Derby day activity ideas

[bbender]

And to give the racers their time in the spotlight, we have a special "drivers viewing area" down by the finish line where during the first race, they can each get interviewed by the MC and tell us who they are and the name of their car.

[Scouting4Ever]

Do you guys have pics of your "transporter?"

[83Eagle]

Back to the original topic at hand...

 

Running our space derby last night reminded me of some things. Teaching sportsmanship is good, and kids are ready to cheer.

 

However, if it's an hour long or more derby, it's a long time to have your seat on the pine while you wait to run. Also, sometimes cheering leads to seats off the pine, seats clustered around the track, general milling about and a bit of chaos.

 

Obviously some things can be improved in the scenario above...streamlining the derby, better control, and so on.

 

But, back to the "activities when you're not running" topic, any other ideas?

 

Next up is the pinewood, and I am thining of doing a photo-frame craft perhaps, taking pictures of all the boys and their cars. Or drivers' licenses, or something. But, something somewhat active, yet not overly distracting, would be great to add in. We run the derby in 1/2 of the gym, and the other half is open.

[beardad]

Our pack has adults or older Scouts/Siblings handle the cars after check in too.

 

We like to pretend that it is because they don't want a bunch of kids getting close to the track and bumping it, or dropping their cars but that's not the real reason.

 

The real reason is, that some adults are just ultr competetive, and wouldn't be above adding a little more weight or otherwise altering the car after it has been officially checked in.

 

In the interest of not accusing anybody we all make up these other excuses, that may also be valid, just not the whole big picture.

[denleader09]

83Eagle,

 

Our pack is small so that is why we can not do activities and the boys don't get too bored. Ours last 1 1/2 hours to 2 hours for the whole shebang. I have been trying to look up some derby themed games and am not finding a lot. There is a game on page 25 of this year's Baloo Bugle that might be interesting: http://usscouts.org/bbugle/bb1012-P.pdf

 

You could do a cubmobile race with the boys racing some boxes around a course on one side the room. Or relays pulling wagons or something. Relays are a type of race so maybe something where the boys assembly something or draw the parts of a car relay style. Or assemble pinewood derby cars out of rice crispie treats and oreos.

 

It might be too late since the derby would have started, but you could have the boys make derby slides.

 

I am not sure how many leaders or parents you have to run activities. Our pack is on the small side, so for us, we might run thin on extra helpers to run activities. Just something to think about after you come up with fun things to do. Staffing.

 

 

 

[bbender]

I forget whether it was here or on Cub Scout Talk, but I recall recently a post about doing Derby "Drive in" movies: cubs made "cars" out of boxes, decorated them, and then used them to watch a "Drive In" movie.

 

Could be done before, during or after a Derby.

[Eagledad]

Not sure if this helps, but we had a rather large pack, so we barrowed a track from another pack and used two tracks at the same time to speed up the evening. Tigers and Wolves on one track, Bears and Webelos on the other. Each car raced a minimum of 10 times, so using two tracks kept the whole event around an hour. We also did a fundraiser by serving hotdogs, cokes, chips and cookies. Everyone had great fun while eating supper and cheering for their favorite cars.

 

Barry

[Eagledad]

Another thing we did to keep the evening around an hour was we did check-in the night before the race.

 

Barry

[packsaddle]

...and then some...