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This weekend I attended our district’s training for Introduction To Outdoor Leader Skills (ITOLS) and Webelos Leader Outdoor Training (WLOT). Over on Boy Scout Trail there is a great short list of the Top 10 Training Topics that includes a great description of ITOLS and why it is important:

Intro to Outdoor Leader Skills – Introduction to the tenderfoot, 2nd class, and 1st class scouting skills so adults can help scouts complete their requirements. It doesn’t make sense for someone to sign off on a first aid or knot tying requirement if he doesn’t know the skill well himself. All adults that teach or sign off should take it. Required for ‘Trained’ patch and Scout Leader’s Training award.

The WLOT part of the course covers the skills needed to plan and conduct a Webelos den outing. A Webelos den is allowed to go camping without the rest of the pack, and this class gives the Webelos Den Leader the necessary training.

I decided to take the class as a next step after BALOO (Basic Adult Leader Outdoor Orientation) training, which covers the basics of planning and conducting a pack camping trip for Cub Scouts. A Webelos Den can go on overnight campouts other than the pack-wide family camping trip, either with a Boy Scout Troop or on their own (with parents and Den Leaders). As always, the Guide to Safe Scouting will help you determine what activities are age appropriate.

I was very pleased to see two things in the course announcement. First, it was not being held in a classroom. We were going to be covering outdoor skills, so we were taking the class outdoors. That made perfect sense to me! The location wasn’t rural by any stretch; they used a field at local dairy farm. It was not the most stunning scenery, but outside training doesn’t require that. Second, the course announcement stated this class would go no matter what the weather. If you were going to be taking scouts out in all kinds of weather, they would train you in all kinds of weather. We lucked out with the weather, it was a little chilly at night, but we were dry and comfortable for the most part. I think the temperature got down to ~25 degrees overnight, but the tents and sleeping bags did their jobs.

During the course we covered a wide range of subjects, and the Webelos topics were interwoven with the Boy Scout topics. It was an introductory course, so the instructors weren’t trying to make experts out of everyone, but review the material and provide references for more in-depth study when needed.

Webelos specific topics during the training were
Webelos/Boy Scout Differences
Activity Badges:

• Outdoorsman
• Readyman
• Citizen
• Naturalist
• Forester
• Outdoorsman

For the Boy Scout side, we covered a lot of ground as well. When I was a scout many of these topics were covered in the skill awards, but they have moved away from that in the intervening years. The requirements for Tenderfoot, Second Class and First Class list a wide range of skills to demonstrate and we covered many of them:

• Patrol Method and Boy Led Overview
• Cold Weather Camping
• Leave No Trace
• First Aid
• Meal planning and menus
• Reverence and Faith
• Cooking and Cleanup in a Camp
• Flag Ceremony, Flag Etiquette
• Wood Tools, Ax Yard, Sharpening
• Fire Building
• Plant and Animal Identification
• Map and Compass training
• Knots and Lashings
• Backpacking Skills

Most of these are skills I learned when I was a Boy Scout, and many of them we use even today as we go camping as a family. But you always learn something in training, and this one was no different. The instructors for the course were definitely of the “been there, done that” variety, and the information they passed on was from personal experience from years of working with boys in troops. When I took this gig as Cubmaster, I decided I would take any training class as long as it fit in my schedule. This one did not disappoint. In fact, I would say this was the best training I have had so far as a Scouter. Hands on training wins every time!

Overall I thought it was a great course, definitely something I would suggest Bear Den Leaders take before they start planning the Webelos years. In addition to the wealth of information that is reviewed, the contact time with the Scoutmasters and Assistant Scoutmasters of the local troops helps a Cub Leader to understand what the differences are between the troops in their area.

At the end of my confession yesterday I mentioned that those of us responsible for the pack meetings (the cubmasters) had decided to start injecting more fun into the meetings.

So I was on a mission. For our pack meeting last night I wanted to add some fun to two parts in particular: the results of our Scouting for Food service project from the weekend prior, and the awarding of the Whittling Chip to a den of Bears.

Why those two? One because I am extremely proud of the work the Scouts did on the service project, and wanted to make an impression beyond just telling them “good job!”. And two, every Cub Scout I know is excited about the possibility of using a pocket knife, so getting their Whittling Chip may be more important to them than any rank badge.

When we talked about Citizenship during the opening of the pack meeting, I wanted a prop I could use when I was talking about how the service project was good citizenship in our community. Something that would drive home the point of how much we can accomplish working together. I kept having images of the Acme Cartoon type of weight



For the Whittling Chip awards ceremony I did my research and shamelessly stole ideas from what I found. While sharing ideas is a long (and necessary!) tradition within Scouting, hopefully I’m using this blog post to properly credit my sources.

I picked up some foam board at the local dollar store and brought it home and went to work. Forty minutes later, I had created my vision. As I said on Twitter, I think foam board should be every Cubmaster’s new best friend.

We used the prop weight at the beginning as planned, and the prop knife during the Whittling Chip ceremony, with one of the Assistant Cubmasters hamming it up doing all the wrong things when we reviewed the rules for safe knife handling. He “chopped” his finger off and wrapped it in gauze. It was a big hit. After the meeting, the scouts kept goofing around with the weight and a number of parents commented to me that they enjoyed the addition of visuals to the meeting.

They should just wait, because even bigger things are planned for later!

Hi, my name is Arlen and I have a confession.

My pack is a baggie pack. *sob*

That’s right. We hand out awards with a ziploc and a handshake.

Well, not all the awards. The rank advancement is done with ceremony and fun. I’m sure there’s room for improvement there too, but the greatest need is to liven up the presentation of the “minor” awards (things like belt loops and activity badges).

