What did you do after school yesterday?
Friday during my drive home after yet another den outing I was thinking about the wide variety of activities that Cub Scouts provides boys and their families. Then over the weekend I read Jeff’s post on Rocks, Hockey, Theater and Art describing the (rather busy) activities of his son’s pack during the previous weekend. I often wonder about the school conversations of our scouts when their classmates ask “What did you do after school yesterday?”
So what do Cub Scouts actually do?
There are the outdoor activities that everyone associates with Cub Scouts, like camping and hiking. These are truly important parts of the program, and things that the boys will remember for the rest of their lives. Pack camping trips or the council’s resident camp may look like chaos at times, or may not run exactly as planned, but the boys are having a blast. On our last pack campout, the entire morning after the campfire was filled with the sound of small groups of boys singing parts of the songs they had learned the night before.
Hiking trips or other day activities outside are equally important, especially in a time when so many kids are at risk for “Nature-Deficit Disorder”. That term was coined in the book “Last Child in the Woods” by Richard Louv, an excellent read!
There are the craft-type activities that often get associated with the Cub Scout program, often by those that either went through it or had to make the many trips to Michaels to run it. Den meeting activities like building a scrapbook (Tiger Achievement) or the Showman Webelos Activity Badge or many, many others have parts that are craft-type projects. These are where the Cub Scouts learn that they can create. Not just create as in “be creative and draw an elephant riding a scooter” but create as in “I have made something, something real where there was nothing before”. Many of the great parts of Cub Scouts are where the boys learn they can build things. Things that they imagine and then create with their own hands. That kind of self empowerment is the early stages of the self-assurance that is evident in the Eagle Scout as he accepts his final rank at the court of honor.
An area of activity I never really noticed (though it was there) when I was a kid is the community and civic activities. Visiting fire stations, police stations, city hall or even participating in a service project provides an understanding of citizenship and community that they just aren’t exposed to in that age group.
Sure, there may be a fire fighter that comes to school to talk about fire safety, but when you get to visit a station with a den-sized group and you see them in their bunker gear the lessons stay with you a little better. The community and government seem much more accessible and the scouts view their role in it as being an active participant instead of a bystander.
The things that aren’t often associated with Cub Scouts are activities in science, engineering, history, and other “school” type of subjects. But a quick glance at the geology field trips, the building of pinewood derby cars, or learning about Native American lore shows there is a lot of reinforcement of things that are traditionally things that are taught in the classroom.
The den outing I was referring to at the beginning of this blog post was a trip to the Little Thompson Observatory, about an hour from our neighborhood. I watched a group of 7 and 8 year old boys completely engrossed for two hours straight as they learned about stars and planets, looked through big telescopes at Moon craters and Jupiter and galaxies and globular clusters. I saw them sit on the floor and “build” a comet with dry ice, water, dirt, and a few other things. I have no doubt that any one of them will remember what makes up a comet, even if asked years from now.
All of these activities have a part in a Cub Scout pack, and in any given evening the scouts might have a chance to participate in one or two (or three!). They won’t see the long view of what they are learning, but they sure are having fun! So when a friend asks one of your scouts “What did you do yesterday?” how are they going to answer? Has you den or pack done something amazing the scout can pass on to their friend?
