scottteng

Neither the Webelos badge is earned early in the boys Webelos career it only requires 3 activity badges and is usually done mostly as a den so that 3 months after starting all the boys get their webelos rank. It is sort of opposite of the other cub ranks in that the Webelos is a starting point not the end of the road. The compass points are earned for each additional 4 activity badges without regard to which they are. The arrow of light is the culmination of the cub scout's career it requires that specific activity pins be earned a minimum of eight. Many packs encourage the boys to earn all 20 with some type of special award. The arrow of light is awarded to the boy as he is crossing over to the troop and he wears the award on his boy scout uniform to show his achievement in cub scouting. If this does not clarify your thinking get with an advancement person or an experienced Webelos leader to help you.

We have had this battle before in our troop the Solomon like decision was (insert drum roll here) the troop will not meet on Mondays when the schools are closed. What that has to do with anything I don't know but we had noticed prior to the decision that our attendance at holiday meetings was pitiful at best with many opting for other more exciting options including the troop planning longer trips on those holiday weekends. And if you really want to see bad attendance try the troop meeting monday night when they just got back at 5 pm from a long drive.

You want to find the ones that rest on the wrist they are much safer than the average slingshot. Dog chow is good to shoot if the critters don't eat it up it is pretty much gone with a moderate rain. It is better if you have targets that will make some noise pots, pans, metal cups, plastic bottles, buckets because the penetration is very minimal you won't get holes in plates or targets. Eye protection is mandated by BSA and is a common sense precaution yes even the cheesy ones from your tool box but it might be better to get youth sized ones. The distance for the range is 15' from firing line to target area. Last I looked walmart had wrist rockets for sale.

Sometimes the semantics of the whole thing get overwhelming and also change from council to council. A national camp school trained shooting sports director is required to open our ranges at the boy scout reservation then the ranges are under the "range masters" trained by the shooting sports directors venue specific Archery, Rifle, Shotgun one or more per open venue. After all it is kind of hard to supervise boys over at archery from the rifle range. The shooting sports director is required to be on property so if he goes to the dining hall or to a troops campsite for lunch activity may continue if he gets in his vehicle and drives to Wendy's then all ranges shut down. Similar rules apply to cub scout shooting sports at council family camps. Where it gets a bit squishy is at cub scout day camp. Shooting sports directors are usually business people who already give lots of hours to the scout program to ask them to take an extra week off and run day camp shooting sports is a bit much. An adult is usually trained and appointed as cub scout day camp shooting sports director to be in charge of the ranges full time during the week. The regular director will help set up the ranges properly and help with equipment but is not expected to be the full time person on site. This is a very good thing because summer camp sessions are often running concurrently with day camp which also needs shooting sports directors. Our day camp typically has two shooting sports venues with one adult and two Junior Range masters each of whom has an assistant. The youth are usually very experienced competitive shooters who are members of our district shooting sports team.

We have a regular yearly reenactment event that goes on and they used to have the camp rented out to young marines for a week in the summer I helped with the range a couple of times volunteering. There was some kind of ROTC thing I was asked to run the range for but had another commitment but I think I heard the DE bragging about signing up ROTC units as venture crews. We had and now have again with the new certification stuff a cope course and climbing wall. I don't think they have enough staff trained yet to meet boy scout demand let alone hire it out.

When they return to the previous policy of actually giving units something out of FOS. It used to be if you just had a presentation the unit got free camping and reduced fees for venues at the local scout reservation. That could not have cost them that much but they discontinued it. They have reduced the Gold card unit perks as well. Now rather than write check to FOS I give the money right to my unit.

No dispensing with buddies to go to the bathroom no way no how. This is not a lost issue it is a youth protection issue you can read that leader protection issue if you want. You start letting em run all over the place by themselves then how do you answer the "so and so showed me his equipment in the bathroom". Its bad enough that it sometimes happens for real but a lot of these kids are sharp enough that if they have an ax to grind you will be the one getting ground. Been there lived the nightmare don't even think about short changing it we don't even when its the troops private bathroom at the scout reservation. We harp more about "where's your buddy" than anything else even at our regular meeting place

We solve this in the same way many troops do and that is to have a family campout once per year bring mom, sis, whoever the boys cook for everybody and a good time is had by all. We have other female adults occasionally on outings but not siblings. We had a problem many moons ago but not with a female sibling the cub age boy was drug by his dad on a lot of outings but he was needed to maintain two deep at that time and the mom was one of the weekend nurses in the local hospital.

