GAMES
Keep America Beautiful
San Francisco Bay Area
The audience is told that a tree will be planted and through the magic of Cub Scouting, will grow and blossom. Two teams of four are chosen and each team selects a captain. The captains are given signs to wear which say "sapling". Each captain stands in the middle of his team. Others on the team are handed a paper sack containing a roll of scotch tape, 20 or 30 green construction paper, a bird nest, and a few small real branches. At the signal to "go" each team begins to make their "sapling" grow by handing him the branches to hold and taping the contents of the bag to him. First team to finish is the winner.
Outdoor Nature Hunt
Heart of America Council
Make up a list such as the one below for each boy. Boys can hunt in pairs in your backyard or in the park. See which pair can find the most within a limited amount of time.
- Something alive that flies
- A cup of wet sand
- A worm
- A cup of pink water
- Five maple leaves
- Three rocks at least two inches in diameter
- A piece of string
- A dandelion
That's My Leaf
Heart of America Council
Each boy takes a leaf from the same kind of tree and looks at it carefully for one minute. Then put all the leaves in a pile and stir them up together. Can you find your one-of-a-kind leaf? What makes it special -- different from all the other leaves? Press the leaf carefully. Send pressed leaves to one of a kind friends, and tell them how they are like the leaves.
Outdoor Bowling
San Francisco Bay Area
For pins use 10 plastic two-liter soda bottles filled half full of water to give them weight. For a pin-setting rack, cut an equilateral triangle with 30 inch sides from a piece of scrap plywood, place the pins on it and draw circles around their bottoms to make it easy to reset them properly. To bowl, use a soccer ball or basketball from a distance of about 18 feet. Score as in real bowling.
One Leaf Trail
York Adams Council
A trail is laid using one kind of leaf as a marker, letting the stem point in the direction to be followed. At the end of the trail, the players hunt for the tree whose leaves were used.
