SeattlePioneer

How about a hike, visit to a police or fire station? Paper airplance flyinmg contests --- boys each learn to make a paper airplane and decorate it, then have various competitions such as the longest flight, best decorated plance, best at aiiming at a target and so on, with stickers for the boys doing the best on each contest, which can be stuck on the planes.

A Scout is thrifty. That means he pays his own way, among other things. So I think parents have a yip coming if they are being held up for $30 for a party. This is where Scout Accounts make a lot of sense. They can give boys an opportunity to earn their own way towards such activities. Perhaps the Scoutmaster should have let it be known that he would need to consult with the Troop Committee before approving of such a party. That might even be a job for the Senior Patrol Leader in some troops. I'm assuming that the idea of pinning the cost on the Scoutmaster is a jovial way of pointing out that parents don;t want to be the ones pinned with this cost either. My reaction is that everyone needs to have more respect for everyone else.

<> Yep. Two Cub Dad's post has the right idea as well. Now the issue is.... How do you get the point across to the CC? I'd consider copying this thread and giving it to the CC, together with an invitation to visit these forums!

<> One thing to consider is what kind of program your Council Membership Chair might offer to help you along. After a number of years of NO support for district membership chairs, my council appointed a Council Membership Chair who has quarterly meetings for district membership chairs to pool ideas on what kinds of things to do and how. The Council Membership Chair also organized a council training meeting for unit leaders which had breakout sessions for ideas on how to do a variety of recruiting and retention programs. The council has an annual training program aimed at all adult Scouters, and among the courses offered are classes on recruiting and retaining Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts. The people attending these training programs are likely candidates to contact for help in your district membership program. In addition, you should find out what kind of partnership you can form with your District Executive to promote recruiting goals. I had a couple of DEs where we worked closely as partners, and two others that went their own way with no effort to coordinate activities. If you are going to be part of an effective membership strategy, it's worth considering. If you are going to be on your own, you can expect to have tough sledding.

One activity I like to do is to give boys a chance to blow a bugle, often for the first time. a popular activity for Cub Scout Dens, and I've done something similar at Boy Scout Camporees. Circa 1982 I gave one aspiring bugler my with the expectation he would practice faithfully and be a troop bugler. That was the last time I ever saw that instrument...

< >> Well, I spent eight years as districtc membership chair and Unit Commissioner, two years as Cub Scout Roundtable Commissioner and numerous years as a Friends of Scouting presenter, in addition to providing leadership at the unit level. When I finally left as membership chair --- no one took my place. I only became Cub Scout Roundtable Commissioner because when the previous person left, no one was recruited to do the job. When I left as Cub WScout Roundtable Commissioner, I recruited someone else to take my place because the district Commissioner and Chair had no interest in doing so. When that person left a year ago, no one took their place and no Cub Scout Roundtable is being held. The district used to do an annual Baloo training --- it's gone. (At the last district meeting, they wondered why the number of Cub Packs doing Pack overnights was declining!) I'm tired of enabling incompetent leadership. <> The council is very well run, But weak district leadership provides poor services to units. Many district leaders have left, as they always will. The problem is that they are not being replaced because the district leadership isn;t doing that job. I'm ready to find something else to do with my time as well. I've spent a year now to get the district to appoint the nominating committee they are supposed to appoint, and they have done NOTHING. I'm not inclined to support that incompetence by handing them more of my money, or encouraging others to donate.

While my council has been doing very well for years, my district has been going downhill for years due to poor leadership. This past year I sought to remedy that by insisting that the procedures for appointing a nominating committee to select district leaders be followed. However, a year later, still no nominating committee. The district chair is either unable to find three volunteers willing to serve or not interested in doing so. So far, no interest by the Council Field Director in doing anything about that. So what to do? I'm currently considering bailing on the Blue and Gold Dinner solicitation for Friends of Scouting that our pack has usually done, raising $1500 or so. Instead, I'm considering proposing that we solicit funding for our Chartered Organization, which has as it's principle object maintaining a very nice urban camp about three miles from our pack meeting location. They make use of this camp available to any youth group at no charge. Just not interested in begging for money for a district that is doing a poor jobs, and apparently wants to continue with that.

Having a troop leader as UC might impair the ability of the UC to be a SPY for the district and council. On the other hand, it might be a great way for a unit to hae someone to SPY on the district and council... Frankly, more units should have their Chartered Orgainzation reps attending District Committee meeting to keep an eye on what the district leaders are and are not doing.

