WVCubDad

The medications question was answered in the FAQ's for the December webinar (page 4) - but basically each Troop will have a lockbox (bring your own) to put their non-perishable medications in. Perishables will be at the med lodge for the subcamp. We have one Venturer going that carries an epi-pen with him, the extras will go in the lockbox. Link to the December FAQ pdf - https://summit.scouting.org/en/Jamboree2013/Documents/December_2012_Webinar.pdf YiV, John

Our Council contingent is 2 full Boy Scout Troops and 1 quarter Crew so the ratio of males to females (including the female advisor) is 87 to 3!!! John

I am going as a Crew Advisor for our council's Venturing contingent, 2 girls, 6 boys and a female advisor. Looking forward to meeting forum members face to face, in character or not. It's my first jamboree and I am sharing the experience with my daughter. She is really excited about going as am I. Working on getting in shape for all the walking... John Collins Advisor Crew F904B

I am one of the advisors for my Council's contingent of Venturers going to the Summit in July. We are Crew F904B and I'm looking for anybody who might be going in F904A,C, or D so we can start getting to know each other's Crews. We have our first Crew Contingent meeting tomorrow 1/21/13 and was hoping to be able to tell them who we would be camping with. If you'd prefer to contact me off group - wvcubdad at aol dot com will work. Looking forward to the Jamboree and hearing from other members of Crew 904. YiV, John Collins Associate Advisor Crew 25 Shenandoah Area Council

If those dates don't work for you in August and September, the Shenandoah Area Council is conducting a Wood Badge for the 21st Century Course August 17-19 and September 7-9 at beautiful Camp Rock Enon just south of Gore, VA. Details and registration available at http://www.sac-bsa.org/openrosters/ViewOrgPageLink.aspx?LinkKey=41946&orgkey=2571 or contact our Course Director Mike Spory at (540) 660-4220 or spory2@comcast.net. Course fee is $225. Yours in Scouting, John Collins Scribe S7-598-12 I used to be a Buffalo and a good ol' Buffalo too... ...and now a Staffer!!!

Curently have 18 Scouts, routinely have 15-16 on monthly outings, 16 went to summer camp. We formed (reformed actually) in Oct 2010 with 5 Scouts - 3 transfers from other troops, 2 brand new Scouts. Started adding Webelos crossovers in December (3) along with one new recruit, then more crossovers in February 2011 (8) along with one Scout from the December den who went to a Troop where he knew nobody (accentuated because he had moved to our area in his Web II year), and another new recruit and a transfer from another troop. Total Scouts as of March 2011 - 20. Then we lost one of our PL's (complained we weren't doing enough, odd since he was hit or miss on stuff and didn't step up to get his patrol out more)to a troop that is perceived as not as active but has friends from his old Webelos den and one boy dropped for medical reasons although we hope to have him back in a year or so. At the moment there are no plans to limit the size of the troop although as SM I am using the suggestion of a Troop of 4 8 Scout Patrols plus a small Troop staff as my guide. Our feeder Pack is newer than us and is currently all Tigers and we also have a Venture Crew that 3 of my older Scouts are also involved with. We're working to really get the Scouts to work the patrol method, focus on Scoutcraft skills and ensure we go camping each month with the patrols at 50 to 100 yards. It's a very young troop but they are having fun and growing even though they don't know that yet. John Scoutmaster Troop 25 Shenandoah Area Council

So at the risk of "exposing" these to others, who are these camps, what are the web sites and what else can you tell us about them (program, costs, negatives)? They sound very interesting, especially Guy's. Good article BTW, thanks Kudu! John Scoutmaster Troop 25 Shenandoah Area Council

An excellent thread! As the SM for a realtively new Troop who just went on our first camping trip since going from 5 to 20 boys, this is exactly the questions we leaders have been wrestling with. Stosh's answer made a lot of sense and I think that is what I will recommend down to the PL's at the next Troop meeting. YiS, John Collins Scoutmaster Troop 25 Shenandoah Area Council

