Pack Meetings

For me I think that pack meetings are probably the hardest part of being the Cub Master.  Due to his work schedule my predecessor was pretty much just doing awards and treats.  With his crazy schedule I don't blame him at all.  When I became Cub Master I wanted to take Pack Meetings to being something fun for the whole family.  That's what I remember them being as a child.  No I wasn't a Cub Scout, but my family has been heavily involved in Scouting since before I was born.  So for me a pack meeting should go as follows:  a flag ceremony, opening prayer, announcements, an activity for the whole family (parents rarely participate, but siblings do), awards, retrieving the colors, a closing prayer, and treats.  One thing I often forget to do, as I'm in the middle of running things, is to take pictures.  It is great to have pictures of your activities.  We use them to make a video of the previous year in review for our Blue & Gold Banquet.  We also try and throw them into a Dropbox for parents to view and download.  It is fun having those scouting memories!  Plus, it is helpful in remembering what you have done, what was successful, and maybe what wasn't.

I get flustered sometimes on the standing in front of a group of people talking.  I often feel like I say the wrong thing or something just really stupid, but the boys don't care.  They just want to have fun at scouts!  At the end of the day, that is my goal - to make it fun.  I want the boys to want to come to scouts.  I may make a fool of myself from time to time, but it isn't about me.  Since the end goal is for the boys to have fun, I try my best to come up with pack meetings that fulfill that.  I haven't written down all my pack meeting plans anywhere, so I am going to do my best to write up the different themes we have had and what we have done.  After my first pack meeting I had one scout, whose last meeting it was, tell me that he was so sad to leave because that was the best pack meeting ever.  It made me realize I was on the right path with what I was doing.  It makes the planning, and the stress that often comes with it, worth it.  Hopefully what we have done and found to be successful will help you.  Just remember, at the end of the days it truly is all about the boys.

Blue & Gold Banquet - Medieval

Blue and Gold Banquets.  This event can be overly stressful if you let it.  It is the biggest Cub Scout event of the year. First things first, the theme.  Once you have a theme decided you can start working the magic.  The Blue and Gold doesn't have to be a production, it can be as big or small as you want it.  I have a friend who for theirs decorated by putting two helium balloons, one blue & one yellow, at each table and was done.  Nothing wrong with that at all!  However, we tend to go a bit bigger.  We can't help it, I think it may be a sickness.  ;)

For our 2015 Blue and Gold Banquet we had decided to go off the theme of Medieval.  So where to start.  The answer to that is decorations!  We decided to have the boys all decorate shields to represent themselves to be hung on the walls.  We also decided on a cardboard castle at the front of the room as a backdrop.  We were originally going to have the boys help with making the castle, but due to time constraints the leaders made the castle while the boys worked on the shields and their tunics (more on that later).  For the shields I took cardboard and cut out shields that were about 18"-24" in height.  We had a bucket of craft supplies and let the boys have at it.  They were allowed to make their shields in any way they wanted.  Some of them got pretty creative, while some just wanted to get theirs done and move on.  It all depends on the boy.  Once the shields were done we cut a long piece of string which we taped both ends of to back of the shield.  When it came time to decorate we stapled the string to the wall (tape would work depending on your wall) and our shields were hung up.  We also did 4 larger shields which had the Bobcat, Wolf, Bear, and Webelos rank insignia on them.  At the back of the room we used 4 Harry Potter banners to decorate behind the food tables.  We used the back of the HP banners and taped on the 4 scout rank insignia from the shields and then put a strip of yellow and blue crepe paper on the outer edges to make them look fancier.  To make the scouting rank insignia for the shields and banners we used our projector hooked up to the computer to trace them out.  The castle was put together using some donated cardboard.  As I wasn't involved in the making of it, only the painting of the bricks, I'm not 100% how they built it.  As we had a boy receiving his Arrow of Light at this meeting, we made shields with the Arrow of Light insignia on them and put them on the castle. The last part of the decorations were the center pieces.  We decided to put castles on each of the tables.  We collected all the square tissue boxes that we could over the year.  Then we went to work making them into castles.  To do this was fairly easy and we involved the boys here also.  We printed out black and white brick walls onto card-stock.  We also printed out the 4 Cub Scout rank insignia talked about earlier in color.  The boys all helped color the brick walls, mostly in browns and reds, though some got creative in their color choices.  It took 2 pieces of card-stock per castle, so we had each boy color two sheets the same.  After all the sheets were colored we had them cut out the scouting rank insignia.  Once we got these things all home we made slip on covers for the castle walls.  Once the walls were assembled we glued on a den insignia banner on each side of the castle.  We also took bamboo skewers and glued the den rank insignia onto them at the top for a little extra coming out the center. My husband also printed out some color copies of a stone brick wall and we used those for the cake table decorations, while the boxes the boys did were on the dinner tables.

