jc2008

IMHO, this is a horrible idea. Just too young. Guess it all depends on the children too. For me it would be wonderful as it would give my younger son something to do since he's was introduced to scouting at 2 via his brother. On the other hand, I know some 5 year olds who would not be able to participate in something like this (without going into specifics, you just know they are too young.) But then again the same can be said about some Tiger cubs (I have a few that are very attached to their parents, wondering how it'll go this year as Wolves when most of the parents won't stick around.) It all depends on the program. The Tiger program is different from the Wolf/Bear program which is different to the Webelos program which is different to the Boy Scout program. If the program is geared for kids those ages then I do not see the problem with it. According to meritbadge.org they are having 2 "den" meetings a month, one den meeting + one grand adventure (think go-see-it). They don't attend all pack meetings, just special ones and they aren't camping. Its basically the program taken down the levels it needs to be for kindergarten.

Tot lot needs to be there so that parents can volunteer. With our tot lot the parents had to bring in a box of capri suns and enough snacks for 12. Each parent sending a kid to tot lot that is. The most we had in tot lot this year was about 6 so it was just one mom and a girl scout in there helping with the kids. Our day camp runs around 120 cub scouts so that was way little in the tot lot for the amount of kids we had at the day camp. Also, the mom running it was about 7 months pregnant. So running the tot lot was one of the only volunteer duties she could have as it was WAY too hot to let her run around outside safely. Our tot lot is in a room with an a/c. Our camp requires every cub scout attending the camp to have a parent volunteer for at least one day. Its mandatory. So it gave the expecting mom something she could contribute while not getting overheated. We had another 8 month pregnant mom come in for one day and she worked over in tot lot as well for the day.

Yeah I get that, but if she brought in a TV + DVD for the tot lot to watch cartoons on throughout the day.. Our tot lot isn't supplied with a full 5 day program. If we had to do that along with the 5 day program for all the Cub Scouts I would just fall over lol. So the cartoons in the morning or in the afternoon when some are napping is essential for us!

No Electronics in the tot lot? I know why no electronics for the rest of the campers, but tot lot is not doing the day camp program, it is more of a day care as a service to the volunteers.

our tot lot has crafts, board games, toys and a tv with dvd player in it so the kids usually watch cartoons in the morning and in the afternoon and do crafts and games inbetween.

Just pinning a normal small balloon to the target and letting the kids shoot at it worked great at ours. Nothing fancy inside of it, just a big pop when they managed to hit it.

I was really wondering who exactly the Girl Scouts would send to a Collection Agency. The Troop leader going to get annoying calls 3 times a day from someone trying to recover the debt? It just doesn't make sense that there is no oversight, and like someone above said, someone at the girl scout council not saying hmm this order is unusually large, better check on it.

YPT is for more than just the boys safety. Its also about the adults safety and the liability risks of your organization/BSA. I mean one of the key things is the 2 deep leadership. You are never alone with a boy. People without training seem to believe that this is so no one abuses the boy or does anything improper. But the other side of the coin is so that the kid can't say "So and so did this to me!" and there is no second adult around to say, "That didn't happen". If a kid claims abuse, you tend to err on the side of the child for safety reasons rather than the adult.

Just curious after i saw this article: http://www.kens5.com/news/Donor-save...tml?hpt=us_bn8 If someone doesn't sell their popcorn/cookies who exactly is responsible for the bill if they don't have enough money to pay it? For BSA is it the charter org? Can't imagine the charter org wanting to be responsible for however many cases of popcorn someone orders.... I know if I went to pick up my popcorn order and saw 12 times the number of things I had ordered, you wouldn't get me to sign the accept form lol..

Agree with KDD, My son takes swim lessons every summer, I dont expect him to just need one swimming lesson, be taught the basics then never get a chance to practice what he learned. You don't need to make a big todo about the ceremony, getting boy scouts and everything, if that is too difficult to arrange. Like I said, a tall pole in your front yard with a rope they can hoist the flag up with is all it really needs.

The Flag ceremony should not be something you do once and checkbox off. We actually have a makeshift flagpole in our front yard made up up a tall plank of wood and some rope and when the meeting is at our house we do the outdoor ceremony. We have done it multiple times this year. The flag ceremony is not a one and done thing for our Den. In fact the kids actually don't need to be told very much at all when doing the flag ceremony now since we do it so often. If we are inside we do the entire indoor flag ceremony too (honor guard marches forward and presents colors etc). I mean surely your kids are able to do it one time per year just to make sure they actually learn how to do it. Doing it one time isn't exactly learning it very well.

I guess we are lucky in our district. We didn't have a District Derby, so my husband said this year we will have a district derby, and we invited all the packs, and a few of the leaders in our pack helped out on the day to make it terrific. We didn't have meetings with anyone, we just said "Lets do this" and did it. we just ran it identical to our pack's pinewood and it worked out fine.

Every district is different. I can speak for our district though since my husband is a Unit Commissioner. Our district has 11 packs and around 13 troops, and they have 2 people as Unit Commissioners. My husband does 3 cub scout packs and the other guy does 2-3 troops. There are not enough people atm to cover all the packs/troops. 2 of the packs my husband is in constant contact with are very healthy and large. The third pack is a new pack and we have been a constant presence for them at their leader meetings, pack meetings, events like pinewood and campouts. It gives the new parents confidence in the program to see people around who "know what they are doing" when all of the new parents are getting their bearings on scouting. He helps where he can and I cannot see giving more than one "new/needy" unit to a commissioner, especially one that is heavily involved in his own Pack. We give a lot of time because we want to see scouting thrive in our community. The trick is to find more crazy people like us who will go above and beyond the program that surrounds our son and reach out to other units and help them make it. Its not an easy task to find, identify and recruit these people. Like anything else, if the UC is done right, it really is a benefit to the entire scouting community. But like anything else in scouting, you only get out of it what you put into it and in some areas volunteers who have that much time and energy and enthusiasm to give are few and far between.

