Scout Meeting Ideas

“Do any of you scout leaders and volunteers have any good ideas for interesting scout meetings? I'm thinking of meetings in which older boys demonstrate or lead the younger ones on topics such as:

stoves
cooking
knife and axe sharpening
map and compass use
fishing gear and technique
survival kits
emergency overnight shelter

Others????”

“Backcountry first aid techniques

Backpacking foot care

I always taught that one, until one year I got a real group of snotty little buggers that wouldn't stop talking for anything. I finished, packed up my stuff and left the room. They never noticed. Neither did most of the parents. These were all new kids, and hadn't had much training in how to behave at meetings and for presentations. They tried to pass off to the ASMs that yeah, they heard all of it and knew what to do. Not so after their first substantial hike.”

“Cooking techniques; dutch oven, fire, stove.

cooking equipment

How to crap in the woods and not leave a mess

shelters

survival skills: shelter, water, equipment,
different eniviroments

What to do when wet,hot,windy,lost, tired, thirsty, cold, hungry, bleeding, etc

Knife and axe use

Do map/compass/land reading outdoors

survival scenarios

team building

bicycling road repair

leave no trace

clothing according to environment

How to find water”

“knots..”

“Take them outside on a windless night. Fill a large metal tub with a handful of crumpled newspapers soaked in a half quart of oil. Ignite. Have each scout practise using a full sized fire extinguisher, pulling the pin, appraching the fire, aiming the nozzle at the base of the fire, and spraying the fire out. We got about a dozen such uses before the fire extinguisher ran out. This teaches the scout how to instinctively put out a fire in an emergency. In an emergency, it is not the time to start reading the fine print on the fire extinguisher. Good skill to know, and it was a whole lot of fun (except for the scout leader whose van was parked downwind and was covered in soot and white powder).”

“get the boys in a group. help the spl and pls brainstorm with the scouts on ideas for things they would want to do at meetings. help them organize the resulting list by sorting the ideas into categories (sports, merit badges, skills, games, food, etc). help the spl and pls select activities (voting, etc) and also assign owners. get them to identify the resources they will need to perform the activities (someone who knows about stoves, sports, etc) and schedule them. you could do all this for them, but what's the point of scouting if you do?”

“Cold weather & snow camping
Cross country sking”

“great ideas.”

“Boys Scouts is all about fire. How about a retired flag ceremony?”

“watching pornography
cigarettes
beer
spitting
driving without a license
cursing
farting
more pornography”

“If it was a truly boy led troop, the topics Jimmy san lists would be the meeting themes, except we would have to add hazing, lazing, crazing, and tazing, plus more pornography.”

“During our annual planning meeting, I gave the boys my copy of the Troop Program Features and said, "Pick out 12 of these as your themes for this year." They are pretty wide-encompassing and almost everything the boys wanted to do this year was covered - in some way - by a program feature.

My philosophy is not to reinvent the wheel. The program features provide a lot of good ideas for meetings of Scouts of all ages and skill levels and can easily be supplemented with additional ideas you may have.”

“where do you get a copy of the troop program features?”

“BSA.org”

“Lol, Creek Dancer!”

“LOL, well actually I was half serious. The Boy Scouts will properly retire your old flag with a ceremony which includes burning the flag. But yeah, they do love to burn stuff.”

“we did something similar to that one year. we printed out the list of age-appropriate activities that the bsa distributes and the guys selected items from the list. it worked out well, but these ranged from meeting activities to outings. still, it was a good way to stick to the activities the bsa defines as age appropriate and not wind up in a mess.”

“a wiser tter told me once that every scout troop has a handful of john belushis and an equal number of pyromaniacs. truer words were never spoken. who said that? it was one of you dudes.”

“i don't know, but i concur!”

“I'm starting to be just a little bit jealous of you Boy Scout troop leaders. Girl Scouts is out of control with their rules and regulations and classes you must take to do anything. In order to go camping I have to take two weekend long classes at $35 each. Why? To learn how to start a fire the "Girl Scout Way". Might look into Venture Scouts next year. Have to see if I can find a troop in our area. But, then my troop would be left high and dry. =(”

“a wiser tter told me once that every scout troop has a handful of john belushis and an equal number of pyromaniacs. truer words were never spoken. who said that? it was one of you dudes.”
Jimmy san

That was me! Actually, I said at least two pyromaniacs and one John Belushi, but who is counting?

My son has aged out. He got his Eagle a couple of years ago. I miss scouting. I thought about staying involved, but it is not the same without my son there.”

“Sass,
Mainly TIC, but if you're going to look into "Venture Scouts" you should learn a little terminology as some of those leaders get a little weird. First, its Venturing, not Venture Scouts. Also, its a Venture Crew, not a troop. Finally, someone involved in Venturing is a Venturer.

Creek Dancer, you should look into Venturing. Its coed, you're considered a youth until 21, and they have their own set of advancement, activities, and rules from Boy Scouts. If your son is still under 21, he may be interested in something like this.”

“Yes, he is still under 21, but away at college. Right now he is way too involved with the girlfriend, classes and bikes. Not sure what is the order of priority. And he is way to busy to call his mother these days!!!! Dang kid.

But I have thought about helping out Venture Scouts.”

“Border security?
I'm just sayin'...”

“well now i know! i have quoted that like a dozen times but always gave credit to an anonymous scouter i could not remember. soooo true!”

“Talk to your local fire dept. and see if they would send someone over with a CPR dummy and a trainer defibrillator and see if he or she would do a little CPR training for free. They don't have to take the official AHA course with the test and the card(unless you want to foot the bill), but you don't have to have a card in your wallet to save a life.”

“Thanks Dave. I'd never even heard of them before yesterday so yeah, I have a lot to learn.”