Put me down in the non-writing kid column. He can't write worth a lick print or script. He does on the other hand type 50wpm in this age of computers which is the more useful skill? We also stress to new parents and to new scouts that their advancement or lack thereof is on their own shoulders. I just did a conference with two of last years new scouts for tenderfoot no less and as part of the next step portion was inquiring as to how many activities they had recorded in their book. They both have been active and on most if not all of our outings and should be completed with the 10 activities. You guessed it the answer in both cases was there were no activities recorded in their books. Now they get to run around and attempt to reconstruct their past year. After this I had group meeting with both new scout patrols and managed to point out the activities list to them we will see next year how many really paid attention. The idea of first class first year is more to push the troops program to the level where that is attainable i.e, monthly camping with other activities sprinkled in in addition not instead of the camping trip. We had an older brother of one of our scouts join at 15 and make first class in 8 months but he had a high motivation level. Sibling rivalry can work wonders if you let it. The helicopter parents soon get tired of trying to keep up with the schedule and the cost. If you are one of the two required leaders on an outing you go for free if you add yourself to the mix you pay your own way. Most of the trips only have two adults with the troop.

Yeah we have 13 new scouts, Crossed over last day of March even that is a challenge as early bird summer camp deposits were due back in February most camps will let you add the crossovers at the early bird rate but how far will they let you push it. All of these boys have been camping with us once and will have April and May camping trip to get the kinks out b4 summer camp in June. Most of the packs round here have B&G sometime in February and then crossover in March. The WEBELOS leader is just trying to make sure his boys start boy scouts out on the right foot and without costing their parents a bundle in late fees.

NRA marksmanship medals may be worn on a uniform.

These elections despite the instructions of the teams are nothing but popularity contests in the troop. I am an outsider neither my son nor I are involved in OA but if your organization is to continue you should set objective criteria for membership and give the elections the heave ho. The problem is the popular boys have lots of other activities they are involved in but the dedicated to scouting ones are usually not popular even within their own troops.

Every time the gay marriage thing is placed on the ballot it goes down in flames. Even in the Peoples Republic of California it is wildly unpopular. Judges always seem to be the ones that are forcing it on unwilling populations. An alternative lets get government out of the marriage business. Most non gay people are choosing not to marry anyhow. I see some that still are not married after four kids together. Leave marriages to the churches exclusively then if gays want to be married they just start their own church. Look at all the divorce destruction we could save as well.

Some packs may lose a lot of help if they ban people who have no kids in the pack from coming. When my son and I were in the pack there was an older lady who came to every pack trip and cooked for the entire pack. She did have help from other adults but she was the one in charge. Most of the time she would not spend the night but would drive to the camp in the morning prepare breakfast lunch and dinner and then drive home. We could have handled the cooking but it would have required a lot more time away from our kids and the meals would not have been as good. This lady was battling cancer at this time as well and unfortunately she lost her battle the cub scouts camping menu took a hard hit. Did we survive? Yes but we were the poorer for not having her with us. If you are leader shy stop looking at just the parents. The longest serving and one of the best cubmasters in our district is an old life for life scout that has had a couple of grandsons come through the pack but his kid days were long ago.

All the ranges set up at 15' from your shooting line to your target line. BB-gun, cub archery, and wrist rockets. They are quite easy to set up. You want a good bit of separation between ranges so you don't have to shut down all venues at once. You might want to check with the local law enforcement agency if they want to check them especially if your location is a park or visible to the public. We set up ranges in very little time and even set up temporary ranges for council cub family camps in order to be close to all the activities rather than far away at the normal boy scout range area. We have found that sign stands like the ones on the side of the road make excellent target holders. Lengths of rope serve for the firing line and the entire range area is roped off, caution taped, and signed. Don't forget the flagpole to fly your red range active flag.