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We probably have about 10 minutes of "instruction time" too. Some weeks as much as 15-20, maybe, but not all at once. Fun and games are how kids engage at this age and besides gamifying the lessons outlined for the adventure, games are one of the best ways for learning the skills of listening, understanding, and following rules, and provide opportunities to work on emotional regulation when the game doesn't go the way they want. And kindness when it DOES go how they want and someone else is the one upset. And, of course, training in cleaning up after themselves. Don't fight the fun and games - just make it work for you instead of against! We have one 1st grader meeting with us, so we're using the mixed lion/tiger plans here https://www.southfultonscouting.com/node/4851 but that website seems like a wealth of information for thinking outside the box in general. Since our plans have to include all the requirements for both ranks, they really look closely at what the requirements actually say vs what is in the suggested meeting plan in the leader guide. One example: the leader guide has a full on first aid lesson as one requirement of Animal Kingdom when the requirement is "show you know what to do in an emergency". It says nothing at all about proving first aid. The plan we're using reinterprets that as making a list of numbers of people to call in an emergency, what to do if the smoke alarm goes off, etc, and a quick "911 or not?" quiz. Still fulfills the requirement. If the meetings are sapping your energy/enthusiasm, it sounds like you need to draw on some energy from other parents. We rotate which parent leads the meeting each week, but if you think that's too much to ask, maybe you could enlist one of the more punctual parents to be in charge of an arrival activity every week while you get everything else in place. Or ask someone to look into short movement-break activities. I know teachers often have a whole tool box of one-minute ideas to get the wiggles out. Maybe it could be someone else's job to direct the kids in some movement during the lull while you pass out supplies for a 2nd seated activity. Last year's lion den never got off the ground, so I know it's not always possible, but a healthy Lion den, run with shared leadership as it was designed, is a truly beautiful thing and one of the best ways to cultivate future pack leadership.

We currently have 6 lions and 1 tiger in our combined den - having lost the one kid from each rank who registered online over the summer, but gaining several more around Halloween. I'm thinking that families need a month or two to settle into school before thinking about adding something else. I'm the perpetual den leader of record for the new dens since even if you had a parent agree to lead on day 1, getting them registered and trained takes time. Telling the parents that once or twice over the course of the year they'll be expected to present the meeting using one of our lesson plans has been an easy sell. Hopefuly at the end of the year one will be ready to take on more. I don't know why they dropped the "Lion Guide" position that the pilot program had instead of a normal den leader role That's really the way this program works best.

I understand their need to protect the organization from future liability, but I STRONGLY believe that there should be an exception to these rules for activities where every child has a parent present. There's no logical reason why a lion den meeting needs to have two registered adults present, or why one of them should have to be female if there are girls, when we are already requiring that their parent partner attends with them. And things like popcorn both sales should be able to have two scouts working it with their own parents there supervising, even if the parent isn't registered.

Having been on campouts with both of our affiliated troops, it seems very clear to me that merging the boy troops with the girl troops would quickly end with the girls bossing around the boys and the boys deciding they didn't need one more place for people to tell them what to do. But at the cub level, we haven't seen that to be an issue. We started our trying to have separate dens, but with smaller numbers of girls and the normal membership fluctuations from one year to the next, one girl deciding she'd rather do something else would have meant kicking out two others. I think the ideal would be to have mixed gender dens for K-3 and start splitting them by gender by the time they become Webelos. Once they start being invited to do things with troops, it's easier to already be separate and not have to tell the girls they aren't invited. Typically, the girl troops may not be as close or as many to choose from as the boys, but by the time kids are in middle school, parents are used to driving them an hour away for travel sport leagues, so we've found that a 20-30 minute drive once a week doesn't get a lot of pushback.

