FOCUS

Cub Scouting Roundtable Planning Guide

What’s special about your state?  This month boys will find out.  Cub Scouts will visit historic places, theme parks, museums, and zoos.  Choose a city or historical site in your state to highlight.  Design a game that features a special aspect of your home state.  Take a trip, go to a ball game, or just have a family picnic in the park.  Pretend you are someone important in the history of your state, and see whether anyone can guess who it is.  How about some special local recipes that each den can prepare for the Pack Show?  Invite a guest speaker who can share something special about your state with the boys.  Use maps or collect tourist brochures to learn more about places to visit.  Your local historical society or library is a great place to get started.

CORE VALUES

Cub Scouting Roundtable Planning Guide

Some of the purposes of Cub Scouting developed through this month’s theme are:

ü       Good Citizenship, Cub Scouts learn citizenship skills and develop pride in their state as they gain knowledge and respect for the history and cultures that make their state special.

ü       Sportsmanship and Fitness, Cub Scouts learn about the importance of these by using state resources with regard to outdoor activities.

ü       Respectful Relationships, One Country, 50 great states, celebrating uniqueness and identity.

The core value highlighted this month is:

ü       Positive Attitude, Boys will take pride in discovering wonderful facts about their state.

Can you think of others??? Hint – look in your Cub Scout Program Helps.  It lists different ones!! All the items on both lists are applicable!!  You could probably list all twelve if you thought about it!!

COMMISSIONER’S CORNER

This is going to be a really different issue of Baloo’s Bugle.  I am going to outline a lot of ideas but I do not have the detail for all 50 states to fill in the blanks. That is going to be your job.  That is why I am making sure everyone knows the kid centered web sites for their state to find the information.

Before you start planning though, I want you to carefully read the Focus paragraph from the Cub Scouting Roundtable Planning Guide.  What is it telling you to do??  That’s right – get outside!!  This is a May theme.  Not a middle of winter indoor activity theme.  National wants us to get out there and explore our states!!  Take your Cubs out to see what’s great about your state.  Please, do not turn this theme into paperwork exercises about state nicknames, birds, animals, trees and such.  In May boys want to be out doing things.  Take them there.  See if your council has a state park on the approved Cub Scout Family camping list (mine does!!) and take them there.  If they don’t – take your Cubs there for a day hike!  Or take them to a museum or a battleground like Gettysburg or Valley Forge or the Alamo.

Roundtable Commissioners – where I said go find out … for your state, I am hoping you will do that for your group (or your Pow Wow Committee has already done that and put it in the Pow Wow Book for you.)  Sorry to be so late this month.