PB_Pack494

I will admit that I haven't had to complete one since I crossed over to a troop this year, but I am a big fan of the online version compared to the old method. My council never turned them around as fast as some of you are getting them, but I really liked getting the confirmations through email. I never heard back on the few old style forms that I faxed in. The methods of gathering and storing information were not what I expected, but once I figured out how they wanted it, filling out the forms was easy. I liked that it had all the information as well as previous submissions available

We usually took some frisbees, a playground ball, and some cones to family campouts. As the BALOO trained organizer, I didn't plan down time, I planned unstructured time. The campout was generally advertised as a relaxing family activity with a few structured things like a hike or GPS geocache. I let people know that I would bring some frisbees and a ball and encouraged them to bring their favorite game. Remember, this is a FAMILY camp out, not summer camp where every minute of the day is planned from morning to night. Families should take responsibility for themselves and you shouldn't t

I was worried about the direction he was headed, but he ended the article very nicely. All in all, a nice piece of PR for BSA. Same with the Jeopardy category last night. Pat

By all means, multi task your activities. If you are going on a hike, you can bring some trash bags for a trash treasure hunt, discuss the principles of Leave No Trace and practice them during the outing, find a geocache along the way, identify plants or wildlife along the way to work on an achievement, etc. Your participants end up with a hiking segment, a partial toward the LNT award, an appropriate amount of time attributed to a service project, a rank achievement, etc. As Bulldog indicated, your service can count toward a centennial award, Good Turn for America, a rank achievement, and