You might be surprised by how much mileage you could get out of just having a tent set up in the corner of your meeting space and allowing kids to pretend they're camping. We had one set up at a joining night one year and it was the popular spot for all ages of cubs, including ones who regularly go camping. If you can get permission to have a lock-in overnight in a church fellowship hall or gymnasium, you could set up tents and a fake campfire, do some skits, etc. Another activity our older scouts do, but that would work well for little ones with a slightly tamer hill, is a sledding day someplace where you can get permission to bring a fire pit. Then you have the opportunity to cook hot dogs and make smores without actually going camping in the cold weather.

I think the eager parents join at whatever grade is the first one offered. It makes sense that you'll get fewer older kids joining because you've already captured the segment of the market that is most interested. If Bears were the youngest, then you suddenly added Wolves, you'd have one year where both programs had high numbers because you hadn't tried to recruit the easy sells yet, then the number of new Bears would drop the next year. And the overall number of bears might drop, too, just because it's normal for some kids to not like scouts and not return for a second year, no matter what age they start. I'm still not convinced how much lions does for the youth, but I firmly believe it benefits the health of the pack. Without exception, our leadership team is made up of people who joined at their first opportunity. For some of us that was tigers and for others that was lions, and for one, it was whatever age his daughter was when they allowed her to join. We oddly seem to have very few families with more than one son. Having the Lion program and adding girls have improved the long-term stability of our pack by letting us keep leaders around as long as neighboring packs with some boy-heavy families have. Leader burnout is real, but the solution to that is making sure the leaders feel supported, not just cutting a year off the time they serve. The leaders I work with are a family that I want to be a part of and the reason that I stuck around after my son aged out.

Even more important - preparing their parents for that transition. I think "my kid isn't interested anymore" sometimes really means "I was the one pushing my kid to do cub scouts, but having visited the chaos of that troop meeting, I don't see enough value to deal with the hassle of making him do it." At the cub level, we really need to prepare the kids and their parents that the training wheels are about to come off, and they may crash and burn before they get the hang of things. And at the troop level, they need to ensure that the older scouts are ready to actually manage their leadership roles so the group does figure out how not to continue crashing.

That's similar to what I was planning: 2-3 "things" each month, so a den meeting or two, no pack meeting, and highlighting one of the pack activities going on that seems like a good fit for the littles. But, the 3 parents who showed up for our kick-off meeting tonight are all going to be at the pack meetings with older siblings anyway, so I guess we'll be adding those in. And they want two den meetings each month. And the sibling factor will probably have them attending a lot of pack functions, too. Our dues are so minimal that we can't charge Lions any less. We've always just ignored the extra cost of the time between sign up and recharter and figured that everyone is new once, so it works out. And while Lions at least theoretically do less fun stuff, they also probably do less fundraising to make up that difference. Definitely this. If you have an orderly den/pack experience like what most parents are looking for, then you move to a boy-led scene where it takes an hour and a half and you still barely have a menu for the upcoming campout (not that this happened this evening or anything) it's a real adjustment. We've also had some kids at least on the verge of leaving and not coming back when we told them that their Whittling Chip wasn't any good anymore and they had to put that pocket knife away. And while they're at it, stop poking at the fire until they can get someone to take the time to do the Fireman's Chit with them. It wasn't until I did the IOLS training that I could look at the chaos without immediately wanting to shut it down and force order upon it. And I'm the least Type A parent I know. After having the "let them fail" mantra drilled into my head, it only makes me mildly crazy. Okay, moderately crazy. But I bite my tongue. I think there's less of a feeling of "burnout" and more a frustration that they are doing less in the troop than they were in cubs because having adults plan and lead stuff IS generally more efficient.

The issue that I found with Lions and pack meetings wasn't that they weren't engaging, but they were just too much too late in the evening. Most of our den meetings are 6:30-7:30, and the pack meeting generally follows that pattern, though some years they've had longer pack meetings that went until 8. Our Lion parents requested an earlier 6-6:45 meeting time to get the kids calmed back down in time to get to bed on their regular schedule.