Glad you are taking a positive attitude towards this whole thing. I have seen Dens fail and fall apart because the Den Leader has a life event happen and are no longer to effectively do meetings etc. You are lucky that you had this woman, however annoying she is, step in and take over to make sure your Den is still going. She might have more stringent standards than you would or your leader would, but they are not unreasonable. They are just more strict and closer to the textbook. Look at the positive things she is doing for your Den (ie her time and effort in actually caring that the boys are doing the awards correctly and making sure your den doesn't fall apart).

Glad you are taking a positive attitude towards this whole thing. I have seen Dens fail and fall apart because the Den Leader has a life event happen and are no longer to effectively do meetings etc. You are lucky that you had this woman, however annoying she is, step in and take over to make sure your Den is still going. She might have more stringent standards than you would or your leader would, but they are not unreasonable. They are just more strict and closer to the textbook. Look at the positive things she is doing for your Den (ie her time and effort in actually caring that the boys are doing the awards correctly and making sure your den doesn't fall apart).

Yeah, last year our pack lost the web leader so the two webelos dens met together for the entire year. (web 1 and 2)

We have that movie Yeah we aren't going to do anything about it, just for next time. Its in our rules that the block must be the one from the kit. But we had volunteer leaders checking in cars, I personally wouldn't even know what to tell them to check for to make sure the block is the official block of wood.

^^ what mdp said! The issue that I know units have with that is that they need someone to come up and actually put on these fun events for the kids and parents. Its second nature to us, but I have seen where its sometimes very hard for people to step up and take charge and make the program more than just following a pre-written script all year.

KDD, yes I agree the cub and his parent need to take some responsibility and mark off their book. We had parents who did that. But I also had parents who did not keep up with their book. If they have their book filling out the sheet for them was easy because they just went through their book and marked it on my list. The other parents had to read through all the activities to see if their kids had done them while sitting at the den meeting. If they were Boy Scouts it would be a different idea, but Tigers and Wolves are still young and I don't want them to lose out on the bling that they have earned just because their parents aren't going over the book with them. But in an ideal world, yes you are correct, the parents should be doing it already.

dedkad, I totally know where you are coming from. We had one of our scouts who took up football and literally missed 2 months of meetings because of his practice schedule. I just emailed his family with what we were doing so they could keep up and when the season was over he was back to normal with our meetings. Even in that sort of situation, its still the same thing, they could decide to miss one practice a month to attend a meeting. But the other meetings were still going on for the other kids who could make them. The sports coach isn't competing with you to get them to attend practice/games, you don't need to compete with him. Just do what you do and keep the parents informed of what is going on with the den for the meetings they cannot attend. I had one parent come to me last summer concerned that their child was going to miss a lot (if not all) meetings in the fall due to their practice schedule. And I just reminded her that Scouting is a year round activity and we will be doing this with our kids for X amount of years until they are finished with Boy Scouts. Missing 1-2 months of meetings isn't as large in the grand scheme of scouting as it would be to miss a month of practice for football when you only are playing football for 2 months out of the year.

Yeah, when we started this 2 years ago as Tiger Den leaders we tried to follow online lesson plans etc and it was a lot like the kids had to do more schoolwork instead of having fun. After we got the hang of what we were suppose to be doing and teaching the kids we worked hard to make the lessons into games so the kids had fun and still learned what we wanted them to learn. We also devote at least 15-20 minutes of our den meetings to pure games and fun to make sure the kids are excited to come to their cub scout meeting (our meetings are an hour long). But not every cub scout leader has time to do that sort of thinking and planning. There should be a guide to doing cub scout meetings that meet the requirements for rank that are all fun and games instead of busywork or crafts. Unless its a really cool craft, most of our kids just were not that interested.

They have a Kindergarten program that is in testing at one council (as far as I know), Lions. http://meritbadge.org/wiki/index.php/Lion_Cub_Scout

People who are comfortable in front of a crowd and able to speak up and not worry about how silly they look are few and far between. We typically don't have much time during Den Meetings to rehearse skits so when we are asked to do a skit its usually something simple that the kids can learn in 5 minutes before the Pack Meeting. We are lucky though because my husband (the den leader) can be a total obnoxious and loud goofball and the other den leader in our den plays the "deadpan" roll which is even more hilarious at times. I think something that is missed is at the Cub Scout age, the repetition is important for the kids. Sure we all know "Row row row your boat" but we have to remember our kids are just learning these songs that are classic to us. So repeating songs we have done well with before is not a bad thing, because the kids get the practice at them. You just have to hopefully identify someone with a great energy who isn't scared to stand up and use it! Not every Den Leader has that energy or ability.

We have a few packs in our area that have multi rank dens. It can be done if you don't have enough kids to sustain separate rank dens. The den I know the leader of has 2 tigers, 1 wolf and 3 bears. There is a whole program guide written to deal with that type of den situation http://www.scouting.org/filestore/multicultural/pdf/523-006_web.pdf