Cub Scouts

Summertime is in full swing and a good time for boys to be having outdoor fun. Our July plans include day camp, the Bear requirement for games, the Wolf requirement for making good choices (also a Bear elective), and learning to sing Choose the Right if the boys don't already know it (be sure to include a discussion on agency to complete a Faith in God requirement). The Cub Scout core value for July is courage so be sure to discuss how sometimes it takes courage to make good choices.

A good story that goes along with this is called Another Kind of Courage from the Friend magazine (June 1986). Years ago I had some boys act out scenes from this story for a slide show to be used in Sharing Time (back when we had to use real slides and a slide projector). It would be fun to have the boys act out scenes from the story to be shown in pack meeting as you read the story.

Activity Day

Here's a fun idea for your activity day girls to do during July. Play some old fashioned games and make pioneer dolls--either cloth, yarn, or sock dolls. There are lots of ideas if you do a web search for "pioneer doll making" or "handmade rag doll." You can make them with fabric scraps or handkerchiefs and very little sewing.

Cub Scouting in Small Units

I recently visited with a friend who works with BSA. I was telling him about the annual plan I had put together for combining our wolf and bear dens (see my post on annual planning) . His comment was: "Oh, like the Year A and Year B plans." He then told me about the BSA materials available that work through all the requirements for boys to get their rank advancements while being combined in dens. These are really good references with ideas that can be used if you are combining 2 dens together or all dens including Webelos together. How have a been a Cub Scout leader for 15 years and never heard of this? This plan is designed to be used by either small units that need to combine dens because they don't have enough boys, or by larger units that need to combine dens because they don't have enough leaders. The PDF versions of these materials can be found here for Year A and Year B.

I also recently heard David Beck (current LDS General Young Men's President) talk about 'Real Growth through Scouting.' The LDS Church would like to welcome boys who are not LDS into our LDS scout units. Brother Beck emphasized that this is not to be used as a proselytizing tool, but only as a chance to bless the lives of all boys-whether they are LDS members or not. So if your unit is small, look for those other boys in your neighborhoods who could benefit from the Boy Scout Program. Welcome them into your units, encouraging these boys to do their best at doing what they believe is their duty to God.

Cub Scouts

For June our Cub Scout plans have included doing the bicycle requirements for both our wolf and bears. The boys are out of school, the weather is nice, it's time for outside fun. The eight year old boys need to learn about bike safety, and the nine year old boys have several additional requirements. Pick out the requirements your are most comfortable with, but they can't get too many reminders on safe biking practices. Here are some good ideas for bike games you can do with the boys that could be done in a parking lot or large driveway. I like to show them the photo of my son's bike helmet. He was in a bike mishap and cracked his helmet, but had no head injury. It's a good reminder of the importance of wearing a helmet.

Annual Plan for Combined Wolf & Bear

In our pack we have combined the 8 and 9-year old boys together in one den. Because of this we have re-worked our calendar so we are doing similar things at the same time. Sometimes everybody does everything, and other times we split the boys to opposite sides of the room with one leader helping each group.

Here is the calendar we are using. Combined Wolf & Bear Annual Planning Calendar

Cub Scouts and Food

Cub Scouts love to eat. This month we had the nine year old boys each take a week to bring a snack they had made. We talked about junk food and the food pyramid-which is now called the food plate. The boys made no-bake cookies. We cooked an outdoor meal. (Hot Dogs and S'mores, along with chips and a veggie platter). Here's an easy way to make s'mores: use the fudge covered graham crackers and skip the chocolate bar. Also I recently saw them made by topping the marshmallow with a chocolate kiss candy. The cooking requirements need lots of things to be done with their families; so I typed up a list the the requirements and told the parents which ones were being done in den meeting and which ones needed to be done at home.

This is a good month to have the boys do the Faith in God requirement that asks them to help plan, prepare, and serve a meal.

Activity Day

Last spring we taught our activity day girls how to crochet. They spent both April and May working on it. They loved making chains (some of them never wanted to progress on to the scarf). The girls struggled with keeping the right number of stitches on their rows. If I did it again, I would have them do an infinity scarf and just keep working around in a large circle instead of trying to work back and forth. Another fun idea is making necklaces with the chain stitch. You use trellis yarn, and chain five strands and then hook them to a single strand to go around the back of your neck. My daughter showed me one of these-she had printed instructions that came with her yarn. The best tutorial I have seen is at justanotherhangup blog. I think especially the younger girls would have more fun learning to chain stitch and then using just the chain stitch to make a project. They could give them to their mothers for Mother's day if they wanted to.

Cub Scouts and Faith in God

In April we have been having the boys work on the religious electives. We had a leader from our congregation come and visit and talk about how the boys can help their church and live their religion. Another week we had the Easter Hunt hunt (posted earlier). We practiced the LDS Articles of Faith, discussed prayer, played a scripture Who Am I game (with the names of scripture heros stuck to their backs), played a scripture bingo game, and let the boys try out stilts.

Articles of Faith Easter Egg Hunt

Last year I did this Easter activity with the girls. This year I am planning to do it with the boys. Have the children go on an Easter Egg Hunt. They hunt for candy eggs and Articles of Faith eggs. I had six children in my group and so I used 36 plastic eggs. Print out the articles of faith and cut them up into "somewhat short" segments. Stick several segments into half of the eggs and put candy in the other half of the eggs and then hide them around the church building or yard. 
Tell the children to go find all the eggs and when they get back, split into two teams. Place all the Articles of Faith segment strips into a pile (and then they got to keep the candy to eat). This worked well to have them working in two groups, and each group can have a leader to help. Some of the children will be better at putting the phrases in order and some will like gluing the phrases onto a paper that someone else has put in the right order. Click here for the page to print with the Articles of Faith.

