All Day Webelos/AOL Activity Days

[AnotherDad]

I am looking ahead to Webelos later in the year. Instead of meeting once a month for 60-75 minutes at the local elementary school (our pack norm), I am planning to have all-day (likely Saturday) activities at the local park where we can work on an entire adventure or multiple portions of several adventures all in one day. I reserved a small lodge at the park with the thought that we could do some outdoor cooking, fire starting, first aid, hiking, etc. 

Does anyone have any experience bringing the kids together for all-day (6+ hours) activities instead of (or in addition to) short den meetings? If so can you offer any advice on how to make this go smoothly, get the buy-in from the parents, and ensure the kids have a great time? 

[Eagledad]

Call a local troop and ask if they can help you. This is easy for most PLCs because they plan whole weekends of activities for the same skills. The Webs will enjoy older Scouts running the activities and the troop will look forward to new recruits. We pretty much let our scouts do it all without any adults. 

Barry

[ParkMan]

Hi @AnotherDad,

Awesome idea!!!

Did I read correctly that your pack's norm is to meet monthly for 60-75 minutes?  Our den always met weekly as do just about all the dens I know of.  I really prefer weekly meetings to bi-weekly or monthly meetings.  I find it's good for dens to have some continuity to build some momentum.

I think it's a great idea to add in some Saturday activity days.  It's a great way to do some longer form activities together as a den.  My recommendation would be to have a regular weekly meeting and every so often replace one of those meetings with a Saturday.  Maybe every other month or something like that.

In terms of the Saturday activities - some recommendations:

1) plan the dates well ahead of time.  Picking which Saturday isn't too hard, so I'd pick them a few months out - even if I had to schedule multiple at a time.

2) have a clear description of what you're going to do that day so folks know what to expect.

3) Leverage some of your regular den meetings to plan.  It's a great time to get the Webelos involved in planning their own activities.

4) have a plan for the day.  it doesn't need to be super detailed, but you want to know what you'll be doing when.

5) don't hesitate to combine these with a camping trip.  If you're going away for the day, why not spend the night too?  Maybe even hold it at your council's camp.  When my son was a Webelos - we had 3 or 4 campouts in addition to the normal pack campouts.

[AnotherDad]

Thanks for the feedback. @Eagledad I will certainly seek out a local troop to help. I don't know anyone in the troop and I don't think we have any Den Chiefs in the pack, but I think some of the other leaders have older kids in Scouts so they might be able to make the introductions.  

@ParkMan yes, you read that correctly. I am not sure of all the reasons our pack is different and has dens meet infrequently, but I was told that it was to accommodate families with multiple activities and so that it is less demanding on the leaders. However its not set in stone and I have the freedom to schedule meetings and activities at other locations.  I like the idea of having the Webelos involved in the planning. I do all the planning now, but I have read about how the older Scouts operate and it might not be a bad idea to begin transitioning with some small decisions and simple planning and see how it goes.

Thank You both for the suggestions.  It provides some reinforcement that I am on the right track and there are even more resources out there than I had been considering. 

[Terasec]

depending on how large your den is, difficult to get most to attend an all day Saturday event

most likely you will have to repeat the activities for those that couldn't make it

all day outdoor activities are great but shouldn't be the method for requirements,

as for monthly meetings, that would actually make it difficult for those with busy schedules, if someone misses 1 meetings its then 2 months between meetings

more frequent meetings is more opportunities, easy to make up a missed weekly meeting, not so easy to make up a missed monthly meeting

 

[malraux]

On 1/21/2019 at 10:18 PM, AnotherDad said:

I am not sure of all the reasons our pack is different and has dens meet infrequently, but I was told that it was to accommodate families with multiple activities and so that it is less demanding on the leaders. However its not set in stone and I have the freedom to schedule meetings and activities at other locations.  I like the idea of having the Webelos involved in the planning. I do all the planning now, but I have read about how the older Scouts operate and it might not be a bad idea to begin transitioning with some small decisions and simple planning and see how it goes.

Last year our pack operated like that. It didn't work real well, in that it was hard to schedule, hard to get things done, and I think we lost a fair number of scouts because there wasn't much interaction. This year we moved to having all the den meetings at once. It works out so that we meet 3 times a month, 2 den meetings and 1 pack meeting. It has helped a good bit. Everyone is almost done with rank advancement now rather than rushing in may, dens interact, attendance is pretty good because everyone knows what day to show up and its just part of the routine. Weekly meetings is a very good thing.

As for the patrol method, I would strongly recommend getting your webelos to start functioning as a patrol, with youth led activities as appropriate. IE, the Denner  should take attendance, should be the person leading the pledge, if theres a thing to demo, he gets to demonstrate, etc. The youth should be doing as much as possible (now for 4th and 5th graders thats not as much as in a troop, but still).

[AnotherDad]

As an update, the activity day went very well. We completed Cast-Iron Chef, Webelos Walkabout, Outdoor Adventurer (Option B), and even got most of Castaway completed. However since I originally posted this I lost most of my Webelos den. One moved away and two dropped out to pursue sports, leaving me with only two. The AOL leader and his son decided they didn't want to come back this year, so I took on both dens (I have a son in each den). Having Webelos and AOL at the activity day made it even better. I had an adult from each den who helped since the activities were slightly different. I already reserved the lodge and having just two scouts would have been no fun, so it was an obvious decision. I asked the parents of the scouts who dropped out if moving to Saturday events influenced their decision and they said no. However I still wonder if this was a factor. None of the AOL scouts dropped out, though one could not make the Saturday event due to Lacrosse practice.