PRE-OPENING ACTIVITY

Have your Cubs soar with paper airplanes and helicopters!!  They can make these or design their own.  If you want you set up contests for distance or design or …

Flying Paper Wing

Santa Clara County Council

Find some scrap paper, and try to fold this paper airplane.  Remember to recycle the paper when you are done.

Paper Copter

Santa Clara County Council

Construct this paper helicopter from colored card stock (80 lb. paper).  To make the copter snip faster, attach a large paper clip to the bottom flap or tape on a penny.

Make a Kite
The Big Wind Kite Factory, Molokai, Hawaii

These directions are from The Big Wind Kite Factory website, www.molokai.com/kites .  They encourage people to copy and use them. The amounts are for 20 kites, you will need to adjust to your den’s (or pack’s) size.  There are many letters on the site from across the country with success stories making these kites.  Take some time and visit their site.  CD

20 Kids * 20 Kites * 20 Minutes

Uncle Jonathan's easiest classroom kites ever.

For over 15 years the Big Wind Kite Factory has been giving kite-making classes for the children on the island of Moloka'i in Hawai'i. These are the complete time tested instructions to get 20 kids making their own kites and flying them in 20 minutes.

Material list:

·         20 sheets of brightly colored 8 1/2" x 11" typing paper.

·         20 8" bamboo bar-b-que shish-ke-bob sticks.

·         1 roll of florescent surveyor's flagging plastic tape. A plastic bag cut in a 1" wide spiral can also make a great tail.

·         1 roll 1/2"wide masking tape or other plastic tape..

·         1 roll of string. (Allow 6 to 10 feet for each child.)

·         20 pieces of 1"x 3" cardboard to wind the string onto.

·         Scissors.

·         Hole punch. (optional)

Directions:

1.        Fold an 8 1/2" x 11" paper in half to 8 1/2" x 5 1/2".

2.       Placing the fold on the left and the open edge on the right, fold again along the diagonal line A in Fig.2.  One teacher wrote in to say that point A should be about ¾ inch and point B about 2 ½ inch from fold

3.       Fold back one side forming kite shape in Fig.3 and place tape firmly along fold line AB.(No stick is needed here because the fold stiffens the paper and acts like a spine.) I went to the website and looked at the photographs of a kite being made to figure this step out.  Commissioner Dave

4.        Place bar-b-que stick from point C to D and tape it down firmly.

5.        Cut off 6 to 10 feet of plastic ribbon and tape it to the bottom of the kite at B.

6.       
Flip kite over onto its back and fold the front flap back and forth until it stands straight up.(Otherwise it acts like a rudder and the kite spins around in circles.)

7.        Punch a hole in the flap at E, about 1/3 down from the top point A.

8.        Tie one end of the string to the hole and wind the other end onto the cardboard string winder.

Astronaut Training
Viking Council

Have beanbags, jump ropes and rubber balls available for Cub astronauts to "train" as they gather.

Set up stations for the boys to use with short direction cards (such as jump rope five times, toss beanbag over head and catch etc.) OR have the Denner or Den Chief supervise the events.  (Note – with a few simple twists this can then be used later for relay race.  See Games section)

Moon Rock Toss
Viking Council

Each Cub will need five small stones, each with the same color marked on them.  Use several colors of markers.  It's all right to have duplications in the colors. 

Distribute the moon rocks to Cubs as they arrive.  Cubs challenge each other only if they have different colors on their stones.  To play, they throw stones toward an empty can (moon craters).

The Cub who has the most stones landing in the crater now can challenge someone else.

Refueling
Viking Council

Buy a bottle of soft drink for each boy in your den.  Open them and pour contents into a large metal pitcher.  Rinse out the bottles and let dry.

Set up a "re-fueling" station in your kitchen, complete with goggles, plastic apron, rubber gloves, and other "scientific looking" things.  Make warning signs about radiation etc.

As the boys arrive, outfit them up and instruct them to "refuel" one soft drink bottle by pouring the mystery fuel through a funnel.

Astronaut Eggs
Viking Council

Scientists spend a lot of time making an astronaut's journey safe.  For the pre-opening activity have the Cubs pack an egg so that it can survive a ten foot drop onto a hard surface.

Materials needed; eggs, ziploc bags, tape, Styrofoam sandwich box, packing materials such as cotton, newspaper, peanuts, grass, leaves, etc.

Put the egg inside the ziploc bag, then pack it any way you want inside the box.  Tape the box well and write name on it.  Drop the boxes from a balcony, or high place, the check to see whose egg survived.

Star Hunt

Southern NJ Council

Tell the Cub Scouts that they are to look for a hidden star. Unknown to the players, a small, silver, gummed-back star is attached to the clothing of each of them. On signal, all move around and try to find the star. As each boy locates it, he goes quietly to his seat.

Outer Space Quiz
York Adams Council

Using the wonderful world of the Internet or old (but expendable!) magazines, cut out space photos, letter each one with a sequential letter, and hang them around the meeting room.  As people arrive, hand them lists of the photo titles (in a mixed up order) and ask them to match the photos with the titles.  Once the meeting gets under way, see how many people were able to get all, many, or some of the matches correct.

Planets Quiz
Shirley Elliott, Montana

1.        How many planets are there?                                        

(9)

2.        Which planet is nearest the sun?                     

(Mercury)

3.        The largest planet is ...                                          

(Jupiter)

4.        Name two planets with rings                                                 

(Saturn, Neptune, Uranus, Jupiter )

5.        Name the planets in order from the sun.

(Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto)

6.        What two kinds of energy do we get from the sun?

(heat, light)

7.        Earth is nearer to the sun in ...                               

(winter)

8.        What galaxy is the sun in?                           

(Milky Way)

9.        Which constellation contains the North Star?

(Little Dipper)

10.     Earth's nearest neighbor in space is ...                  

(moon)

11.     What time of day would your shadow be longer, 9:00 am or 12:00 noon?        

(9:00 am)

Gathering Activities

Circle Ten Council

This is how you memorize the order of the planets:

“My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas”

The first letter in each word gives the first letter in the names of the planets in order from the sun.

Have the boys say the phrase, then name all the planets. Divide group into two or three sections had have them do it in a round.  (Mercury, Venus. Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto)

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