Re: SAC Webelos Woods Crossover - That's another reason we limited the Patrols to 6 right now, just in case we get additional Scouts we're not aware of who want to come to the Troop. Also it gives us an opportunity for the boys to do some peer to peer recruiting to flesh out thier Patrol. Interestingly none of the boys in my old Pack wanted to wait that long to go the crossover, all of them wanted to get to the Troops as soon as they earned their Arrow of Light. In my time with the Pack, only 1, maybe 2 Webelo II's ever went to that and it wasn't for lack of advertising John Scoutmaster Troop 25 Shenandoah Area Council

As some of you may recall, my Troop is brand new Troop, a resurection of a unit that has been dormant for 15 or more years. We began this past October with 5 boys, organized into a single patrol. In November we added a 6th boy. Of these, 4 were "experienced" Scouts (1 Life, 2 FC, 1 Scout) and two were brand new with no prior Boy Scout experience. In December my son's Webelos Den crossed over to Boy Scouts and of the 4 boys in the den 3 came to our Troop and one went to another Troop. We still operated as a single patrol. I also stepped down as the Cubmaster and crossed the bridge a few minutes behind my son to devote myself full time to being the Scoutmaster. In January the other 2 Webelos II dens completed their Arrow of Light requirements and crossed on the last Tuesday of the month. We added another 6 boys to our Troop and 1 went to the Pack's sister Troop. One boy who just joined the Pack in September went to work with the Webelos I den to finish off his Webelos and AOL. So we went from 5 to 15 boys in 3 months. We have one more boy from another Pack who will cross to us at the end of February at his Blue & Gold. He came to his first meeting with us today and knows a lot of the boys from school and Cub Scouting events. Also today our Webelos from my son's den decided that while his new Troop was okay, he didn't know the other boys very well and wanted to come back to a unit where he knows more people. 17 Scouts!!! Knowing that we would need to sort out into patrols and get started on the business of Scouting, I had discussed with my ASM's some of the ideas I read about here on the Scouter forums. Several were leaning very much towards the adults deciding who went where and sowing our seasoned Scouts among the three patrols. Today was our day to get them at least split up into patrols. Initially after another discussion we went with the adult sorting process, when the list was given to me I saw several conflicts that wouldn't have survived the first patrol meeting. I told the ASM's that this wasn't going to work and that we'd discuss it further after we'd finished rehearsing our Scout Sunday program with the boys. The boys were not made aware of this first attempt. After the practice, we discussed it further and the Committee Chair suggested having the boys draw names from a hat. I suggested we modify that to draw numbers and then they would have some ownership of the process. My position all along was one that the boys should sort themselves out and we would let the seasoned Scouts pick where they wanted to go with a minimum of 1 per patrol. So we gathered the boys together explained that we were going to have them sort themselves into patrols. As we went along each Scout drawing a number, it worked out that they sorted into their old Webelos dens. The seasoned Scouts who were present drew their numbers and my son's former Den Chief was in his Patrol!!! I do not know how this happened, the boys drew numbers in random order, it just happened. Each Patrol immediately raised their voices in dismay as the ASM's voiced thier disbelief. At this point I said, "okay we'll do it this way - Senior Scouts each go to a corner (3 of them were present today.) Here are the rules, adults will leave the room, you will have 5 minutes to sort yourselves out, you may have no more than 6 in a patrol to allow for recruitment and future growth. I will see you in 5 minutes, remember the Scout Law, be kind and courteous as you make your decisions. Good luck." In the outer room we continued to discuss how the second sort ended up just like our old Dens. In the middle of this one of the Scouts came out and said we're done. They had finished in 3 minutes. When we walked into the room each Patrol was in thier corner, all smiles and looking very happy with themselves. I asked them if they were happy with thier choices and reminded them that they were going to have to live with their decisions until after summer camp at least. I also laid out the Patrol Leader's Challenge that if they thought they wanted to be a PL and form a new Patrol they could have 2 boys from the Troop but they needed a minimum of 5 boys to form a new Patrol, setting them up to recruit new boys. In my original post back in November or December, one of you answered my question with a question, what do the boys want? I think that they knew, I knew that and I'm glad that they proved themselves very capable of doing what they needed to do. Thank you to all here who helped me to arrive at my decision, I am looking forward to seeing how well this works out. Based on thier first decision, it should be an exciting time. John Scoutmaster Troop 25 Shenandoah Area Council

