heat4212

Just know your unyielding, inflexible advice is making me hate scouting. Which I was pretty close to hating anyway because few parents in our Pack pull their weight. So the unhelpful advice of out-of-touch 'experienced' scouters + lazy millennial parents who sign their kids up for everything then drop and run + BSA launching a new, untested, unbalanced program = 3 less scouts. Thanks for the fun.

It's May 28th. The carnival didn't happen. I am a parent, not a den leader. So you are seriously saying our Bears are just out of luck and there is nothing they can do about it? Too bad boys, your leader quit, your parents can't help, no badges! You have admitted that you are not a Cub Scout leader or parent so why do you even troll this board? You do not know the new program, you argue semantics even when proven wrong, why don't you just let people who actually have experience with the new program offer useful advice and quit wasting our time.

Agreed. But it is a required adventure now, not an elective. Not a small part of another adventure, a whole adventure all by itself (including the prep work). Not only that, it forces the hand of the rest of the Pack. The Bears are supposed to do it a special event and work with younger scouts (so we have to incorporate it into B&G, camping, or a recruitment event... which usually are hard enough to pull off without adding more to them). In my Pack our Bear den leader just ignored this requirement. He never planned for it, he never mentioned it, and then quit the Pack in April. None o

I might be stuck staying whether I like it or not! We can't find a new treasurer to replace me. The CM volunteered so he could get out of being CM... but he has not even finished paying for his popcorn yet, so no way he's getting the checkbook. So then he tried to volun-told someone and she told me she was willing to try but isn't very good with math or computers. Sigh....

I don't think any of you really answered meyerc13's question re: the Cub Scout carnival. This is the kind of event that you can't just repeat or make-up. So... you are saying, too bad, no Bear rank for any scout that misses the carnival? No exceptions? Or do you think it's okay for his parents to have a backyard carnival? Or for him to sub in his school's carnival? The book is pretty clear that it will be with "your den" "at a special event" (p. 98). And BTW, attending the carnival is required to complete Grin and Bear it Requirements 2, 3 & 4. So if he misses, he will only have 40% of

I have struggled with that question myself as Pack Treasurer. Our council pushes selling camp cards in the spring to cover the cost of day camp. But to get the early bird discount, most parents sign-up and pay for camp online before the fundraiser is even over! They usually tell me to just apply the funds earned to next year's dues or something in essence creating scout accounts! Since I have been in the Pack, our boys have only crossed over into two different troops. Both have ISAs so it's not been an issue. But if they didn't, now that I know what you all go through with buying items on

That's too bad. That is not my experience, however. We do the bridge but the only boys that cross it are the ones who have been visiting scout troops and committed to a troop. A rep from their new troop attends the ceremony and is on the other side of the bridge. The scout is also given a check made out to the troop with a portion of his fundraising sales to seed his new Scout Account. (I supposed that is one way to make up for the lost neckerchiefs and handbooks!) I don't know of a single boy that has graduated from our pack in the past 5 years who crossed the bridge and then dropped out

I love Scoutbook! It is not perfect, but last year our awards chair struggled mightily getting the den leaders to report scout achievements. They were a good group of guys, but not good with paperwork and documentation. With Scoutbook, parents can enter things themselves, and the Awards chair at least knows that something is out there needing to be signed off by leadership. Our CM tends to stroll around during meetings chatting up the parents, so we gave him the job of verifying requirements for the den leaders. No, it's not ideal, but it keeps things moving forward, allows us to have less

On ranks, according to scouting.org: "On the advancement trail, a Cub Scout progresses from rank to rank, learning new skills as he goes. Each of the ranks and awards in Cub Scouting has its own requirements. As you advance through the ranks, the requirements get more challenging, to match the new skills and abilities you learn as you get older." The word "rank" is used 62 times in my son's Webelos handbook -- the first reference being: "Your first rank badge -- Bobcat." It seems to me that Cub Scouts does indeed have ranks. On graduation, scouting.org states: "Graduation or transit

I second debriefing the past leader! Then look at each requirement and make a list of everything that needs advance planning or can be done during an outing. Sit down with the Pack calendar and see if any requirements match up with Pack events (point out two birds, at a camp-out, for example. Or make up a game to add to the Bear Carnival for Games Tigers Play). Then plan for all the other stuff before the year even starts and give parents a schedule. This is a great resource for looking things up quickly and getting ideas for fulfilling each requirement: http://www.boyscouttrail.com/cub-

You should't have to convince the treasurer, only the committee. If they vote that's a good plan and there's money in the account, then there shouldn't be a problem! He can bring it up again at committee if his fears prove to be true. I am the treasurer in my Pack and my beef is that the awards chair expects me to run to the scout shop and top up our account every time she plans on going. I don't live anywhere near the scout shop and I keep telling her if she needs money in the account, then she needs to think to get a check at the committee meeting -- for the whole month! I am not runnin

Then why is the big national recruitment push (School Night for Scouting) in Sept? We got 8 of our 19 boys at that event. If we relied on the stuff we did over the summer, then those 8 boys (over 40% of the pack) would just be out of luck. That seems like a great way to turn off the new people! Seems like ranking up should happen August 31st if they seriously want us to be able to plan for summer activities helping fulfill requirements.