SHIELDS:

BANNERS:

CASTLE:

CENTER PIECES:

BRICK TEMPLATE FOR COLORING:

 BRICK TEMPLATE FOR PRINTING:

SET UP FROM FRONT AND BACK:

Our invitations were as follows:

Here is the original shield design we based ours off of.  I made the invite in Microsoft Publisher again and so used a shield and sword found in their default clip art. Then inserted the rank insignia on top of it. 

Since our theme was medieval, we decided the boys would all be knights.  So of course a knight needs a tunic and his crest.  We had some paper grocery bags in our garage that we decided would make the perfect tunics.  I had my kids help me with the cutting, as it was going to take some time.  First we cut the sides out of the bags.  We then turned them inside out and folded them at the top.  We then cut out a half circle in the middle of that fold.  We then opened it and cut a slit in from the outside of one side into the middle where the circle was.  This made it so the boys could easily put it on and off.  We used a small piece of tape to help hold it closed.  So that it wouldn't tear it, we put down another piece of tape underneath it so the tape holding it closed was on top of tape and not the bag.  We also cut out yarn and taped them halfway down the sides to make tie closures.  Each boy was given a bag and asked to decorate it in a way that represented them.  It could be anything that they loved as it would be their knight crest.  The boys were given a bucket of crayons and markers and told to go at it.  We had a crest with a Pikachu, one with a monkey wizard, an artist dragon, Minecraft, and many others.  The boys got very creative here!  We also made a tunic for each of the incoming Cub Scouts for that year.  We used the projector again and put the Bobcat insignia on each of these tunics.  We also made a couple extra tunics for boys who hadn't made one of their own, one was a dragon and the other a lion.  We were able to find foam swords and shields in the dollar bin at Target and bought them out.  So now our boys were all equipped with a tunic, a sword, and a shield.  Our knights were ready to go!  Since the boys were all dressed up, we figured the Cub Master should be too.  Using a stray piece of fabric and some felt we made me a tunic with the fleur-dis-lis on it.  I wore my brother's vampire cape and one of his swords at the waist.  My mom let me use our Forbes family crest pin to pin the cape.  It worked out pretty well.  Since there was now a sword involved it was decided that we would "knight" the boys who were getting a rank advancement.  So they were knighted into the Order of the Bobcat, Wolf, Bear or Webelos.  The boys got a kick out of that. The boys also did a skit for the parents.  We used a skit that we found here: http://insanescouter.org/p/2564/142/The_Reluctant_Knight_And_The_Magic_Herb.html

We changed the name of the knight at the end to Sir Brave a Lot instead of Sag-No-More.  It turned out very cute!

TUNICS:

SWORDS AND SHIELDS/KNIGHTING:

CUB MASTER:

 For food we decided to go with finger foods.  We did baked chicken legs, veggies and dip, potato wedges, and jello jigglers.  The jello didn't set up quite right, so that ended up having to be eaten by fork.  We had two cakes, one chocolate and one white.  One had the American Flag on it and the other we got plain with a congratulations on it and then utilized the projector again to draw the Arrow of Light on it in yellow.

Thrown into the Deep End

I became the Cub Master for our Pack in January 2014.  The following week was the Pinewood Derby, followed closely the next month by the Blue and Gold Banquet.  I won't lie, I almost freaked out!  Then my husband, who was the Webelos leader, told me that everything was already planned out.  I just had to show up and be in charge.  Sure, not a problem.  And so began the craziness of the last two years.  At this point we have had 3 Pinewood Derbys, 3 Blue and Gold Banquets, 3 Rain Gutter Regattas, and approximately 12 pack meetings.  Every time there is a frantic question running through my head of "what are you going to do this time???".  We want our activities to be fun and to include the whole family.  So far, so good.  As I continue on my quest for fun pack meetings I will share what we have done/are doing here.  I find that as a Cub Master figuring out these meetings is the hardest part of the job.  Once everything is figured out and in place it seems to run fairly smoothly.  You just have to figure out what it is that you are going to do.  Often easier said then done.  I hope that you find this blog useful.