I came across the article in Baloo’s Bugle (you ARE reading Baloo’s Bugle, right?) where the topic was “Ziploc Packs” written by Sean Scott. You can find the article on page 6. He list’s a number of great ideas, many of which I plan to implement at a pack meeting:

• Shoot your awards in on balloons. Tie up a string with some cut straws, tape the award to the balloon, the balloon to the straws, and fill the balloon with air. When you release the air from the balloon, it will propel the award/balloon rocket down the string. Take on the role of “mission control” and with a little help from some willing parents you have a space themed recognition!
• Tape awards to the undersides of Frisbees and throw them out to boys standing in the back of the room. Have them throw them back to you, and let an assistant reload the Frisbees. Or mount them on paper airplanes for similar effect.
• Hide the awards around the room and give each boy a treasure map that leads them to their award. Tell everyone what they received while theyre looking. Or hide coins that the boys can use to buy their award from the Cubmaster, er, I mean Pirate King at the front of the room.
• Have them pan for gold nuggets and exchange them at the bank for their awards. You could make a speech about them being more precious than gold while youre at it.
• Fire them from catapults your Webelos made. Make castle walls from refrigerator boxes and shoot from inside the castle (or outside, depending on where you want to be…)
• Give them out as carnival prizes, with each boy performing some simple, fun skill. (Dont make it so hard that your Tigers cant do whatever it is, and just get something handed to them.)
• Put them inside Whiffle balls or balloons and hit them out to the boys with a big plastic bat. Let them “field” the award.

After reading the article, I decided there was no time like the present for getting started on adding life to the awards ceremony. I got together with the other Cubmasters in our pack and we talked for a bit about what we would like to happen during the awards ceremonies. It didn’t take long for all of us to get totally excited about the possiblities and we were throwing out ideas faster than I could write the down.

We are going to have lots of fun with this. I’m going to need more costumes and cardboard!

I’ll keep you updated and let you know how they go. There may be ziploc baggies used in future ceremonies, but they just might be launched across the room with a potato cannon.

Do you have any favorites that were a big hit with your scouts? Any you have always wanted to try but never got around to it? How about suggesting a go-to resource for award ceremony ideas? Leave them in the comments!

I could not be more proud of what these boys did.

Over the last two weekends our pack has been participating in the Scouting for Food service project. For the Denver Area Council, they partnered with the 9Cares Colorado Shares winter food drive.

Scouting for Food has two parts:

• Distributing the bags and the flyers describing the project, which include the instructions on when to leave the filled bag on your front step (usually the next weekend)
• Canvassing the neighborhood a second time to collect the bags that have been left as a donation.

We organized our effort into the Tiger and Wolf Scouts putting the bags out on the first weekend and the Bears and Webelos picking up the donations on the second. The thought was that the younger scouts could handle the light bags a lot easier than they could handle the bags full of canned goods. We had a goal of covering our entire neighborhood, a total of ~1200 houses, and I secured the flyers and bags from our District Director. (As an aside, how many districts have two professional scouters? We have a District Executive and a District Director.)

When I was dividing up the routes for the four dens that were going to be distributing the bags, I started to feel like I was planning some sort of invasion or spy operation. So I decided to run with the theme. We put the maps in envelopes marked top secret and had “mission briefings” before the groups headed out. After they returned from putting out the bags we all had hot chocolate and cookies before they headed home. It took less than two hours total, with each den covering about 300 houses.

The next weekend was the older scouts, and they were given similar assignments. They covered their respective areas and brought the bags back to the staging area for their cookies and hot chocolate. We weighed them and put them in the trucks to be taken to the 9Cares collection site. When we started this project, I figured we would end up collecting around 500 pounds of food. The important part was that the boys start to see how working together can have a big impact on the community, and that spending a weekend morning helping out others was actually a fun way to serve.

After the final tally, we needed to use an extra pickup truck to take the donations to the collection site. We ended up collecting 212 bags of donations and 1,667.5 pounds of goods for the local food banks. That’s right. Over three quarters of a ton!

Again, I couldn’t be more proud of the work these boys did.

Since school wrapped up there hasn’t been a lot of activity on this blog. I do apologize, but really it has been due to a shift in how I spend my time. While I was working on my PhD all my “spare” time was spent working on research and writing. I was up to my eyeballs in sciency-researchy things.

It’s a bit different now. I spend my time on Cub Scout stuff. As I just put on the updated “About Me” page, I was a Cub Scout and a Boy Scout when I was growing up. I became an Eagle Scout in 1989 (Yay Troop 13!). After losing track of the scouting program in college I got back into it when my son reached the age to join Cub Scouts. Going into it I knew I wanted him to have a great time, and what’s the best way to make that happen? Well we have a fantastic Pack in our neighborhood and we both agreed it was the group for us. I was the Tiger Den Leader for that first year, and it was a lot of fun. We had 6 boys in the den and spent our time learning about the community we live in and getting familiar with the scouting program.

We had so much fun that after that first year I was asked to be the Cubmaster, responsible for the program we brought to all 70 boys that span first through fifth grade. I started with that in September, and I am still having a blast!

I haven’t been posting these things to the blog, thinking I would be diving back into the science before too long. But after looking at my tweets and facebook updates for the last year, there’s really no reason why I should incorporate all of it into the blog. As a scout leader, I use the internet as a great resource when looking for ideas and inspiration. I might as well add my part to it, providing my experiences for others to come across. And the other nerdy stuff will still show up on occasion.

So here’s your fair warning: there will be a lot more posts related to Cub Scouts, the Boy Scouts of America, and specifically our pack.