CLOSING CEREMONIES
I'm A Boy
Circle Ten
Council
Cub
# 1.
Everyone cannot be brilliant, everyone cannot be smart.
Cub
# 2.
I may not be a genius, but I can build a neat go-cart.
Cub
# 3.
I can dam a stream with boulders,
Cub
# 4.
I can climb trees to the top.
Cub
# 5.
I can run for blocks and blocks and never even stop.
Cub
# 6.
I can't solve a chemical equation or lecture on Newton's rule, but
I can make a peanut butter sandwich that will really make you drool.
Cub
# 7.
I don't know much about flowers, but smelling them is a joy.
Cub
# 8.
I don't think I'm a failure.
All I'm a genius at being a boy.
SLOGAN
CLOSING CEREMONY
Sam Houston
Area Council
Arrangement: Cub Scouts hold up cards with slogans as
they ready their lines.
Cub
# 1:
DO YOUR BEST in everything you do life's way.
Cub
# 2:
ALWAYS BE FRIENDLY to brighten others' day.
Cub
# 3:
GIVE AWAY YOUR SMILES for it is rewarding indeed.
Cub
# 4:
BE PREPARED to help others in their daily need.
Cub
# 5:
BE HONEST AND SINCERE toward others you meet.
Cub
# 6:
BE LOYAL AND TRUE, a most commendable feat.
Cub
# 7:
COUNT YOUR BLESSINGS, being thankful for each day, for life's
wonderful opportunities that come your way.
Cub
# 8:
Good night to each and every one of you. May these thoughts stay
with you, your whole life through.
THE MANY SIDES OF A CUB SCOUT
Sam Houston
Area Council
DEN
LEADER: We will try to show you the many sides to the little boys we so
proudly call son, but remember, these are all one boy.
Cub
# 1:
1'm the one all-full of dirt, so very sure that soap and water will
hurt.
Cub
# 2:
I'm the one who lives in his dreams, always off on a cloud, at
least that's how it seems.
Cub
# 3:
1'm the show-off and athlete. I just can't stand to get
best.
Cub
# 4:
I'm the pouter, sensitive and shy, but I try to make people think
1'm a real tough guy.
Cub
# 5:
I'm the angel, neat and obedient. Mom wouldn't trade a day with me
for all the money in the mint.
Cub
# 6:
I'm the Cub Scout, the one we boys like best. That's cause I'm
different from all the rest.
Cub
# 7:
So everyone please join us as we say the Promise we try to live by
every day.
DEN
LEADER: They're all these boys and even more. There are lots of surprises
for you in store. So love the, protect them, and try to understand. It's a
very hard job growing up to be a man!
Cubmaster’s Minutes
Walk In
Baden-Powell’s Shoes
Circle Ten
Council
As the nineteenth
century ended, men on both sides of the Atlantic worried about boys,
especially poor immigrant boys in the teeming cities, who seemed destined for
delinquency or poverty. Ernest Thompson Seton, a Canadian naturalist, wildlife
painter, and children's author, summed up these anxieties: "It is the
exception when we see a boy respectful of his superiors and obedient to his
parents, handy with tools and capable of taking care of himself, under all
circumstances whose life is absolutely governed by the safe old moral
standards." Seton looked around for "robust, manly, self-reliant boyhood," and
found instead "a lot of flat-chested cigarette smokers, with shaky nerves and
a doubtful vitality"—just as his British contemporaries found an alarming
number of young men unfit for the draft.
These concerned men responded by creating a host of
character-building organizations, the most powerful of which was the Boy
Scouts. The organization grew out of Seton's newly created boys' group, the
Woodcraft Indians, and the insights of an ebullient British war hero, Robert
Baden-Powell. Lord Baden-Powell had returned to England from the Boer War in
1903 to find children devouring a soldiers' scouting manual he had written.
Teachers urged him to revise the manual for boys, and Baden-Powell, inspired
by Seton's Woodcraft Indians handbook, seized the challenge.
He envisioned a new organization that would draw on
wartime scouting lore and ancient codes of chivalry to teach boys the
Victorian virtues. King Arthur's Round Table, Baden-Powell understood,
resonated in boys' souls, for it symbolized the marriage of strength and
goodness, by contrast with today's "gangsta" culture, which defines manliness
as violently predatory. The aim of this new organization, Baden-Powell wrote
in 1906, "is to develop among boys a power of sympathizing with others, and a
spirit of self-sacrifice and patriotism."
Baden-Powell believed that Scouting's core virtues of
selflessness and the cheerful performance of duty were as valid for the poor
as for the upper and middle classes. "Everything on two legs that calls itself
a boy has God in him," he insisted, "although he may—through the artificial
environment of modern civilization—be the most arrant little thief, liar, and
filth-monger . Our job is to give him a chance." Respect for others, without
class distinctions, was a scout's universal duty.
We are taught tolerance for others, respect for our
difference, compassion for those less fortunate. We all walk in the same
shoes. Those of a Scout and a Scouter. May we always remember to treat each
other with goodwill. Goodnight.
