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Sidney Porter
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No Water Gun Fights - Yeah Like That Will Happen
Sidney Porter replied to RememberSchiff's topic in Open Discussion - Program
I was at that parade. -
Scout Troop Looks For And Finds A Dead Child
Sidney Porter replied to Fehler's topic in Open Discussion - Program
When I was 11 I had a paper route. I found one one of my customers dead sitting is a chair by the slidding glass door. She always sat in the chair. I notice that when the previous day's paper was there and she was in her usually spot. I knocked on the door and she did not respond. I called to police from the the next person on my route. Not tramatized. When I was 13. My grandmother died in the house fire. I was their when they found the body. Not tranatized but In hindsite I probably should not of been there during that process. -
This might be an important part? A lot of the Boys and Girls culbs and YMCA programs are really intended as extended care after school programs. There is a contract between the school and organization. My son went to a before school program that was run by the YMCA at the school, it was a business agreement between the school and the YMCA. If we had complaints about the staff our first contact would have been the principal of the school. As far as 4-H. I don't know the structure of the organization but if they have something similar to a charter organization the school might be able to be the charter organization for them but not for scouts because of the discriminatory policies.
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New WEBELOS/AOL Program - Which option are you doing?
Sidney Porter replied to blw2's topic in Cub Scouts
Are there that many units that do not camp? I assume that all district run some type of resident camping in the summer. It is not hard to put on a some family camping in the fall or spring up north depending on where you are in the south winter might be the best time to camp. Plus a lot of zoo's, and sports teams have scout night where you can camp either on the field or in the park this might not be the best camping experience but it exposes the scout to sleeping in a tent. A lot of the program is taken care of with those. When we were in FL our unit gave the following opportunities to camp Zoo, minor leage baseball, NFL football, NASCAR track Resident camp, district fall camping 4 family camping Plus Webelos usually had a Webelos camping and camp with 2 different troops In Oh we have 2 family camping Resident camp x2 (we market 2 different councils to allow for scheduling conflicts but scouts typically would only go to one) Zoo, minor league baseball Webelos can have den camping and 1 of the troops puts on a good camping experience for them In hindsite I realize that our FL pack was the exception but I thought our Ohio unit was pretty common. -
New WEBELOS/AOL Program - Which option are you doing?
Sidney Porter replied to blw2's topic in Cub Scouts
Each level will have 7 achievements which is suppose to take 3 meetings each. I think that is a piece that people have not talked about. a lot of packs aim for B&G to obtain rank. I think it is going to be harder to reach the milestone in that time frame (which isn't really a bad thing). Sept - Mar would be 7 month, this assumes you have 3 meetings in Nov and in Dec. I think a lot of units have fewer den meetings those 2 months. So I think rank is going to be obtained for most in the April time frame. I am interested in how the packs handle this. Are they going to try to move B&G, are they going to have 2 large event or will one of them become low key. The other big change is the activity belt loops and pins are going away. (The achievements will now be loops and pins for the Web / AOL). AOL can be reached w/o Web to help with 5th grade recruitment. I beleive there is a goal to have more outdoor requirements. -
New WEBELOS/AOL Program - Which option are you doing?
Sidney Porter replied to blw2's topic in Cub Scouts
We are currently Web 2 (cross over in 2 weeks) everyone I have talked to is sticking with the the old program. Mainly because you have something to work on in the spring. One of the things that I like about the Web/AOL is that it doesn't feel like you are killing time after they obtained rank. -
We have a thread about last child in the woods. This is another book that I think people will find interesting. It is a short book and is available free on line https://timrgill.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/no-fear-19-12-07.pdf The book deals a lot with how society evaulates risk and how that has impacted kids. He touches upon a lot of things that might be an interest to scouters.
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When I hear average size I think 30-50. I think BSA recommends 6-10 in a den.
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We have resident camp, summer camp and a monthly pack activity. But we do not have weekly den meetings and monthly pack meetings during the summer. I think the problem with fall recruitment is a lot of units have it too late. We seem to be dependant on recruiting at schools, these usually get delayed until the 2nd or 3rd week. At that point the kids have already committed to other activities.
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Should have used the buddy system
Sidney Porter replied to Sidney Porter's topic in Camping & High Adventure
Not a long article A group of tourists spent hours Saturday night looking for a missing woman near Iceland's Eldgja canyon, only to find her among the search party. The group was travelling through Iceland on a tour bus and stopped near the volcanic canyon in the southern highlands Saturday afternoon, reports the Icelandic news organization mbl.is. One of the women on the bus left to change her clothes and freshen up. When she came back, her busmates didn't recognize her. Soon, there was word of a missing passenger. The woman didn't recognize the description of herself, and joined in the search. About 50 people searched the terrain by vehicles and on foot. The coast guard was even readying a helicopter to help. But the search was called off at about 3 a.m., when it became clear the missing woman was, in fact, accounted for and searching for herself. -
http://www.torontosun.com/2012/08/28/missing-woman-unwittingly-joins-search-party-for-herself Not BSA but hiking related. I thought people would like this. Group tour hiking in Iceland. After the hike one of the participants went to freshen up. When she came back she was not recognized. They thought they had a missing person. She proceeded to join in the search party. The search lasted until 3am.