Yes, Webelos is much easier than Bear for sure! I mean, you could probably figure out a way to dumb down those Bear things, but I made the mistake of showing our Bear den the carnival requirement and just asking them to brainstorm. Within 5 minutes they had planned a dunk tank, wooden ticket booth, striped tents, ball pits, and the works. Maybe they meant for us to just paint faces and play some bag games on the lawn, but as written, it's a monumental task! Webelos are just instructed to make a fitness course with some "obstacles". Took one den meeting. Also for some reason Bears have to p

LOL I don't think this is the elephant in the room... I think you have made your view very clear! And I don't disagree with the concept that not every boy should get an award just for showing up. We've never handed out a badge, pin, or patch that wasn't signed off on (sure, the parents have probably fudged things tons of times but that's on them). Boys have gone without at many a pack meeting or event (such as Pinewood). But this is a graduation. Do the boys that don't finish their requirements get held back? Do they have to stay a Bear until they do a carnival? No. They get to walk across

Personally I think it's all the other activities like sports that have made parents complacent. If they have to do more than drop-off and pick-up (like in sports or school clubs) they aren't interested! Some of our schools even have rules that parents can't get out of their cars when dropping kids off (supposedly for safety). It just re-inforces this idea that "someone else" runs their kid's activities. Since I homeschool, I haven't picked up those habits yet I guess! But it means I am the "someone else" at Scouts.... and I'll admit, I had a very hard time with that this past year!

Now that the year is over, I can't resist answering this question. My kids did not enjoy this year and have decided to quit. Luckily I was able to convince my Web II to visit some Boy Scout troops and he is going to give it a try... but it took a LOT of work to convince him it wouldn't be anything like this past years' Cub Scouts. I have really mixed feelings about it... I liked being on the committee and helping plan, but I also felt like I was standing in front of an oncoming train all year. I knew that many things were being overlooked from the new program, but I couldn't get anyone el

If you cut with one of these it doesn't make any dust: http://www.homedepot.com/p/BrassCraft-Ratcheting-PVC-Cutter-T012-X/202351847 Plus, for engineering... the stomp rocket and the marshmallow shooter are just too much fun. We did those in Sept (to go with the recruitment rocket theme) and the boys are still talking about it. Not to mention these are better projects for kids with special needs (we have several aspie/autistic kids including my son). They were able to use the PVC cutter safely but could not handle using hand saws, coping saws, or hack saws which ruled out wood project

Actually a lot of boys muscled through a ton of things this past week (weird how quickly 30 days goes by!! ) I thought the cut-off was June 1st. I guess I'll let families know that's it's a possibility to finish up by August. We don't meet as dens over the summer (just one fun Pack event per month to keep in touch). I suspect the parents who did nothing for their kids during the year will continue doing nothing over the summer, but maybe some will surprise us. Really though we have a nice graduation tradition where every kid gets on stage, the parents present them with their rank

Wow, interesting debate! Thanks for all the feedback Especially thanks to meyerc13 for explaining the situation so perfectly! This is exactly where we are at except add that 40% of our Pack joined up on School Night for Scouting in Sept so we had that added headache of trying to get them caught up. The boys did a great job showing up and giving it their all throughout the year. The adults dropped the ball repeatedly due to 3 brand new den leaders, the new program, a Cub Master who put off planning all year, and parents who did very little outside of den meetings. For the record, I h

This new program was rough on us and we have quite a few scouts who did NOT earn their rank badge. The boys all showed up and participated at den meetings, but we realized WAY too late that meeting only twice per month was not enough to get these new requirements done (especially Bear... what's up with Bear?!?!) and we had a big surge in membership in Sept (which means they missed everything we did at our summer camp-out and Day Camp). Anyway, I want to recognize the hard work these kids put in at graduation even though they won't be getting their badges. What do you all do? This is the f

We LOVED the engineering badge! I wish I would have seen this post sooner... We made this marshmallow shooter and it was a HUGE hit! http://www.howtoons.com/?page_id=139 The comic shows the boy making a blueprint of his shooter so it was an easy jump for our boys to do their own on graph paper. I bought extra fittings and joints so they could actually experiment with different configurations. Also I encouraged them to play with a test model first (swapping out parts to make the barrel longer and shorter, etc.) so they could see what effect that had (for example, a longer barrel shoots fu

Amen to that!! My youngest has been tagging along with his older brothers for years. He thinks now that my oldest is graduating that he should get to be done too! He was devastated to hear that he still had 3 more years of Cub Scouts and begged to stop. I told him we could take a year off and see if he wanted to try again later. Luckily with the new program he can wait until Web II and still get his arrow of light. Which he really wants for some reason....

I actually get the popcorn sale... purely from a math standpoint. Last year I calculated that each scout would need to sell about 40 bags of popcorn to meet their $650 goal. (Assuming they sell mostly caramels, zero gift boxes, and a couple of each other flavor which is pretty typical around here). That's not actually too hard to do. Girl Scouts, on the other hand, need to sell over 230 boxes of cookies to clear the same amount of money for the troop. Granted most people buy a couple of boxes of cookies, I also get a lot of people who buy more than one bag of popcorn. So even if they sell

For those of you that don't sell... do you have a different fundraiser? If not, how do you get by? If we didn't sell, we would have to raise dues to like $200 a year. Or nickel and dime parents for patches and Pack meeting and what not. I agree! I had two kids hit $1,500 last year just for the Star Wars Lego set.

Not sad to see Bacon ranch gone, but I can't believe they shrank the White Cheddar and Jalapeno again. I was already embarrassed when delivering this stuff last year and now it will be even worse. I know all the lines about "you are not buying popcorn, you are supporting scouting" but still. There is no way we are going door to door without product in hand. I want people to see what they are buying and know right off the bat that they are basically handing over a lot of money for very little.