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.