Our pack used to meet all on one night, but not necessarily in the same space, and one of the other two packs in our area takes over a church building for the evening for den meetings, but the only time the kids are all together is if it's nice enough to hang out all together outside before the meetings start. Having them on the same night just makes it easier to schedule. If a den normally meets on Mondays, then trying to get those kids to a pack meeting on Weds is hard. The family generally has other stuff scheduled for other nights and needs to designation one day as the one that they are going to have scout stuff. We also encourage parents to stay for the meetings even after the kids age out of the "parent partner" stage, but don't absolutely require it if the kids are okay without their parent along. So, having the dens meet at the same time helps free up parents to attend their Lion/Tiger meeting without having to figure out how to occupy their Wolf/Bear/Webelos child. Although we only meet together at the pack meeting, we also have at least one pack activity going on each month (hike, leaf raking for the place we meet, camping, pinewood, blue & gold, scouting for food, zoo or aquarium trip...) and when the kids are all dressed the same and running ahead of you, knowing what den a kid belongs to at least narrows down which child you might be looking at.

I love the idea of the uniform bank being coordinated outside the pack/troop. That avoids the problem of families who are embarrassed about charity AND those who are keeping their distance because they may have left scouts on bad terms or just don't want to deal with a hard sell from leaders wanting them to come back. Plus, it keeps you from ending up with pack A having all the medium kids only small shirts and pack B having all the medium shirts and small kids.

I took the year off myself when my son crossed over. I needed the break, but after a year of that, I found that I had just replaced the stress of trying to run everything with the stress of not knowing what was going on, with no real gain. So, I'm back.

Those of you who are unhappy with the Lion program - did you follow the plans laid out in the leader guide or just read the actual requirements and do something that fulfilled them? I feel like there's a huge disconnect between what the requirements say and the activities suggested to fulfill them. Like the Animal Kingdom requirement "demonstrate you know what to do in an emergency" that then has the kids playing a game with first aid for cuts and sprains and bug bites and blisters. I would personally interpret "what to do in an emergency" as things like discussing how/when to call 911, getting out of a burning house, and what to do if they get lost. For most other "emergencies" the age appropriate answer is "Find an adult"! I don't see that, or a related trip to the fire station, as causing a risk of burn out - but if you play the recommended game that is far closer to what the Webelos are doing than what the Tigers are, then I can definitely see how that might make the older kids feel like they're not learning anything new.

Alcohol isn't allowed in state parks in PA? It never would have crossed my mind to look into that, even though I grew up there. It's something that was done so often that I wouldn't have thought I needed to research it. In NY it's legal and parents always look at us like we've lost our minds when we tell them that they won't be drinking on the campout.

Given that we haven't had a Lions cohort go all the way through without the interruption of covid, I don't think we can say yet what impact the new rank has on retention. Were you guys in packs that had an early pilot program? I'm surprised you had any that started as Lions. Our 6th & 7th graders didn't have the opportunity to be Lions and our current lack of any 5th graders is because we didn't have a Lion den but the troops on both sides of us were chosen for the pilot program and the next year they had solid groups moving in to Tigers and leaders trained and ready to go. We did our best to recruit Tigers, but most called up a day or two later to say they just found out their kid's friend was in one of the other packs and could they transfer. And all the parents who were invested in the idea of their kids doing cub scouts had signed them up as soon as they were eligible, not leaving good leader prospects. So, whether or not the Lion program is a good idea over all, not having that rank when the other options in your area do puts a pack at a disadvantage for years. Our 4th graders are the first that started at Lions and they're a nice solid group, roughly the same size as when they started. There HAS been a fair bit of turnover of who the kids in the group are, but starting with a solid Lion den gave us a group to recruit those later kids into. I will say, though, that I don't think there's any need for the advancement piece at this age. I would love to replace Lions with a true "Family Scouting" program for K and even younger that offered a family camping opportunity 1-2 times a year and maybe a few hikes and an easy service project like maybe one block of Scouting for Food or just asking them to bring in something to build a Thanksgiving basket together for a family in need. Younger siblings are welcome at all our pack events, and it always makes me a little sad to know there's no way to extend that experience to kids without an older sibling. So, maybe my answer is wrapped in that idea - $130 is a lot to pay for one child, but if the family is invited to everything, then it's $130 for a year of experiences for your entire family. That's actually a pretty good deal. Just have to make sure I don't pitch it that way to anyone with an older child already in the group who is already serving as their admission ticket to pack events!