My Jac-shirt was a Christmas present from my wife when I became the Cubmaster. She had worn her grand-dad's as a teenager and thought I should have one. I later found one for my son and gave it to him when he became a Webelos. There was a Scouting family that had 4 of them - Dad, Mom (CC), #1 son (Boy Scout), #2 son (Cub Scout at the time). It was and still is a kick to see them all walking in to a meeting wearing them. Of course now it is when they come to Troop meetings and activities. My goal is to go to Northern Tier and add the loon to mine. John Scoutmaster Troop 25 Shenandoah Area Council

I wear my uniform for Den, Pack and Troop Meetings, Roundtable, popcorn kickoff unless a theme is declared and dress specified, B&G, Scout Sunday, etc., etc. I wear it at camp and on our last Troop and Pack campouts wore it all weekend long. Actually felt comfortable to do so. My wife doesn't understand and wonders why the heck I wear it to Roundtable. I know that I wear it because I want to and usually there are very few that attend who do not wear it. I was also recently appointed as the CSRT Commissioner. I don't wear it to the Pack Committee meetings since that is just the handful of us who sit around the room to work on Pack stuff. Since Troop Committee meetings occur prior to a Troop Meeting I wear it there. I enjoy wearing it and think that the newer uniform is actually pretty decent and don't mind wearing it for camping and hiking purposes too. Merry Christmas! YiS, John Scoutmaster Troop 25 former Cubmaster Pack 13 (as of 12/21/10 8^) ) Cub Scout Roundtable Commissioner Potomac District Shenandoah Area Council

So I've read through three threads on optimum Troop size and the Patrol method. I am a brand new SM and my Troop is brand new as well. I still have to finish my SM training and recognize that fact. We have 5 boys registered but for the last month have had only 4 showing up to meetings as the fifth is involved in the local community theatre and busy with that, but still wants to be a Scout. We are currently organized as one patrol with a PL, APL, Scribe, Quartermaster and Grubmaster all chosen by the boys. The PL is a Life Scout (may fit Stosh's description of Eagle w/o skills), the APL is FC, the Grubmaster is FC, the Scribe (been a Boy Scout almost a year) and Quartermaster (brand new Scout) are almost TF and Scout respectively. At the end of December (12/21) I expect to have 3-4 Webelos from my Pack (different Chartered Org and different brother Troop) cross over including my son. I expect another group to show up at the more traditional crossover time in Feb/Mar. My question to the forum is this, given the discussion about NSP's, "mixed" patrols and the like and desiring to truly have a boy led/run Troop, what are your suggestions for organizing the Troop as these new boys come in? I'm not sure I want to break up the exisiting Patrol as they've just started to go through the forming process and are making some progress there. I don't have enough experienced boys to create a "book solution" staff but feel the APL would make a good Troop Guide. I know that about 6 of the boys from the dozen or so in my Pack's Web II three dens (we've had some attrition from the 18 that started out as Webelos) plus at least one more from another Pack would really like to be their own patrol, have even created a name, buddy nicknames, yell, etc. Again my son is involved in that. Do I allow that normal association to happen as long as it doesn't become more than 8 Scouts? What about the other boys that cross who wouldn't be a part of that patrol? One of my gut feelings is that brothers should not be in the same patrol for what I consider obvious sibling reasons and we'll have over the next few years about 3 sets of brothers, 2 this year. So lots of questions. All suggestions will be carefully considered and of course as we go forward I'll share our experiences with the group. Thanks in advance for your help. YiS, John

