Working Through Webelos

It's been a few days since we moved into my parents' house, so it's time to work on Webelos again, right?  Anyway, there are requirements that are just easier to accomplish in a house.  Like listing all the geologic materials you find in your house.  So we did some work on Earth Rocks!  Yesterday we visited Garden of the Gods to take a look at a great geologic site, and today we did an experiment taking us through the rock cycle.  

Balanced Rock.  We've been to a lot of really great geological sites, and inevitably there is a feature named balanced/balancing rock.  But I do so love to see the balancing rocks and how nature is just so amazing.          

K did a good job looking at the rocks and seeing their textures.  We watched some great videos on YouTube about geology.      

This is our simulated sedimentary rock.  We got this experiment from this video.  Who doesn't like working with Starburst?      

The melting process in its beginning stages.  Fortunately my mom has a hot plate, which is actually quite large, so all four of us got to melt ours at the same time.      

 

 

Three hours in, and I quit.  It was close enough, I felt, and I just didn't want to hover over it any longer.   Overall, we've enjoyed working on this elective adventure.  We've got more to do, but so far, so good!

Digging in the Past

We've got our first camp location picked out--Dinosaur National Monument in Utah!  We've been before, and we loved it, so it's exciting to get to see it again.  Since we'll be hitting the fossil trails, I thought we'd go ahead and squeeze in the Wolf adventure, Digging in the Past.  I had not originally planned on this one, but it makes sense.  We spent only two days on the adventure, but each day was longer than a regular den meeting would be normally.  My kids are dino-crazy, so they had a lot of fun with it.  I set my two oldest up with the Den Chief training, because I want them to have experience working with younger kids, helping an adult with activities, and practicing the skills of encouragement and generosity.  G is being Den Chief for J, so he worked with me to get all the activities and projects together.  He worked so well with J, encouraging him and showing him what to do.  Beauty in motion, beauty.in.motion.

The picture doesn't quite convey it, but there were two VERY different techniques being utilized.  Care and caution vs. reckless excavating.  I leave it to you to guess which was used by which kid.  

We all like to participate in any fun activity, so we actually had two dino digs going on.  K and NB have decided to be a den, since they're both Webelos age, so they worked together on a dino dig.  It was really exciting to see the imprint from the plastic dinosaurs we used on the plaster.  Everyone agreed, however, that though it was a fun project, we were never doing it again.  They had to clean up after it.  If I were the one who cleaned, they would ask to do it several more times.  Lesson learned.  Thank you, BSA.  Oh, and if other scouts are reading this, my kids ALL hated the layered snack.  It was too sweet and they really didn't like the way the animal cracker got mushy in the jello (we didn't let it sit long enough in the pudding for it to really get mushy there).

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!  

Lone Scout

One of the difficulties of this travel year is continuing the scouting program.  We're progressing as Lone Scouts.  We headed down to the Denver Area Council today.  Bill spoke with staff, I hit the store.  My boys have grown, so several shirts were needed, along with all NB's Webelos stuff and J's Wolf stuff.  G and NS have both earned their one rank since the new program was instated, so they both needed new books, and then NB and J just need their new year's books.  Oh, and all the belt loops and Webelos pins.  It was not a cheap visit! While I was off collecting all the stuff, Bill was off collecting paperwork and trying to get all angles taken care of with the staff.  Bill's been Cubmaster of our pack for 5.5 of the past 7 years, so part of his work today was making sure pack stuff got settled.  The other part was getting our Lone Scout applications and talking about what it's going to take for us to actually do this.  We came home with Lone Scout applications, Merit Badge Counselor applications, and a ton of info. I've also got Leader's books for Wolves and Webelos that I borrowed from last year's leaders.  I'll have to return them to the pack, but I get to get a feel for the adventures before handing them back.  We've actually started working on things, going over information and practicing skills.  I told my den that I would send them videos of our progress for this year, so they can see what we're doing and try some of that stuff themselves.  I actually picked up six elective pins for NB, so we'll get to show the den some cool things we're working on this year that they may not actually have thought about working on.  

Along with getting the new is finishing up the old.  Since NB earned his Bear, I went ahead and attached it to his uniform, but at the same time stripped it of everything that can go on his Webelos uniform.  I'll clean this bad boy and then promptly pack it away, another memory to store.