JeffD 10 Posted October 3, 2006 Share Posted October 3, 2006 with some of the complaining i sometimes hear about scouting - i figured this would be nice to share. we started the school year with 20 tigers (19 paid - 1 guest). all 19 tigers just earned their bobcat. and we rarely (if ever) have more than 1 or 2 kids miss a meeting. we have 2 trained 'leaders' (myself and a friend) and a nice group of parents who enjoy helping out and working with us. though the group is pretty large - we manage them very well. we have had 3-4 guests and are working to get them to join up. i hope this doesnt jinx us - but we are having a great time and everyone is enjoying it. its nice to have parents come up and thank you for the "excellent job youre doing" and tell you how much fun everyone is having. Link to post Share on other sites
OneHour 11 Posted October 3, 2006 Share Posted October 3, 2006 Jeff, Congratulations. Enjoy it while you can. Once the hum-drum of cub scouting kicks in, once soccer, basketball, football, or whatever starts and these boys start to join the teams, then the attendance starts to drop off. Once the parents start to think that this is more work than was first advertised or they realize that cub scout is not boy scout that they were thinking of ... then the kids slowly stop coming. But ... on the other hand, if you keep up with the same energy and fun, you should have a grand time with the boys! Remember, kids at this age will attend if their parents have fun, too! Good luck ... it's really great to see if all 20 tigers at Webelos 2 cross over in 4.5 years! I saw my oldest son's Tiger den crossed over to boy scout with 8 of the orginal 11 and my second son's Tiger den with 8 of the original 12. 1Hour Link to post Share on other sites
ScoutNut 147 Posted October 3, 2006 Share Posted October 3, 2006 Congratulations on signing up that many Tiger Teams! If you KISMIF & use the Tiger program, you should have a G-R-R-E-A-T year! Keep those Teams involved & you should have little or no drop out! You might think about scoping out the Tiger adults this year for those with leader potential. If you have 20-24 Wolf Scouts next year you should consider spliting into multiple dens. BTW - I have 13 Teams Teams and growing! Much better than just 4 that I had last year! Link to post Share on other sites
JeffD 10 Posted October 3, 2006 Author Share Posted October 3, 2006 we have 2 real dens now (had 3 but the third leader isnt involved much at all). my wife is a soccer coach and soccer/football both started the same week as scouts - and we have had excellent participation with the tigers with things like a coastal cleanup - fishing derby - camping trip. this weekend is the scout olympics in the area and i expect similar turnout. i have a couple of people who have said they would step up and help more if asked - and i let them know they will surely be called upon. i am also very fortunate in that the other leader and i get along very well and are similar in planning methods and we meet to plan out our den meetings a month in advance.. plus we're both pretty gung ho and i think that excitement comes through to the kids Link to post Share on other sites
cubbingcarol 10 Posted October 7, 2006 Share Posted October 7, 2006 I will add my own Tiger tidbit, at my last meeting I had 2 new Tigers. They enjoyed it so much they didn't want to go home. And when I went to my son's class yesterday to read to them one of the boys kept asking, 'when are we going to have scouts again cause it was fun!'. Gotta love 'em!! Carol Link to post Share on other sites
JeffD 10 Posted October 9, 2006 Author Share Posted October 9, 2006 my son told me he likes scouts more than anything in the world. he wants to work on his pinewood derby car (there is a race at an upcoming campout) and he has sanded it just how he wants. we just painted it silver (looks metallic) and he can wait to paint the racing stripes on it. now - heres to keeping scouting fun on the path to eagle Link to post Share on other sites
WVCubDad 11 Posted October 11, 2006 Share Posted October 11, 2006 We had a huge Tiger recruiting success. We now have three dens of 8-9 each. We split them according to schools - we recruit from 4 elementary schools. 2 of the dens (mine and another) meet in the same room and usually do things together. The third den really got off the ground last week and we're working to incorporate them into our activities. So far we've only had a couple miss each week. I too would like to see all of them cross over to Boy Scouts, but as my son put it this past weekend when we were walking back from the latrine at our second camping trip in as many weeks - "Dad, I want to quit Scouts." "You can't quit Scouts, why would you want to do that?" "Well, I don't want to quit yet, I just don't want to be a real Boy Scout, I want to stop after Webelos." (He had a bad experience with a Webelos at Family Camp who didn't know when to back off in showing his knowledge to a younger Cub.) I told him that we had a while to wait and he could make that decision in a few years. It is my hope to be standing proud at his Eagle ceremony at some point in the future, but it is his decision to go all the way. Our Tigers have had fun so far - tonight we made edible ship snacks out of apples, cheese and pretzels. They really got into it. We also played the game from the program helps of blowing a toy golf ball through a maze with a straw. Due to time constraints we fashioned the course out of 2x2's and Duplo blocks and lined up the boys along the length of the table in two teams. Each team worked together to "con" their ship through the channel. One of my Tiger dad's corrected my use of the term drive with respect to ships. He's a recently retired SWO Lt. Cdr. The boys had fun and this old treadhead (Army tanker) learned something new! Next week all three dens will visit the local fire station and walk over from our meeting place so those who missed the Tiger hike this past weekend will have a hike to complete 5G. Fun stuff. John Link to post Share on other sites
JeffD 10 Posted October 11, 2006 Author Share Posted October 11, 2006 john - one thing we did on our hike was for each boy to find a leaf on the ground. we then made a rubbing of the leaf which covered 5D Link to post Share on other sites
WVCubDad 11 Posted October 13, 2006 Share Posted October 13, 2006 Jeff, We did that as well Tuesday night. The Tigers were so energized to pick up leaves on the hike that we had plenty for the boys that didn't go camping to participate. The one thing that I couldn't do is find thin enough paper to get really good rubbings. I was surprised that Wal-Mart didn't have tracing paper or really thin writing paper, but then I guess I shouldn't have waited until an hour before the meeting to get my supplies! With the exception of my son who had an oak leaf that wouldn't fit under a regular sheet of copy paper, the boys had fun. John Link to post Share on other sites
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