I'll add to what I posted earlier by noting that demographics is working against Scouting. Hispanic populations are exploding, especially among youth, and African American populations are substantial, but BSA isn't having much success recruiting among either group. My district and area of my Cub Pack has a LOT of Hispanic families, and I made intensive efforts to recruit among Hispanic youth and families for several years, with only limited and temporary success. Part of that is lower income, lower educational levels which means less leisure time and money for Scouting. Language barriers are significant among Hispanics, in my experience. Plus Scouting simply isn;t part of the culture of those groups, by and large. Some of the schools in my area are 90% Hispanic and maybe 5% White. If your main appeal is to the 5%, it's tough. My council had a major workshop on just this issue a couple of years ago, bringing in specialists from BSA National to discuss methods to overcome these difficulties. Despite my best efforts, I was at be only marginally succesful.

I spent eight years as District Membership chair. I never found another volunteer willing to help with that task on a district level, so when I quit that was another vacant district leadership position. I've spent the last eight years (and counting) building up a pack that was down to a single boy when I got started --- we had 23 Scouts registered for 2014 at rechartering. Tough to build that up, though, and not much assurance numbers wont crash again when I leave. << despite significant investment in infrastructure (the Summit>> My IMPRESSION is --- what a waste of money! And no doubt a sinkhole for maintenance costs for decades to come. Unfortunately, national BSA seems to have bought into the idea of Scouting as a Disneyland type of experience. Another aggravation of mine is that BSA loads down volunteers with large amounts of bureaucratic record keeping and administrative detail work when isn't needed and is a waste of the time of volunteers. Rechartering, internet advancement and the BSA adult and youth leadership forms and such are vastly more complicated and burdensome than are needed. And then there are the youth. When I'm in schools doing Cub Scout recruiting, I often ask the fifth and sixth grader if they would like to go out on a weekend adventure hiking and camping ----"Yeahhhh!" I then say, "of course, there wont be any opportunity to play video games>" Marked lack of interest! The biggest turnout I ever got for a Boy Scout recruiting night was when I did and video game night --- but none of the new boys who attended ever showed up again. If hiking and camping are no longer of interest to MANY youth, is it a surprise that Scouting is having trouble with attracting the interest of boys?

For December my pack has dens make a Christmas "sleigh" from a cardboard box, with a rope tied to it so it can be drawn by reindeer (other Scouts in the den) The sleigh can be suitably decorated according to the inspiration of the boys. At our December Christmas Party, we have relay races with each den racing around a race course then changing out the boy driver with another boy until all the Scouts have had a chance to ride. That's a fun and easy competition. I like this kind of low stakes competition. Boys love competition, but young boys in particular are easily discouraged by losing. I like competitions where you can run the game over repeatedly so a loss or losses don't "smart," ---much.

For Cub Scouts I like to practice what to do in a fire. The basic idea is to 1) stay low to avoid smoke 2) to identify the nearest exit not affected by the fire and 3) try to get everyone out while you head for the exit. The "fire" is parents waving some cut up red paper to block one or more exits. My experience is that boys get REALLY involved in this! The first few times they all jump up and head for the exit --- of course I tell them they are all dead from smoke inhalation. Then they start to get the idea, and solve the problem well after a few trials. The only real trouble I had was this was a boy who went over to a window and backhanded the window, breaking the window and cutting himself pretty well. Since I was PREPARED, I had a first aid kit available and had the boys hand bandaged up. However, someone called the fire department and they showed up with a fire truck, took off the bandage I had put on and put on one of their own. Well ---- I imagine that was an exciting night for those boys!

One activity I did from time to time as part of troop meetings was to have boys practice throwing one end of a rope to a boy who needed to be "rescued." the boy then needed to tie the rope around himself and the other boys in the patrol would pull him in over the floor. This was run as an interpatrol contest and as a relay race so each boy had to tie the knot and get pulled in. Comes a snowshoe hike we had going into a winter wilderness of snow, 20 degree temperatures and twenty mile an hour wind with drifting snow. We were on a forest service road with a steep dropoff and deep snow. We took a break, and I discovered we were short a boy who was on his first Scout outing. Oy! After looking around a bit, I spotted him down that steep slope below the road. There was several feet of powder snow and the boy was floundering around and couldn;t help himself. I gave the oldest boy a rope and told him it was up to him to rescue the boy. He threw the rope down with several Scouts holding the other end, but the trapped boy couldn;t help himself. So the older Scout more or less rapelled down the slope on the rope, and tied a bowline around the boy, how was pulled up. That was repeated for the older boy too, who couldn;t get back up through the deep snow on his own. I thought that was a neat example of the utility of troop practice sessions!