How do other people "sell" the Lion program? My understanding is that the recommendation is that the kindergarten crowd should have 2 meetings each month, about 40 minutes long, and only have the pack meeting and events loosely mentioned to them, not really pushed. We've had a number of people interested in trying it out, but $130(assuming the pack doesn't ask for any dues from them) plus uniform plus book hasn't turned out to be an easy sell. Broken down over the course of the year it's not a huge amount, but any kind of sports kids sign up for at this age tend to be a month or two long and priced accordingly. Families who already know they want cub scouts for their child get over the sticker shock and enroll anyway, but the ones that just dropped by the table because they're looking for some sort of team or club for their child to make some friends aren't going to give us a chance to prove that it's worth it. They're going to keep going to the next table and sign their child up for 4 weeks of lacrosse skills for $25.

Troops aren't broken down by rank the way a pack is, so having the necker change wouldn't be as useful as it is for cubs. It's nice to be able to find at a glance that one kid who has wandered off with his brother's den. Our pack solved the cost problem of the multiple neckerchiefs by asking parents to donate back any old neckerchiefs and slides they didn't want, then buying enough more to have a complete set. Now all neckerchiefs are owned by the pack and loaned out for the year. We always end up short a few slides at the end of the year, but that's a manageable expense for the pack to cover if it lets us shave $20 off the start up cost for new scouts.

ParkMan, Would you be willing to share the script you used for the face painting?

I actually think that this pack is operating so far outside of the way the program is designed, that it might not be having the effect on the boys that everyone is suggesting. It seems like it has gone all the way past "being handed a rank you don't deserve" to just being handed a piece of fabric to put on your shirt to identify how old you are. It's lost all connection to being an earned rank, so probably bears the same weight to the boys as getting a different colored neckerchief. And I'm guessing that if this has been going on for a while, the troops in your area must be used to starting things off with a speech about "This isn't cub scouts anymore. In Boy Scouts you have to EARN your ranks." Boys can join Boy Scouts without ever having been a cubscout at all, or having been one and never earning any rank, so having a pack that doesn't adequately prepare kids for Boy Scouts shouldn't necessarily be a deal breaker. That said, I don't understand what to appeal is to do it this way. It sounds like after you hand out the rank patches, you do finish out the year working out of the same handbook you started in the fall and try to fulfill the requirements for something the kids already have been given. That seems pointless to me. To the kids' perspective are they just earning beltloops and unaware of the connection between some of them and the rank? Are the beltloops being honestly earned? That would be something that you can do as "just" a den leader, despite the overall pack culture. Normally, I would think that at some point the kids would notice that the handbook says one thing and they are doing another - but with the current requirements already not matching the handbook, one more thing that doesn't line up will hardly be noticed.

There's really surprisingly little overlap. When I was looking at trying to incorporate our one Bear into a den of Wolves this fall, it looked like there was actually more overlap between the Bear and Tiger activities. I think they must have been trying to avoid kids doing the same activities two years in a row so they spaced similar topics a couple of years apart. I also feel bad that I didn't realize that in the beginning. Last year when the Tigers were picking an elective to work on, I told them not to worry too much because they had many years of cub scouts ahead of them and would get to pick again next year. Then found out that it would be years before there was another chance for, say, an astronomy achievement. I just assumed there would be harder, but similar, options in the other ranks. Oops.

