End of Year Ceremonies and Webelos

[scoutermomks 12]

Our Pack is starting what I hope to be a new "end of the year" tradition.  We're going to a local park for our May pack meeting and having a campfire with special "graduation" ceremonies for each rank and an induction ceremony for the boys we just signed up that will be next year's Tigers.  I have the ceremonies all planned but now I'm realizing that I'll be completely leaving out our current Webelos.  We had cross over for our 5th grade Webelos in February so we only have 4th grade Webelos now.  I'd like to do something to recognize them as the new senior scouts in the pack but I'm not finding any ceremonies like that.  I can certainly write my own ceremony but I'd like something to at least give me some idea about what to do to make them feel special too.  This pack meeting will be my last hurrah as Cubmaster since I'll be taking over as Scoutmaster of my son's troop after summer camp so I'm probably obsessing a little too much about the ceremony being perfect.  Anyone have any ideas?

[blw2 433]

no direct idea... but I'll throw something out as brainstorming fodder...

how about asking them (the 1st year WEBELOS) to be your co-MC's?

 

Something that was suggested to me, but given the situation and people, I was never able to affect, was to give the WEBELOS more responsibility in preparation for boy-led patrol method.

I did try to lean on them whenever I could, to do things like forming up the teams, leading games in the pack meetings, etc....

but I didn't do enough of that

And now in hind site I really see that we failed in really gelling that den as a patrol and introducing to them what that really means.

 

So my thought is this

try to find a way to involve them in all the ceremonies, or at least some of them.

maybe even the planning....who knows, they might be able to come up with some ideas....if you have time to meet with them before...

 

I'm not really big on ceremonies for the sake of the ceremonies, but I do like the idea of making a "big deal" about some things.  Trying to make things just a bit special.

 

Think about it in terms of the patrol method.  

and give the WEBELOS scouts some responsibility.

The boys will almost certainly have more fun with almost anything that way... and more fun when they are involved themselves, not simple spectators (not just the WEBELOS, all of them)

 

They WILL have more fun with responsibility, than with any sort of ceremony that you can do "to them"

Edited May 10, 2016 by blw2

[Stosh 3452]

Okay, I apologize for being a big kid, but why not just have a potluck party, have some games, eat a lot of good food and skip the boring ceremonies?  If I was a Cub Scout I would want to run around, play games, yell as loud and as long as I want, eat too much food especially the sweets, drink too much Koolaid and spill a portion of everything I ate on my shirt.

 

At the campfire each DL reads about all the fun their den did.  Now the Tigers are going to be pumped up for next fall's program and the older boys will be able to reminisce about all the fun things they did and had forgotten about  Hype up the summer camp outings coming up and don't worry about how perfect it is.  The boys don't want perfection, they want fun.

[scoutermomks 12]

blw2 - That is a good idea.  I'll talk to the Webelos den leader and see if he will talk to the den about helping at the pack meeting.  We only have 3 Webelos right now so it shouldn't be hard to give them each a chance to help out.

 

Stosh - We are planning on doing s'mores and letting the boys run around and be boys, the ceremonies are just going to be short "cross overs" not the longer face painting ceremonies we use when they get their rank badge.  In the past we've had boys (and leaders) that didn't understand that June 1 starts the next rank so the ceremonies will just be a visual reminder that now they can start working on the next book.

[meyerc13 85]

Our District has a Webelos Weekend for 4th Grade Webelos.  In that, they have a ceremony where they 'bless' arrows for the boys and challenge them to continue on their path to Arrow of Light and Boy Scouts.  If your area doesn't have something like that, maybe you can do that at a Pack level.

Edited May 11, 2016 by meyerc13