Monday
October 12

Tonight we had a flag retirement scheduled. We were supposed to meet at our local nature center, and one of the den leaders had this ceremony to go through with the boys, after which an old, tattered US flag would be buried. However, it has rained just about every day for the last couple of weeks, and today was no different. It probably wouldn't be raining during our meeting time, but we couldn't be sure.

So about 3 hours before the meeting time, the den leader contacted Jay and said let's just meet at the church and do this some other time. He couldn't get a response from Tim, so I sent an email to everybody to tell them about the change.

Having not really prepared for a meeting tonight, I looked over my lesson plans to see what I could pull together. I figured I could do a few activities from each of the next two sets of plans, and fill in any remaining time with some of the electives I had chosen as "filler" activities.

Our opening went fairly smoothly. The announcements were short, so we were in our meeting room before you knew it.

I started in the unit about the flag. We did two requirements - first, to discuss the proper care of the flag, and how to display it. Second, Jay found an old flag that was no longer on a pole and the boys took turns folding it properly. Joshua had done both of these at day camp.

Next I moved on to the unit about taking care of your body. We discussed several ways to stop the spread of cold germs - things you should and shouldn't do if you have a cold. Then I handed out bandaids, and we talked about how to take care of a small cut. Then each boy put their bandaid on their Mom or Dad. Again, Joshua had done both of these at day camp.

Moving on to a couple of electives - first we did a little more work on our target for the beanbag throw game. I cut out the target spaces from the box, then let the boys decorate the box with markers.

Second I passed out a sheet of paper and showed them a couple of secret codes that were mentioned in their handbook. One was to assign each letter a number, the other was to assign each letter another letter, by writing the alphabet backward. (So A would be Z, B would be Y, etc.) I showed them how it worked, they figured out a coded sentence in the handbook, then I asked them to choose one of the codes and to write their own coded message. When they were finished they passed their paper around the circle and solved each other's code. Amazingly enough they all chose the number code, and all wrote their names. So much for creativity! But this was an elective all of them could count, and they thought it was pretty cool.

Once again we were the last den to leave for the night. Not sure how I always manage that, but I guess it's alright. We're making good progress. So far, even though I've had to shuffle some things around, we are still right on track with my lesson plans.

Next week we are supposed to go to the gym. Now that should be interesting! Tyler wasn't there again tonight so I sent him an email to check up on him. Hopefully he will be back - he was in another pack last year but didn't stick with it for some reason, so I was really hoping he would get into it this year.

Joshua's progress as of tonight's meeting - one additional elective completed.