Loy_36

These are all really great ideas. Thanks for all the input everyone.

I think we're going to do something like this for sure.

If we had a guess speaker what would they usually talk about at a Pack meeting? Do you usually have refreshments and snacks at Pack meetings?

So we've finally gotten to the point to where we're ready for our first pack meeting. I wanted to get some ideas for things we should do during the meeting besides passing out awards. All the boys will be receiving the Bobcat rank along with a few of them getting some belt loops they've earned. What else can we do to make this exciting for everyone that comes?

Thanks, Sidney

We haven't had a Round up at any schools but there are a few that I'm trying to work with the DE for my area to go in to and have a sign up night for our pack.

The nearest healthy pack is a 20 minute drive from our house. I've talked to several people about joining and I've found out rather quick that a lot of the time people will come up with some sort of reason that they can't join. Rather, they are to busy with work, have to many other things going on and so on and so on. We have a lot of competitive sports especially baseball around our area and we lose quit a bit of kids to that. Personally I think it's more the parents thinking that baseball will get them something because I've never meet a kid in the 3rd grade that wants to play & practice baseball 4-5 days a week. Just my opinion.

jblake, I appreciate the words of encouragement. I think I have such high expectations of what this program was going to be and people were going to be as enthusiastic about it than I was. I know at least my son is having a good time and enjoys me being the Cubmaster & his Den Leader but as I stated in my first post are the kids getting what they should out of the program when there is only one of each of them in their Den and the only interaction with other kids is when them the Cub Scout and the Den Leader which is their parent is when we have an activity at the end of the meeting. I just want to be sure my son and the other kids think back on this when they get older and say "Ya I had a lot of fun in Cub Scouts".

So we're about to go into our 4th meeting and it seems to be almost impossible to continue doing this. We only have 6 Cub Scouts total 2 tigers, 1 wolf, 2 bears and 1weblos. One of the families has 1 of the tigers and 1 of the bears so when they miss which is often that only leaves one kid in each of the ranks and to top it off the dad is suppose to be our acting weblos leader. One of the whole main reasons for doing is to have your child in a group of kids his own age to experience things. So I don't feel that my son and the others kids are getting the full Cub Scout experience from this. With that being said I feel like telling the other parents and the charter we are shutting it down and enroll my son in another well established pack in another town and getting involved with them. Is this wrong of me for feeling so defeated?

Let me ask everyone about Scouting software. I have heard a lo about different software to help you keep up with everything from bookkeeping to advancement for the kids. Is there a preferred software for Cub Scouts?

Thanks SSScout, that was a lot of helpful information. Even though I'm technically the Cub Master in the councils eyes I will be stepping in as one of the Den Leaders. So I got the three other parents with kids that are in various ranks to agree to be Den Leaders. That was my biggest fear for some reason. I think I will ask the school that chartered us to purchase an American Flag and a Pack Flag for us. My district does have a round table to meeting the second Thursday of each month so I'm really looking forward to going to the one coming up. About the yearly dues, how do you figure what new Cub Scouts will pay when joining? I know that the council prorates your registration depending on when you join in the year but if you join late in the year you have to turn around and pay a full years of dues at the begging of the new year. Do you just go ahead and collect the prorated rate plus the next years dues up front or just wait until January and ask everyone to pay their registration again? We are going to implement Pack Dues that will amount to $1 each week for the kids. Thanks for all the advice.

We started a new pack because the one that was in our town was not around anymore and the other one that was about 10 miles away is not an active pack from what I understand. What I mean as active is doing other things other than just meeting once a week. Now there is a much bigger Pack that is about 15 miles away but I wanted to at least try and do something for the kids in our area that I know wouldn't travel that far for a Cub Scout Pack.

KDD, when we went to sign up night we only had 5 kids there which is the minimum for a new start up along with 5 volunteers. None of the volunteers knew that they would have to be paying to volunteer. The whole issue with this is that it didn't get brought to our attention by the DE until about 3 weeks after everyone had signed up and went and spent money buying uniforms and all. So far everyone in the pack is out between a few hundred to several hundred dollars since every family has at least one Cub Scout and one Leader. My family had to sign up two adult Leaders and one of the other families has two Cub Scouts and one adult Leader that signed up. No where did the DE mention that it was going to cost this much for everyone to get started in this. If he had done so I really feel as if everyone probably would have baled on this.

Ya, right out of the gate our District Executive forgot at sign-up night that since we were a new Pack he was suppose to collect at least 6 months dues from everyone instead of the standard prorate so because we signed up in October he only collected $6 for the registration from each person. When I confronted some of the other parents about the DE wanting some more money from each of us they started talking about how much they were already in money wise so the DE said he would pay the difference since it was he's screw up. You would think that if local councils would have some sort of account setup to help new start ups out with their initial start up cost or at least have some sort of basic supplies they could give you to help get everything started.