Leading a flag ceremony.

[JeffD]

For the Cub Scouts, it seems that all are required to lead a flag ceremony for one requirement or another.

 

Not that i am trying to overanalyize the program at this young age, but if a flag ceremony were held, wouldnt there only be 1 leader (calling the commands)?? i would think that if you carried a flag, or simply walked behind someone carrying the flag, that wouldnt satisfy the requirement.

 

Since i have tigers, we only need to participate, but when looking at some things for a higher rank with another leader, i am under the impression that they are not going to be able to get their W1 boys to lead a flag ceremony. Our pack has den meetings in the same place and each rank alternates the flag ceremony.

 

thoughts??

[John-in-KC]

I don't see anything that says "only in a Scouting context."

 

Have the young men do the daily flag ceremony:

 

- At school, either at the Flagpole or in their classrooms.

- At a church/synagogue business meeting.

- At a business meeting of your chartered partner.

- At the beginning of a Little League/Pop Warner game.

 

Can others think of other suitable places?

 

 

[JeffD]

John -

i agree that most scouts **should** be proactive enough to search out opportunities... even if they need a little nudge

 

my question was more - am i thinking correctly that to LEAD a flag ceremony, a scout needs to be the one who issues the commands.

 

I am thinking that if they carry the flag, or if they act as part of the color guard, they are PARTICIPATING and not LEADING.

 

is this correct?

 

[msnowman]

Maybe our Pack interprets "Lead" a bit too loosely. We have always (heck, going back before my time....6 year now) considered "leading" as being the one to call the room to attention for the Pledge of Allegiance and the CS Promise/Law. The boy leader is also the one to bring in the US Flag.

 

Our Webelos I's (all 2 of them) have both planned their flag ceremonies. One was last month, the other will be this month. They lead by bringing in the US Flag, plus another reading about the flag of their choice. They also choose the other members of the color guard (each den has a flag and doing a full parade of flags has been very popular this year). They have even chosen who will call the color guard.

 

YMMV

YiS

Michelle

 

 

[JeffD]

Michelle -

we have ~15 W1 and 10 W2 scouts, and the others all have about 15 in them. so we are a pretty good sized pack.

 

our pack alternates dens - and the dens choose a leader to call the color guard forward. they then lead the pledge, oath etc.. all scouts in the den usually march behind the flags. this is followed by a webelos who will recite the BS information.

[ScoutNut]

Usually this works because the Webelos all take turns leading the flag ceremony each week in their den meeting, & possibly 1 or 2X at the Pack meeting level.

 

Yet another reason I dislike the meet altogether senerio!

 

However - Considering the way your meetings are held & the size of your dens, you do not have much of a choice. While you hold a central Pack flag ceremony at the beginning of each group Pack den meeting, perhaps your Webelos dens could also hold a mini flag ceremony just for their den. That would help give every boy the opportunity they need to lead a flag ceremony.

 

Another idea is to have a committee of 2 to 4 boys work on the flag ceremony together. In this case it would not be the generic, carry the flag in, say the pledge, post the flags, type of ceremony. They would have to come up with something different (lots of different ideas on the Web for them to research) to all get credit for "leading" as a group.