My Pack just switched to PM in December to facilitate the online recharter process. We were using Scout Track for Cub Scout Packs which is internet based, allows the Pack leadership the option of allowing parents to input when their boys complete advancement requirements, electives, Sports & Academics Belt Loops and Pins and has a schedule, e-mail functions and produces reports useful to the Pack. The only thing it didn't do well is internet recharter. My CC couldn't get the database to upload and she was familiar with PM so we switched with the intent of allowing the Scout Track program to expire. From my perspective, PM stinks! I have yet to close out of the program without crashing it and losing what I've entered in it. I am not allowed to put it on my computer at work so I have to wait until I get home to use it in the DotNet version. I can use Scout Track on my lunch break at work or from my laptop on a business trip or on my desktop at home or even the library in town. My den leaders are not happy with PM and of course the parents have no idea what is being used to track their boy's progress. I find it cumbersome and aggravating and truly prefer Scout Track. Because of that, I renewed our Scout Track license and will make that available again to the Pack. The only exception will be that the Webelos parents will not be able to enter the advancement requirements since they are not the ones who can sign off on those under the program guidelines. While it seemed as if the parents weren't entering information often, there are some who did and didn't like that they couldn't update their boy's records. My den leaders like it because they don't have to spend a lot of time in the den meetings going over the books and signing stuff off or recording what Akela has signed off. Since we paid for a 3 year PM subscription, the CC can use that all she wants especially for recharter but I will have the Scout Track available for the den leaders and parents to use. Should have only gone with the one year subscription but thought we'd be saving money. Also should have tested it better before agreeing to switch. Stepping down off the soap box now. Your milage may vary. Caveat Emptor! YiS, John Cubmaster Pack 13 Shenandoah Area Council I used to be a Buffalo, and a good ol' Buffalo too... SR-893

Our pack owns a trailer, purchased it 2.5 years ago with popcorn proceeds. The CM at the time had a large pickup which he used to transport all our gear that was stored in several locations throughout our church, including a nice kitchen box prior to getting the trailer. He was able to store the trailer at his house since his POA didn't have any regs against that. He's moved on, I'm the CM and we rotate the trailer between my ACM and myself as our church doesn't have any room in the garages for our trailer. The troop trailer is in bay, the church van is in another. We camp 3 times a year summer, fall and spring and we go to Resident Camp and this year the Webelos will be den camping (finally!) It is a handy storage system for us, the load plan is pretty well tweaked and it was nice to be able to load a bunch of gear in it to haul into our Resident Camp site. We did have a new leader with lots of experience in other units outside our Council and he and his wife wondered why the heck we had the trailer. After their first camping trip with us they understood. It works for us and the way we camp. Included in the trailer are 4 5 gallon drink coolers, a large cooler for perishables, a small cooler for ice for drinking, 3 4 gallon water jugs, 2 folding tables, 1 wooden kitchen box, 1 camp kitchen set-up, 2 grills, a plastic storage container for our breads, 2 large plastic totes with lids for our dry goods, a screen canopy, fire pit, trash can, sports equipment, lanterns, propane canisters, etc. It's a tidy little package in a Car-mate trailer. There are 4 spare sleeping bags in there but no tents. We debated the issue of purchasing some tents and the committee decided not to do that but to encourage borrowing or buying your own. As our Webelos do their den camping this year we will probably start to transition from classic car camping to a little more primitive style camping for them in preparation for Boy Scouts. We have access to some private property and to a new camp site at our favorite local park (one of our Troop's Eagle projects, should be done by the end of August). Both should allow us the ability to drive in some of the equipment and then let the boys hike in for less than a 1/2 mile. Insurance is provided by the CO when the vehicle is on their property, when it's on mine it's covered under my homeowners policy and my auto policy when I tow it. My ACM rents so there is some exposure there. It works for us, YMMV. YiS, John Collins Cubmaster Pack 13 I used to be a Buffalo and a good ol' Buffalo too... SR-893