Wrapping Up with My Den

Even though graduation was on May 12th, my den is having our end of year picnic on June 14th, just due to schedules.  As Bears, we worked really hard on the Scout Law.  This end of year picnic is a celebration of each of the boys recognizing how they lived by the law during their meetings.  At the end of each meeting, I asked the boys to say which point of the law another scout lived during the meeting.  Having the boys observe each other, learn what each point really means, and verbalize how someone else lived a point of the law, was such a good practice.  I had to help at times, and I would ask if they agreed with my observation.  They didn't always agree with me of the person who noticed something about them.   This started after a particularly painful visit to the police station, a required field trip.  It was a very long visit, and the boys lost it.  They lost it before it was overly long, though.

As a way of reining them back in and getting them to focus on their behavior, I promised them a party after they had lived all the points of the law during meetings.  Reverent I allowed for outside the meeting, I counted church or other ways of living their faith or acting out their faith.   That was way back in October, and it took us until our final meeting in May to make it all happen.  But I'm so proud of the boys for looking for the good in their fellow scouts.  I happen to have a scout who doesn't go with the flow easily and is very tempermental.  When we started this program, the other boys were having a hard time finding something positive about him, how he lived the law.  By the end, things were coming far more easily to the boys.

The picture shows the neckerchief slides I made and am going to give to them at our picnic.  I'm so excited by how they turned out.  I love to see my Scouts wearing the neckerchief slides I make for them!