Yes, I think you want an activity the boys will find fun and instructive. If it were me, I'd take my bugle and give everyone an opportunity to blow it and see how they do. Sometimes there is a trumpet player who is a ringer....

<<~~After the Popcorn Sale, I took my son out for a quick dinner at a local restaurant. Over dinner, he told me that selling is hard work because you have to let so many people tell you "no" before you ever get someone to tell you "yes".>> Heh, heh! He's actually playing in the Big Leagues. Three boys selling popcorn together ought to find that entertaining enough of an activity as long as they don't do it too long at a time. Especially for young boys, Scout activities should be FUN! I wouldn't keep selling popcorn after it becomes a job or they get discouraged. I had a group of new Tiger Cub selling popcorn this fall at the entrance to the Ballard Locks in Seattle. They tended to lack the volume and confidence to make themselves heard. They wound up shouting all together "WOULD YOU LIKE TO SUPPORT SCOUTING BY BUYING CUB SCOUT POPCORN?" That they could do, and enjoy doing together!

You can shop around for troops using beascout.org As far as the council goes, I'd start by looking at the various districts to get an idea of their strengths and weaknesses, the kind of programs they offer and the extent of their volunteer leadership. Keep an eye on the council website over a period of months. Check out the kind of activities they have for both youth and adults.

I use a nice lid lifter. I never realized I was a candy *** for doing so!

<> I'd bet that if BSA offere co-ed Scouting it would kill off GSUSA just as admitting Black players to the Major Leagues killed off the Negro baseball league.

<< The Girl Scout in question was looking a photos of her brothers and her father from the trip they took to the 1973 National Jamboree in Idaho. >> I'm guessing that BSA is now locked into their East coast location for the jamboree by it's immense costs, and we wont see the Jamboree rtravelling anywhere else, probably forever.

<> I agree.

I did a Tiger Cub Den Bowling Tournament last night. Two teams of three Tigers each, a Blue and a Gold team. They set up aluminum pop cans as bowling pins and took turns rolling a ball to knock them down. I made up a blue paper score sheet for one team and a yellow paper score sheet for the other team, suitably inscribed with the date and activity. The boy knocking down the most pins each time got to put a sticker on their score sheet. After several trials, the number of stiockers won each time went up and maxed out at five for the grand finale. The boy on each team that got the most stickers for his team got to keep the scoresheet as a memento for his Cub Scout scrapbook. Lots of fun!

Ummm... Are you not holding BORs often enough, allowing them to bunch together? That delays boys from getting their new rank. If this is happening very often, I'd look at scheduling BOR more often.

RIP Norman Rockwell...

<> In general, I encourage volunteer leaders to do things they WANT to do or things they are GOOD AT DOING. Speaking as someone who's been leading Tiger Cub Dens for eight years now, I like the den leader's practice. And if HE likes doing it, that's another very good reason for doing it. Do the boys actually get all these segments on their uniforms? If so, that's another good reason for doing it. If they mostly just throw them away, that would be an argument against doing it. I might start doing some of that in my Tiger Den, which meets tonight. The pack has hundreds of leftover segments --- this would be a fgood way to use some of them. I doubt if many would actually land on uniforms, though. We are doing "Cub Scout Bowling" tonight, using soda pop aluminum cans for pins. Boys on each of two teams take tunrs rolling a ball at the other teams pins, with those knocking down the most in a round getting a sticker on their scoresheet. The boy getting the most stickers on the scoresheet for each team gets to keep the scoresheet for theuir team and include it in their Cub Scout scrapbook.

<<#25 Yesterday, 09:18 PM Originally posted by SeattlePioneerView Post His son never entered Boy Scouts because the parent (and perhaps the boy?) felt that the atheist issue would likely come up in Boy Scouts and it was not an issue with which he wanted to be confronted. Sad. In my experience, scouting and beliefs is not an issue until someone (parent, scout or leader) makes it an issue. At that point, it's a show stopper and just destructive. >> It was sad. The parent won the Eagle as a youth, and did an excellent job as the defactor Pack Committee Chair. Perhaps he and his son made a wise decision though, avoiding conflict that might well have happened and causing the boy a lot of disappointment.