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Last Child in the Woods, by Richard Louv
Sidney Porter replied to LeCastor's topic in Working with Kids
It is a good book would 2nd the recommendation to read it. -
San Diego Cub Scout hike through nude beach
Sidney Porter replied to RememberSchiff's topic in Open Discussion - Program
It seems like fox is slanting the report. They keep saying parents are upset. But all of the parents except 1 set are on record with different accounts of the story. All of the qoutes from the "parents" are from the same person. It doesn't even sound like they were at Black Beach but rather another beach in the park when they came across the nude people. If there was any truth to the CM arranging a hike through nude beach the BSA would have gotten ride of him. post 31 has the links including the version from all of the other parents. -
San Diego Cub Scout hike through nude beach
Sidney Porter replied to RememberSchiff's topic in Open Discussion - Program
Thanks for this update. For those that did not follow the links. It sounds like they did not go through the nude beach but rather encountered naked people somewhere else on the trail (it is not clear how close to the nude beach they ventured), The naked people were in violation. All of the parents except the one quoted in the original article has this story. Sounds like that parent has issues with the unit or CM. -
How is a parent texting distracting to the scouts? I could see being annoyed that the parents are not paying attention but not distracting. If the parents are talking to each other and it truely is distracting then you stop the meeting until they shut up. If the issue is really have scouts that do not stay on task and their parents don't seem to care. You need to determine is it really all of the scouts and all of the parents? It seems like most dens has one or 2 scouts that wants to be the center of attention. It can be challenging to get through the agenda. I have seen this come across as 3 different parent styles: boys will be boys, parent wanting th den leader to be the one correcting the kid (they want the kid to here it from someone else), parent actively correcting the kid. If it is the first 2 the den leader needs to take charge but first they should look at how they run the meetings. Things to consider: - Are the tasks in the meeting too long to keep an average boy interested for that time period - Do you have you meetings on school days? Do the meetings end up being a continuation of school work? Are they inside? - Set expectation every meeting. This isn't just behavior expectation but tell them what you are going to cover. Requirement A, game, Requirement B. - Do the den leader think that the scout is going to find the meetings interesting?
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First time reading this thread - For those that are sayin money needs to be paid up front. That is a hard sell for the 99.9% of the scout that you don't run into problems with. I will tell you that if I am a consumer and do not know the scout I have no interest in paying for the product up front without the product. If I am a parent of the scout I am not going to send my scout out to get $1000 worth of orders and then front the money.
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I hink I like you design better for a display purpose. It sounds like it displays the top of the cars better. The ones we made you end of seeing the side of the car which usually isn't as interesting.
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I would say that most of the stuff we have made: pinewood derby car stands, bird houses and bird feeders were pre cut. So it was mainly assembly. We ran into two problems not enough manual hand tools (everyone has electiric) so the few manually ones you have it takes awhile to let all of the scouts cut everything. I think for wolves they got to practice with all of the tools but the final projects was pre-cut. We did make picture frames which they cut with a miter box we used wooded yard sticks as the wood, so the wood was pretty thin and quick to cut. The corners were 45 degree angles so there was some discussion around that. We walked around the house and looked at som trim work and discussed how the carpenter sometimes need to make compound miter cuts.
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My son has been involved with youth swimming since he was 7 at both a rec and club level. The rec leagues are really interesting from a participation vs earned awards. They all get a trophy at the end of the year but at the meets they also give out ribbons for the top 8 places for each event. There are a ot more girls that swim than boys. A middle of a pack boy ends up getting ribbons in just about every race. But a middle of the pack girl is unlikely to get a ribbon. I would say that there are 3x more girls than boys at each age group. It was interesting to see the reactions of the boys vs the girls at the young age. A boy would be happy with a 7th or 8th place not really comprehending that there were only 10 racers. On the other hand you would see a girl who came in 12th place out of 36 swimmers noth grasping that she was in the upper 1/3 (and would have come in 5th or 6th in the boys race). Once they get older it has to do more about their times than a ribbon. At the club level it is also more about time because the meets are larger so you need to be fast to place, a middle of the pack kid (boy or girl isn't getting a ribbon).
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My son came in 35th out of 36 tiger cubs in the pinewood derby. His goal the next year was to do better, he came in 20th out of 24 as a wolf. He can in 2nd for his den as a Bear and a Web 1. He came in 1st for his den as a Web 2. He worked and studied at what makes one car faster than another. What is interesting his attitude was always wanting to do better than he did the previous year it never came across as direct competition against the other scouts. He was gracious in winning in part because he experienced 35 out of 36.
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My son played flag football. Thiey received participation medals. The coach asked the league for his at the beginning of the year rather than waiting until the end of the season. After the first game the coach huddled all of the players together and announced the player(s) of the game and gave a short letter speach about why the player earned it. As the season went on it was obvious that every kid would be player(s) of the game 1x. They were really just participation medals but the coach turned it into an actual award.