PACK & DEN ACTIVITIES

Melt & Pour Soap
Baloo

Never being one to turn out a fabulous looking craft, I still look for a craft that I can do that will turn out simply fabulous.  Well, I might have hit upon one using Melt & Pour Soaps.  These are blocks of glycerin soaps that can be bought at your local craft stores.

After cutting the soap blocks into 1 inch chucks, you melt them on low in your microwave or double boiler and pour into molds.  I bought a snow flake mold (4 can be made at a time), 1 small rounded loaf (again 4 can be made) and the 1 large loaf.  I bought clear, opaque, and avocado blocks of glycerin along with some soap scents and sparkles.

Last Sunday I made approximately 30 bars of soaps, using my snowflake mold, and some Christmas shaped soaps from an old candy mold I had.  I used only the opaque (white) soap, added scent and sparkle, and they looked great.  But there is no way we will go through 30 bars of soap really fast, especially with a Christmas theme.  Monday night after work I delivered 25 bars of soap to our local homeless shelter.

Then I went back to the Craft store and bought a star insert-made of soap- to go into the large loaf soap mold I had bought.  After curing the soap for a day we sliced it.  The blue glycerin with sparkles that I had poured around the star soap insert pulled away.  So then I made lemon out of lemonade.  I cut the blue soap up into chunks, filled up the four small loaf molds with the chunks and poured clear glycerin over it.  Now I have some really attractive soaps to put in our kid’s bathroom.  Plus some extras to again give to the shelter.

This is a kid-friendly craft.  Watch for the glycerin soap to be on sale, pick up a couple of molds and that is pretty much it.  As a den leader you could even make up a batch of yellow chucks and then a blue base to pour over the chunks.

A few hints

1.        Keep your soap in a soap dish, water on glycerin soaps helps the soap melt down quickly.

2.        Let the soap cool down after microwaving, if pouring it over chunks, 3-5 minutes is good.

3.        Remember melted soap is hot, exercise caution with your Cubs.

Paper cup Telephones
National Capital Area Council

Make a small hole in the base of each cup.  Insert one string from the outside to the inside of each set of cups and secure it with a piece of tape.  Let the  Cub and his partner talk to each other.  Be sure to keep the string taut but don't pull so hard that the string comes untaped.  Suggest they have a code word to indicate they are done talking, so each knows when to change from listening mode to speaking mode.

Other ideas for dens
National Capital Area Council

Take a tour of your local newspaper’s facility.

Visit the telephone company’s offices.

Take a tour of a TV or radio station.

Start/make a den scrapbook.

Sam Houston Area Council

Practice your phone skills by holding the meeting over the phone.  Set up a telephone schedule the previous week with the time that each boy is to call another.  Give each boy a message to give to the others a week ahead of time.  Put it in a sealed envelope and put them on their honor to open it only on the day of the calls.

On the day of the stay-home meeting, the boys should open their envelopes and keep their calling schedule.  They should write down the messages that you gave them to share with one another.  Have them bring the messages with them to the next den meeting.  Compare the messages that the boys wrote down with the messages you gave them.  Discuss how communication breaks down and how they can make it better.

:00 Boy 1 calls boy 5

        Boy 2 calls boy 6

        Boy 3 calls boy 7

        Boy 4 calls boy 8

:05 Boy 5 calls boy 2

        Boy 6 calls boy 3

        Boy 7 calls boy 4

        Boy 8 calls boy 1

:10 Boy 1 calls boy 6

        Boy 2 calls boy 7

        Boy 3 calls boy 8

        Boy 4 calls boy 5

:15 Boy 5 calls boy 3

        Boy 6 calls boy 4

        Boy 7 calls boy 1

        Boy 8 calls boy 2

:20 Boy 1 calls boy 2

        Boy 3 calls boy 4

        Boy 5 calls boy 6

        Boy 7 calls boy 8

:25 Boy 2 calls boy 3

        Boy 4 calls boy 1

        Boy 6 calls boy 7

        Boy 8 calls boy 5

:30 Boy 1 calls boy 3

        Boy 4 calls boy 2

        Boy 5 calls boy 7

        Boy 8 calls boy 6

:35 Boy 1 call Den Leader

:38 Boy 2 call Den Leader

:41 Boy 3 call Den Leader

:44 Boy 4call Den Leader

:47 Boy 5 call Den Leader

:50 Boy 6 call Den Leader

:53 Boy 7 call Den Leader

:56 Boy 8 call Den Leader

Stay on time!  If a boy is missing or you do not have eight boys, give byes to those who have no one to call.

Meeting Ideas
Circle 10 Council

Invite someone to your den meeting who know sign language.

Have the boys make up their own form of communication for the future.  How will we send messages—by radio, computer or other media?  They can make up their own alphabet and words for a world-wide language that all persons would use to communicate.

Below is an example of some simple ciphering

Caesar's cipher:

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZABCDEFG

            ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