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@ScouterCC87 welcome to the forums, the requirement gives you options: (Emphasis mine.) Did this patrol start out as 5 scouts? If it has done all of those other requirements for national honor patrol, and it added a scout in the process, then the requirement is met. If not, they need to recruit one more member. To earn it again, they will have to recruit another member, but then they'll be 8 and all they have to do is maintain membership and complete the other requirements in the next quarter.

In general, we have not looked too closely at when the scouts cooked their meal. As long as it was a troop activity, we were fine. That being said, in things of this nature, I suggest you have your girls read the requirements together and ask them if it would be fair to sign off on outdoor cooking in these circumstances. Also, you may want to take advantage of the weather and demonstrate how snow is an abrasive crystal. Snowballs make excellent scouring pads.

My opinion is informed by an Italian exchange student, who insisted, "I am not a Girl Scout. I am a scout!" You could also say: "You are no longer a Cub. You are a Scout."

The practice isn't that unusual. Music festivals have also done split locations when demand was high. There's a bit of fun-with-electronic-telecommunications to have. Why not continue? It seems that scouts want to meet scouts from different parts of the country. Why not rotate? Logistics. And, more western troops wanted to come east with a chance to visit DC than want to go west with a chance to visit monuments there.

We tell our scouts that the CO (a Presbyterian church) considers the troop to be their ministry. As such, we help set up some of their activities/fundraisers with no thought as to money being exchanged. They make sure that there are extra doughnuts on Scoit Sunday. Everybody wins.

@DwightS, welcome to the forums! No rule against it. It could be appropriate. Check with the family. Usually when we do this we have scouts meet in a different location (e.g., a parking lot) near the viewing and walk in together.

For most camping activities, don't worry about materials. Comfort trumps tech most days. When you actually need technical cloth, don't worry about color.

Scouts+sledgehammers. There's a recipe for success. Actually Mrs. Q sucking us into hand-pouring our cracked sidewallk one year allowed me to helped a scout frame in the molds for 8x8 slabs for a project.

In many of the old guidebooks, the SM is drawn wearing a suit and tie. One wonders how much better youth would uniform if adults wouldn't!

Researched them. But never saw evidence in the field. All flying objects were identifiable. As to the likelihood of extraterrestrial life (especially the intelligent kind) ... well so far the only creatures producing measurable signals of their existence to far parts of the universe are homosapiens. Life in general here seems to produce an oddly oxygen rich atmosphere, but it's hard to tell who would have the tech to see it if they haven't even built tech of leaky radio signals. It's equally possible, however, that they did build that tech years or epochs before we were even able to receive and translate it. They have since learned (for reasons known only to them) how to not spill traces of themselves into the "great beyond." So, until more evidence is gathered, the notion that there's something out there has the same odds of being true as the notion that we are very much alone.

I think there needs to be some acceptance that Eagle projects involve lots of opportunities for one-on-one contact with folks not registered in the BSA. Contact with a district representative while the scout's parent is nearby should be the least of our worries.

I'll push back on that ... Leadership Development (through responsibility, service projects) is a method. Actual leadership (e.g., scout gets his friends to pick up litter, leads a school assembly in the national anthem, calls a buddy out on pushing drugs, etc ...) is the expected outcome. Personal growth as a method is embodied in the Scoutmaster Conference. In fact GBB's handbooks calls it a personal growth conference. The outcome is a young adult who can take is place among other noble adults in the wide world. Most of us would agree that providing the scouts opportunity for responsibility, service, and conferences with caring adults is a linchpin of the program. Other groups have outdoor components, high-minded ideals, uniforms, awards, teams, etc ... But few really strive for leadership and personal growth in the rounded fashion that troop life offers. That said, I see these methods as overlapping (e.g., to advance, you must attend to leadership and personal growth) and can't imagine one outweighing the other.

My barista, a senior, is my cookie contact. She hasn't been in the shop since she took my order. oh no! Maybe the cookie police have her in interrogation!

This old crow is happy to help!

