Monday
October 19

Tonight was the "extra" den meeting night I lobbied for, when I found out that last week's meeting had been taken over by a flag retirement ceremony. Then last week the rain canceled the ceremony and we had a den meeting anyway. So tonight was another night of piecing together a few remnants of my original lesson plans.

Only Justice and Joshua were there tonight. And since both of them have already had the chance to carry the US flag in our den's flag ceremony, I decided to skip that for tonight, and wait until a night when one of the other two boys were there so they could have a chance carrying the flag. Don't know why James was out, and I don't know whether Tyler will be coming back or not. I sent an email to say that we've been missing him, and to encourage him to keep working on learning his Bobcat requirements, but I didn't hear anything. Tim said he was going to contact them as well.

I wanted to get a little closer to wrapping up the unit on Flags, so I went over what little information I could find on the Mississippi flag (2d) and explained the process of raising and lowering the flag on a flagpole (2e). Basically that you have to stand at attention the whole time, and use the proper salute - if in uniform use the cub scout salute, if out of uniform just put your hand over your heart.

Next I passed out the health habits chart that the boys have to keep up with for the next two weeks. They could have made their own, but I had a sample one in my lesson plans so I made a copy for everybody. (3a) They have to keep track of every time they bathe, brush their teeth, drink water, get plenty of rest, get some exercise outdoors, and wash hands.

Before wrapping up this portion of the meeting I reminded the boys to think about what they were going to collect (a requirement we'll be working on in a few weeks), and to keep looking for articles about people who are helping the environment. I also asked them to either come a few minutes early next week to help set up for the Halloween Party, or to be prepared to help clean up afterwards. That's also one of their electives. We're definitely going to be busy this year!

Next came the fun part of the meeting. I had already arranged through the church to bring the boys over to the gym to work on some of their sports electives. We started out with demonstrating a sprint start in track and seeing how far they could run in 10 seconds. (20h) Next they had to do a standing long jump. Mine was pitiful! (20i) And then I stretched the guidelines a little bit, when they said to play a game of basketball. First they had to demonstrate dribbling, passing and shooting. They did that fairly well. But it's kind of hard to play a game of basketball with just two boys. With our den, though, this is about as good as we're going to get, so I let them go ahead and count it as credit, since a main part of it was focusing on the skills of the game. Now, I wouldn't go so far as to give credit for this toward the basketball belt loop award, but for one of these electives, that have to be combined with 9 others to receive an award, I don't feel too bad about that. (20m)

We still had some time left over, so we went into the front part of the activities building and I let Jay handle explaining table tennis to the boys. Joshua's already familiar with the basic concepts from playing various Wii games, plus I think on play night at the church he might have gotten in a little practice. Justice on the other hand was getting frustrated, mainly because he kept hitting the ball too hard and missing the table. But they learned the basic rules and played a game together. (20a)

After this we did our closing ceremony and dismissed a little earlier than normal.

Joshua's progress from tonight's meeting - he had already completed the two requirements from the flag unit, but he was able to count all four of the sports electives. This gives him a total of 2.3 Silver Arrow Points earned!

Next week is the Pack Meeting and Halloween Party. Should be a lot of fun!