This weekend is our pack's spring campout. We are going to a state park at a large lake that is about an hour or so away from where we live. The weather is supposed to be really nice, and we have a lot of fun activities planned for the boys.
One of the nice things about this park is that they pretty much dedicate one whole area of the park for our pack to camp and have free run in. This is great for the boys - we emphasize the buddy system, and as long as they stay with their buddy within our area, we don't need to worry about them too much. All the parents in our pack are really good about keeping tabs on each other's kids, and the kids like having a little freedom to explore or hang out with their friends around one of the campfires. It's a small enough park that getting lost is really not too much of an issue.
The hard part about going camping is always the preparations.
I suppose I should take a moment here to explain some of the traditions in our pack: we traditionally have a "pig out" event right after lunch, where everyone brings a dessert to share, potluck-style. Then we gather around a campfire and enjoy some skits while we pig out on all the desserts. This may seem a bit unusual, as most campfires are done in the evening to wind down the day. However, we usually have two special events going on at night on Saturday night: in the fall, we do our special Bobcat award ceremony for all new Scouts, and in the spring, we do our Arrow of Light award ceremony for the departing 2nd Year Webelos Scouts. Other packs do these things differently, and that is fine. However, in order to accommodate these special events, we developed the tradition of the "pig out" and campfire right after lunch. It works for us!
We also traditionally eat a common meal together as a den, usually dinner on Saturday evening. This means we have to plan our skit for the "pig out" and our den dinner in advance before we go.
Before we could get to the planning part, we had a little business to take care of first. Not all of our Scouts are going on the campout, so we have to accommodate them with activities at our den meeting as well. So, at our den meeting on Tuesday night, we first finished working on the Art pin as part of the Cub Scout Academics and Sports program. As with most packs, the boys in our den all finished their Tiger badges back in January, well ahead of the Blue & Gold Banquet. We have been filling the rest of the year with various Tiger electives, as well as belt loops and pins. It turns out that we have several boys in our den who are budding artists, and our Assistant Den Leader enjoys making art as well. I figured this would be a great opportunity to leverage her interests, and have her teach something the boys would all be interested in. I think it worked out really great. Part of being an effective Den Leader is learning to delegate and trust other people to do some of the work for you. Whenever you recognize a talent in that person, have them run with it!
After that, we let the boys who were not going camping go home around 7:45. We spent the rest of the meeting time with the boys going camping from our den (there are five) planning the skit and den dinner. I took BALOO training last weekend, and got some great ideas for campfire foil wraps for dinner this year. We will have the boys make campfire pizzas using English muffins, and the adults will be enjoying a chicken and sausage jambalaya. Should be some good eats, and I know the boys will enjoy making their own dinners! We will use this to fulfill a requirement for the Nutrition belt loop, too. I made a signup sheet with all the ingredients, and asked our parents to sign up for several items on the list. I am really proud of all our parents - we have a great group in our den, and they really stepped up. Some dens choose to collect cash and send somebody grocery shopping, and that works OK, too. I figure since everyone is going shopping for the rest of their meals anyway, it wouldn't hurt to ask them to pick up a few extra things for our den dinner. Again, it's all about whatever works.
I also started planning our next den meeting after the campout, in which I will be teaching the Computers belt loop. More on this soon.
No comments:
Post a Comment