We took our kids out of school to attend a wedding in Rapid City. Son #1 was assigned a lot of journaling. He had a lot to write about. We took a drive to the Badlands one day.

We woodbadge earners are fairly simple folk. The favorite memento from my crew for my beading ceremony was a picture with the first and only venturer in my crew to earn a bronze award. Even if you get him a book, I'm sure your CM would like a picture of him with your scouts as a bookmark!

FWIW, I also think a UC (or any of us who are friends of a unit) should critique positively when a new SM/ASM is by-the-book regarding advancement. It's likely that they are getting flack from someone for it, and if you don't voice your positive reinforcement, you may not hear that a leader may be struggling with parents on that issue. Sometimes someone from the outside can provide the necessary unified front before such parents. I've often found myself in that position, and leaders and parents have thanked me for walking them through the advancement method.

That black soot went away with most of our steel jobs. The debate is out as to if those stacks "seeded" more than "heated" the clouds.

Not presently, but we have in the past. Since we attend week 1 of summer camp (which is usually synced to the week after Pittsburgh Public Schools' last day) it has impacted us. Fortunately, in those years, our school district didn't take as many snow days as PPS, so it only cause problems for a minority of scouts. I can't remember how they resolved this issue. I do remember them camping with us, so either they came mid-week or were granted an early dismissal. (Being a good student comes with some perks.) For us, the serious issue is that it cuts into long weekends for backpacking, or spring break for high adventure. We just can't do last-minute camp outs on snow-days (although I'd certainly rather).

Yes. Without question. What's at issue is how to deliver that critique. I started advising a crew after being a seasoned ASM; however, I still felt inadequate. And I felt that I had to respond quickly to things that were coming up. So, I sought out folks who could give me a blunt critique quickly. And the venturing commissioner was pretty good at laying out "must do" vs. "must stop doing" vs. "take it or leave it" advice. And for the "must stop doing", I could go back to my youth next meeting, apologize, and promise to do better. I think this SM and ASM are in a similar situation. The only question is if they will take brusk advice, if they will allow such critiques at a committee meeting, or if they need a let's-sit-and-have-a-coffee approach.

There's a reason I called it a "challenge." No adults want to be accused of not delivering on the promise of scouting. The UC in this thread might have an advantage in that this is a new unit. He might not if these are old scouters wanting to run things "better" than their former unit did.

@Treflienne, your daughter has some good quotes to work from! Kids usually get it. The challenge is to convince scouters that it's more fun to make good on the promise of scouting than dole out bling.

Thicker skin, @Ranman328, please. You didn't say that they actually have the leader's sign-off in their books for "whipping and fusing." If that's the case, the UC has to come down firmly and say 3/4 of scouting is outing, and 1/2 of outing is working with fire. If it's bad outside, surely they can light candles somewhere in that church! (The kitchen?)

@mrkstvns is right. It's great that you Scoutmaster is just learning "the ropes." That means he's citing the rules based on how he's read them - not how he's made it work for hundreds of scouts. If that's the case, then the best thing your son can do for this troop is ask the SM if a counselor for each of those MB's can come visit the troop, do a presentation and explain how a scout and his buddy would go about earning those badges with him/her. If the sailing camp has a representative, they might be happy to speak to this group of scouts, teach some new knots, and pitch their camp to parents. And, most Hiking MB counselors have pictures and maps of trails where they like to hike. They might even be a part of a club who holds family events. Rather than dickering over the rules, find ways for everyone to learn together. (Oh, and if your son and his buddies really like sailing, start saving. A week at Seabase might be in their future.)

I think most leaders split hairs over this: How do you test that someone has hiked a hike? Or righted a capsized sailboat? If an SM has seen too many scouts just flash a sailing certificate (or affidavit of whatever requirement) at a counselor, he's likely to insist on his pick of counselors and his way of implementing requirements. Its almost worse than the "naive SM" (like @mrkstvns describes) in that the cynical SM is trying to fix a problem in other scouts that might not even pop up in the next round of scouts.