giving.

I use to lie to my parents when I was growing up, mostly about my schoolwork (or lack thereof). I even thought I had gotten away with it, until all the lies started unraveling and my house of cards came down with it. Were my parents angry with my deception, Absolutely! They were more disappointed with my actions, than they were with the lie itself.

Now, my son tries to lie to me about his schoolwork, or staying up late and playing video games. (Thank goodness for email and automated grade reporting systems that are online) I've told my son that he won't get in trouble for telling the truth, but he will suffer the consequences for what he did wrong. Does he still try to lie, you bet. At some point in his life he's going to realize that the lies will hurt himself more than taking responsibility for his actions. Or , as mom used to tell me....Someday, you'll have a child that was just like you growing up.

We can only give our boys the tools to become the best that they can be. How those boys use those tools is up to them. At some point in time, each of these boys will have to look in the mirror and decide what type of person they want to be looking at.

That's why we scheduled multiple workshops for the parents. Some parents were able to knock out the arrow in 1 night, others needed more time. The running joke during these sessions was " Just remember, next year, there will be another group of parents sitting here doing the same thing or maybe even more!"

My son had 14 activity pins, 6 arrow points between Wolf and Bear, and countless other awards. Yes, it got tedious during the threading phase, but it was worth it when he saw it and realized how much stuff he had actually done during his Cub Scouting days.

Sorry... I meant the whipping technique for the threads. (As in whipping and fusing) Not WICKING. I should be whipped for my grammatical blunder.

Eliza,

Our pack does the Career Arrow for the boys that have earned AoL. One of the things we do is have the parents stripe the arrows, and then at B/G, we present the arrow to the boy. This is usually the first time they see the arrow, and we make a big deal about the parents doing all the work on the arrow for their son. Kind of a symbolic gesture for the boys that have done all this work for 5 years, the parents are pretty proud on both fronts.

We use the colored thread as well for the stripes. Instead of glue to secure the thread, we actually use the wicking method for ropes that the boys learn in Webelos and also for the Tenderfoot badge. We brought the parents in for the last couple of den meetings before B/G and had them work on the arrows while the DL would have the den either playing games or whatever to keep them occupied while the parents worked.

Here is a link we used for placement and striping color. We were able to print off the boys advancement records from our pack records to show the parents what the boy had done. By the end, those parents were old pros at wicking thread on an arrow.

http://www.skyhawkkits.com/blank?pageid=19&catstart=0&prodstart=0

Get word out to the rest of the district about the plight of this scout and his family. Don't know if your district has an email group for mass distribution (Ours has a google group for packs, troops and crews)or contact the district offices to try and get the word out for help. Gift cards are a great idea. It doesn't matter what number is on the sleeve of a scout, We're Scouters to all boys and A Scout is Helpful.

Thoughts and prayers to this family. I'm glad they weren't hurt or injured. Stuff can be replaced, people can't.

Fish,

I wish I had you as a CM when I became a TCDL with Scoutson. I was given no input by my CM at the time. The only thing he told me was when the first leaders meeting was after the school year started. I had to find all the program helps and leader books on my own.

I still say TCDL is the hardest position in Scouting. Having somebody to bounce questions off of or even just getting some reassurance about the job your doing would have been great at the time. I personally was scared to death about running an entire meeting for a group of 6-7 yr olds.

It still took me a couple of months to get really comfortable in the role as TCDL, and even then, I realized what I still had to get done before Blue and Gold. I wish I had had that extra time to work through the program properly instead of rushing things at the last minute.

Thanks for being a great scouting brother to all. I've certainly picked up some things from you that I will use in the future. You are truly being a mentor to the boys and probably some leaders too.

Those sound like half the towns I drive through in Oklahoma. And of course, having Texas plates on my car is 1 more reason to pull me over if I'm trying to slow down and end up a couple mph over the limit when the next speed limit sign comes up. Sheesh!

E92,

You mean you don't just let them dangle on your boots after unzipping them? That seems to be the trend with our boys I saw more boys at Camporee last year with them just hanging low instead of putting them in their pockets.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you guys!

Old Scoutmaster's never die, they just become Committee Chair!

Congratulations on your accomplishments as SM. You have a very lucky group of boys to have you as a leader. Thank You for your service to the boys and good luck to you in your next role as CC.

Barry,

Thanks for the update. We are headed to SE Oklahoma next weekend for our campout.( just outside Atoka) Last years campout was 15 degrees and lots of mud from all the rain and snow throughout the week. Of course, It's still one of the boys' favorite and most memorable campouts!

Kudu,

I don't have a lot of experience with long backpacking treks, but some hikes I've gone on with the boys and the SM, the older boys and even the SM carried an Ipod with them. My SM is an avid runner and definitely uses the ipod for pace, cadence and what not. He shuts it off during hard parts of the hike to keep better focused on the trail or to listen to the boys. I always have my headphones in at work, because I tend to focus better on my tasks, but I can see the benefits for a long hike as long as it's not abused by the boys and they lose the focus on the trail by paying more attention to their music than the trail itself.

We also went with the career arrow mounted on a plaque. The arrow started at 16.00 and the plaques were an additional 9.00 or 12.00, depending on the size of the plaque. With the small one, the arrow hung off the edges, the large one, the arrow fit completely on it. We also had a trophy shop make a brass plate with the boys name, pack number and AOL date. They used flexi brass and charged us 6.00 for each one. That's a whole lot cheaper than real brass and looks just as good.

We went with Tatanka Traditions for our arrows. www.honorarrows.com

Our parents actually did the striping of the arrows themselves, but instead of paint, we used knitting thread. That made the arrows really stand out.

Our CM also gave the boys their AOL knot for when they return to Cub Scouts as an Adult.

We also did the certificates as well.

Unfortunately, none of us knows the exact situation this parent is in. But we've all seen the different types of situations out there, some that end well, some that don't. At least she is still taking your calls, so you still have a line of communication open to her. Try offering some alternatives, whether it's a payment plan to pay the pack back, if she still has the popcorn, offer to take it back and try and resell it even at a discount.(something is better than nothing) You can catch more flies with honey instead of vinegar.

It stinks that we have to play bad cop, bill collector, etc in Scouting. This will probably be one of those lessons the pack learns and adapts from. We had a situation 2 years ago that changed how we did popcorn sales this year. We had a first year family place a large amount of popcorn orders to family members 4 hrs away. Come pickup day, theirs was the last order still at the pickup site. We called and they said they were moving that weekend to another part of town and that their son would be transferring to another school. of course, boys in his den saw him at school on Monday. We were still stuck with the popcorn, but we dealt with it. We had to change our policy to First Year boys and families need to collect and pay for the orders up front, or the order was not placed.

Hope everything works out for you.