Activity Day

When I was an activity day leader during March we talked about service. Our primary had all the 8 to 11-year old boys and girls come to the church and do the weekly cleaning for one of our activities. A service scavenger hunt would be fun-make sure each group has a leader with them and that the girls know not to go inside of any homes. Some ideas of service include: sweep porch or walkway, read a story to a child, bring in garbage can, play a game with a child, pull ten weeds, sing a song, wash a front door, pick up trash from the front yard. Here is a fun game where they can serve each other.

Frozen Bean Bag Game: The children begin by moving around the area balancing a beanbag on their head. If a player's beanbag falls, they are frozen until another player picks up the beanbag without losing their beanbag to free the frozen player. Each player keeps track of how many players they have helped. The object of the game is to help as many of the other players as you can.

We also did a fun kitchen craft making spring chicks from deviled eggs:

(I used bits of olive for the eyes, and bits of carrot for the beak)

Cub Scouts

For our den this month we are learning to use tools. They boys had lots of fun pounding nails, driving screws,  sawing boards, and drilling holes with a hand drill. I am lucky to have the old fashioned hand drill that my father gave me many years ago. To build something useful, our two wolves made a flag stand for our little flag we use each week in den meeting.

The boys had to cut the wood with a hand saw and then drill a hole for the flag. The bears were able to pass off the requirement to demonstrate how to use tools.

Our bears are also working on the jot it down requirement this month. They made a list of things to do and we are planning on having them write about what we have been doing in our den this month for our church bulletin. They wrote thank-you notes when we did the good manners belt loop and I am planning on having them write thank-you notes to the mothers for mother's day.

We will also pass out Scouting for Food bags around our neighborhood for a service project. Our local hardware store does a kids workshop once a month, and most of our boys went and made something from wood this month. Making something from wood also is listed under developing talents in the Faith in God book.

Activity Day

When I was an activity day leader I used February and President's Day to learn the 12th Article of Faith and talk about patriotism, what it means to be a good citizen, and how their actions can affect others. (This fulfills a Faith in God requirement from page 9 of their book). The girls learned how to fold a flag and what our rights and responsibilities as citizens are.

We played a fun game where sitting in a circle each person shared somewhere they have seen a flag displayed. The first person says "I've seen a flag flying at ____". Each following person says "I've seen a flag flying at (repeats all previous places, and then adds a new place)".

There are lots of cub scout resources for patriotism. I always figure that the girls can have as much fun with cub scout games as the boys do.

Cub Scouts

For February den meetings, we worked on the collections achievement (wolf) and elective (bear). We decided to do penny collections since we could do that in den meeting at a minimal cost. I printed up card-stock sheets with spots for the pennies for each year the boys had been alive and also for the years their parents were born. They had a lot of fun sorting through $2.00 worth of pennies to find the right ones.We used a handi-tac type product to stick the pennies to the card-stock. We talked about the type of things they could collect and I showed my son's patch collection and a couple of other collections from my family. I collected several items that they could collect and displayed them on a tray (stamp, postcard, toy car, rock, mug, sea shell, quarter, magnet, stuffed animal, leaf, etc). After discussing each item, I covered them up and had the boys write down the ones they could remember.

We also made puddle jumpers with the boys (I learned that the cans are not as strong as they used to be). We had a friend of one of the parents who brought several collections to share with the boys. We held onto the boy's penny collections so they could show them off at pack meeting. Here's a photo of the sheet I made for each boy:

Activity Day

When I was an Activity Day Leader, we liked to talk about goals and choice in January. We talked about setting a goal to read scriptures everyday and fun ways to mark their scriptures. We suggested that the girls look for what Heavenly Father is asking us to do and marking that in one color; and then look for His promise to us and mark in a different color.

We made cookies and divided the dough into individual portions and let the girls choose one add-in (raisins, cranberries, coconut, chocolate chips, nuts, etc). One of the girl, while mixing in her add-in asked if she could do a second. It was a good chance to talk about how sometimes the choices we make limit future options. She had made her choice and no longer had the other choices available.

The girls would also have fun shoveling snow for the senior citizens in your neighborhood if it happened to snow on the day of your activity.

Cub Scouts

For January we worked on The Past is Important for the Bears and played Old Fashioned Games for the Wolf elective. We had a visitor come one week and tell about what he remembers from when he was a Cub Scout many years ago. We then played a fun Jeopardy game with questions on the history of our nation, our state, our city, and our neighborhood. We had the nine-year-old boys do pedigree charts (for both Bear and Faith in God). We also did the Respect Character Connection.

In addition we worked on the Marbles belt loop. We try to do a belt loop several times a year so the boys have something to be awarded at pack meeting. (Sometimes it takes them a long time to finish their rank advancement, while the Webelos all get awards every pack meeting).

January is also a fun time to do a service project. If it snows on your meeting day you can go around the neighborhood and shovel snow from the walkways of senior citizens. If there is lots of snow, they can shovel the snow away from fire hydrants. This January was bitter cold, so we opted to do the belt loop instead of snow shoveling.

We have started having a opening for every meeting. We do a short flag ceremony with the pledge of allegiance  an opening prayer, recite the cub scout promise together, and then recite an Article of Faith together. Sometimes we go through the Article of Faith several times if the boys are having trouble with it.