2 October 2008
Cubs: Tigers are Easily Amused
Posted by admin under: den meetings .
But don’t go teasing any at the zoo. I’m talking about the first graders. We had our weekly den meeting tonight [post date doesn't match my words because the blog is on greenwich time or something] and welcomed a new boy into the group. We’re going over Bobcat requirements and after talking for about 15 minutes I realized I had committed a serious error. I’d been talking for 15 minutes. Sure I’d gotten them up and down and moving a bit, but mostly it was me talking and them repeating stuff. So I moved into the next part of the meeting.
3 boys, 3 Bobcat requirements. We stood in different corners and the boys had to run to each adult and do one of the requirements: first give the Cub Scout motto, next give the Cub Scout salute, and finally give a Cub Scout handshake. The boys were wary at first because they thought they didn’t know what to do or say even though I’d been talking about it seconds before, but after one round they were laughing as they ran from adult to adult. They did three rounds so they could really reinforce these three requirements.
Since October is Adventures in Books we brought in a couple of favorite kid stories and Mrs. Admin read them to the boys. She does voices and acts things out so she’s great with that stuff. The boys got their homework assignment to read two books with their Tiger partner and tell me what it was when they come back next week.
Then we experimented with the idea I played with for the pack meeting at the end of the month. I asked if they’d like to come bursting through some paper that I plan to decorate like a book and they were enthusiastic. I had some really wide plotter (big printer) paper that had been donated by a mom who had it and didn’t need it. If not that I was going to get some butcher paper and tape it together to make it wide enough. We experimented with several long portions to see what kind of perforations I needed to make to ensure the boys would rip the paper apart instead of bouncing off. The older sisters of one of my boys helped, too. My Cub philosophy is that Cub Scouts is all about families having fun together while teaching their son Scout values. So, when they asked if they could try I said, of course.
At the end of the meeting I asked if they had fun and they all said yes. See? I asked the question right after I let them do something active and fun. It’s not really cheating. They had fun at that part even if I started to lose them a bit earlier on. Later, when I asked my son what his favorite part was it wasn’t anything I had spent any time at all preparing for.
I gave the boys necklaces at the first meeting attended and told them that each time they come to a den meeting they’ll get a bead to show they were there and by the end of the year they’ll have a necklace full of beads. Then I let them pick out the next bead they want to put on the necklace and they wear it throughout the meeting turning it back in to me at the end so it won’t get lost or forgotten at home. That was my son’s favorite part. My little throw-away trick to get them interested in attending meetings for the beads ended up overshadowing all the other stuff even though he was laughing and running around during the active stuff.
Kids. Who can understand them?
- Cubs: Pack Meeting Packed a Lot
- Cubs: Dad and Me Time
- Bobcat Debacle
- Boys Don’t Quit, Parents Do
- Cubs: Off to a Rocky Start