Even if they meet as a single den, though, they can still only earn the awards designated for their grade, right? I can understand not wanting kids rushing through and thinking they should be able to complete Arrow of Light and move up to Boy Scouts ahead of schedule, or having kids working on things that are far too easy for them, but it would make the logistics of a multi-grade den so much easier if there were flexibility for kids to earn recognitions designed for their grade or one grade higher. Or their own grade plus one lower. It just makes no sense for everyone in the den to do the same activities and some of them to earn a beltloop and others not. I can see how to explain it to the older kids - it makes sense they aren't getting one because the work didn't stretch them the way that it did younger kids. But explaining to younger kids who participated right alongside the older ones why the older kids are receiving an award for something the younger ones just did for fun, that seems trickier. I'm hopeful that the addition of girls will mean that enough packs are suddenly dealing with mixed-age dens that the program will become a little more in tune with that scenario, whether those dens are boys or girls.

It would be nice if there were the possibility of some flexibility in that regard, as some people were interpreting it, especially as girls begin joining this year. Our pack currently looks like it may be forming a girls 4th & 5th grade Webelos Den - it would be really nice if they had the option of working on the Webelos rank together. I don't think we'll have enough of either grade to separate them. Really, it would be nice if they could offer a two year range of ages for all the ranks. We have several packs in our area, and there's a pretty obvious pattern of people joining the pack that makes sense for their neighborhood & schedule, then realizing there are only one or two boys in their grade, and they move to a different pack. Then we get more kids wanting to join, who learn there aren't any others their age, then go to the other pack. Then repeat a couple more times for that grade. Meanwhile, the next grade, we're the receiving pack and end up absorbing the kids from the neighboring one. If we had the option of just including the lone Wolf or two in with the Tigers AND having them actually working toward beltloops at meetings, then they might stick around long enough to still be part of the pack when other kids their age are looking to join.

We've been doing them at pack meeting for exactly that reason. But... there were some issues earlier in the year with kids thinking that they had earned thiings because they had been at the meeting where MOST of the requirements were completed, but missed the meeting when we wrapped up one or two last things. If we had awarded them at the time they were completed, we would have avoided that confusion. Last time we went to the store, we did pick up enough of the required ones to finish out the year, but hate to do too much of that since we still have old pins and beltloops for achievements that no longer exist.

I'm not too concerned about the badge, but the pack has a tradition of doing the face painting type of moving up ceremony, which the boys really look forward to, and all the scripts I've found for that are definitely "you've done all these things to earn your rank" and not "welcome to the next level", and an unpainted face would stand out and not in a good way. But I think I've figured it out. Other than one kid who I think has probably quit, the boys likely to not have time to make rank are all new additions, not kids who just didn't show. They will have all earned their Bobcat rank this year, so I think making a big deal about how glad we are that they decided to join us on this path then a little paint just for the new recruits should do the trick. (even if they've already gotten the badge itself before then)

This is exactly my angle on it, too. Others in the pack, though, lean pretty heavily toward ceremony, and with all of the points in training about making to sure to publicly recognize the kids for all of their achievements, ideally involving parents, asking them to come up and stand with their kids as they receive the award, etc, I'm even more outnumbered. I've been planning on working on the "give the kids the new neckerchiefs now" angle since that's such a nice tangible way of marking that the new year is starting now, and summer is a part of it. The pack doesn't have a strong history of summer activities, which I'm hoping to change this year. The pack covers the cost of neckerchiefs and books, though, and uses that as motivation to get people to turn in their registrations, so that might be a hurdle to get past. For the record, I'm not talking about any awards at Blue & Gold. Ours is a party, albeit a rather formal one for my tastes, but it did have a magician! Just trying to figure out the logistics of kids who join in March and how much it's realistic to try to do in the two to three months left in the year. I like the idea of having kids get their Wolf patch as soon as they have completed the requirements instead of waiting until the end, since that also makes the ones who don't earn it not such the odd men out if they don't get one at the end of year event.