mashmaster

I can't comment specifically about your son's disability but in our pack we have a boy who has Down's syndrome and we have him in our regular dens and he does fine. We do expect that the parents help us understand how to best work with him. If your son would join our pack, I would welcome him and work with you on what he can and can't do. The other boys might learn something from your son. There may be some things he just can't do but usually you can incorporate the boys into something at the same time. In general, I think only sports games might be an issue. Everything else would be fine, IMHO.

That is awesome, love seeing the boys having fun.

I agree with everyone about the space derby. Even run perfectly, there are technical difficulties, bands break, or they come off the hanger. We get tears so we don't do it anymore.

Does you district hold Round Table meetings each month? They are some great ideas and help provide ideas for meeting ideas for the next month. If you don't, you can watch ours and get the pamphlets we have. Ours are at: http://www.nsdbsa.org/forums/?mingleforumaction=viewforum&f=17.0 Let me know if you find them useful at all.

Thanks Stosh, I will see what I can find. It has only been since June and we have lost them several times.

My son's tri-colors always seems to fall off. The backers for the pins don't seem to work well. Any suggestions for keeping them attached?

Chili is always a favorite and the boys can help cook it. Boil in the bag eggs are fun with tortillas, precook the bacon and just warm it up.

Interesting. I'm not sure I understand the reasoning here as long as there is two-deep in the group.

I agree

Read them the yard stick story.... It always seems to rely on the backs of a few leaders per pack about what they do. It is unfair to those few but we do it for the right reasons. When I get frustrated, I try to think about a few boys that have benefited from my work and take the joy from that. No good deed goes unpunished. You are an idol to some kid in the unit. Thanks for all that you are doing to make a difference in the boys life.

Our pack is in central Texas and we hold pack and den meetings during the summer.

Well back to the original topic..... I was able to jump on an opportunity to reserve camping at the LBJ presidential ranch that only allows camping by scouts in a small amount so it works for patrols. So we will mix in some of the Citizenship activity badge along with fishing and some field sports. They have the historical buildings and museums so it should have some interesting stuff. I'm gonna try to see if I can get a park ranger to talk to the boys about the ranch.

As someone that is Jewish. Yom Kippur is the holiest day of the year and not a happy holiday. It would be respectful to not conflict with that date. We avoid a large number of Christian days during the year.

All of this sounds like great suggestions. decisions decisons :-)

Just Webelos. I might try the Readyman hike.

Our Webelos are camping out again and I wanted to have a fun activity for them that is fun and cool for Webelos as compared to the lower ranks. Any suggestions? Is Pioneering fun? I've never done it. The place we are camping rents 2 person kayaks and paddle boats but the GTSS says we can only do that at disctrict or council events.

Welcome to forums :-)

In general I think the new program is good. I have a few nit picks with it, but the current one has issues too. I am not sure that the changes they made are actually all that different. It appears that in general, they just reorganized what they already had. It does bother me that all the "feedback" is all over the top positive and that they have drastically changed the program. They didn't, and in general I think they changed it to just change it rather than for any particularly good reasons.

We do our meeting quarterly, the leaders for Tigers/Wolves would attend monthly. The older ranks the leaders would show up if they wanted something.

I'm joking. But I'll offer up opportunities to get all 20 during the 18 months. My boys in the patrol decided they wanted to camp monthly from Sep-May, so we will probably do one activity pin per campout like we did Outdoorsman for our first campout. I like having a theme :-) so that is 8 right there, plus we will have Patrol meetings 3 weeks a month so I wouldn't be surprised if we are mostly done with all 20 by next June.

Nice, We did two camps this year. One led them through a lot of Webelos requirements, the other was soley based on treating them like boy scouts so they get that experience. I promise I'll try hard to push him to get all 20 by next spring :-)

I have a personal friend that was a SM and had a hidden drinking problem. He finally hit rock bottom, took a couple of months off and is back to being a great leader. I wouldn't jump to forcing someone out because of the drinking problem. Each situation is different. Clearly the SM needs to at a minimum step away and deal with his issues. He can't drink at scouting activities and if he can't fix that he can't be in scouts but maybe he needs your support to have a goal to focus on.

I take full credit for the change with my petition that I started and sent them the people in national. :-) Heck my son is 2 months into the Webelos program and has already earned 5 activity pins.

Yep, although the question will be how long will we be able to get the pins? Will we need to buy them all in May for the rest of the program?