BALOO'S BUGLE Volume 15, Number 12 July 2009 Cub Scout Roundtable August 2009 Cub Scout Theme FUN IN THE SUN Tiger Cub Activities Webelos Naturalist & Forester FOCUS COMMISSIONER’S CORNER Cub Scout Roundtable Leaders’ Guide Alice is back!!!! Alice from Golden Empire Council sent Let's go outside and have some fun in the sun!!! It is a great me a great packet of stuff. They moved her roundtable dates time for a pack to have a picnic at the park. The Cub Scouts and she has been missing sending me items for Baloo. It and their families will get to know the new families and was really great to see her E-mail this month. welcome them to the pack. Everyone will enjoy great picnic I did not receive an E-mail from Bill Smith this month (or I food, fun games, and wonderful fellowship. Each den can lost it, a possibility, too) and when I tried to contact him, I plan a game or activity for this outing. Include a could not get to his site. I hope nothing bad has happened. Cub-anapolis 400 derby in the activities!!! The Training Topic is one of his about Planning. Apropos as we ready for our Annual Pack Planning Meetings. CORE VALUES Something is happening. I have received E-mails from Cub Scout Roundtable Leaders’ Guide Scouter Jim and Carol in Ohio, asking if I know what is up. Some of the purposes of Cub Scouting developed through The 09-10 CS Program Helps and the 09-10 CS Roundtable this month’s theme are: Planning Guides do not list themes for 2010-2011. Sportsmanship & Fitness, Cub Scouts will develop good sportsmanship while participating in outdoor From Jim Jones - "I guess you have heard the rumor BSA is games. dropping Cub Scout Monthly Themes beginning September 2010. Life goes on and things change. I don't have to "dial" Fun and Adventure, Cub Scouts will have fun a number and my Albums all have dust on them and turn building and racing Cub-anapolis 400 cars. tables are hard to find." Family Understanding, Cub Scouts and their Carol told me she had heard there will be a presentation on families will spend a fun-filled day at the picnic. changes for Cub Scouting at the "Top Hands" meeting this The core value highlighted this month is: summer. After that I guess we will all know. Respect, Cub Scouts will gain a better understanding I will be at Philmont for a trek July 11 - 25. My daughter of what they need to do to be courteous while playing is going with me and 54 other Scouts and Scouters. It will games at the picnic. be a blast but prepping gets harder every time. Can you think of others??? Hint – look in your Cub Scout Our Webelos Resident Camp, "One Small Step Now. Program Helps. It lists different ones!! All the items on Soon, One Giant Leap," at the end of June was a major both lists are applicable!! You could probably list all twelve success. Attendance at Webelos Resident in our council has if you thought about it!! doubled since Jodi and I became the directors. We are Character Connections Ideas from Program Helps almost at the limit of eh dining hall at our Pine Hill Scout Sam Houston Area Council Reservation!! Philmont Prep and Webelos Resident - that is why Baloo is a little late Respect. Boys learn to respect nature as they learn how to take care of it. Health and Fitness. Spending time outdoors is important to physical and mental well-being. Cub Scouts learn that playing games and being active is a fun way to be fit. Do you see the Tooth of Time in the boot heel?? BALOO'S BUGLE PAGE 2 Fast Tracks Our pack was chosen to be a trial user this year and so I have THOUGHTFUL ITEMS FOR been looking over the material on National's website under Fast Tracks. This is a different approach to advancement SCOUTERS that National has been trying out with selected units. You Thanks to Scouter Jim from Bountiful, Utah, who prepares can get the info at this section of Baloo for us each month. You can reach him at [email protected] or through the link to write http://www.scouting.org/CubScouts/FastTracks.aspx Baloo on www.usscouts.org. CD It puts more advancement in Den Meetings and makes the Roundtable Prayer parents part a little more defined. Instead of saying to the CS Roundtable Planning Guide parents, "You should do something in the book with your Great Spirit, thank you for this beautiful sunny day and for son this week," you would say, "You need to do the time we spend with our children. Help us appreciate this Achievement 42, parts t, u, and v, this week because next moment and cherish the memory of their happy faces and week … ." The meetings seem really "power packed" with laughter. AMEN activity. The boys stay really involved. Check it out! Sam Houston Area Council Months with similar themes to Please watch over us as we play outside in the warmth and Fun in the Sun brightness of Your love. Amen. Dave D. in Illinois From Program Helps The original name of this theme was "Family Picnics' and Oregon Trail Council reading the vignettes, I think that is still the intent. So here Check out – are two sets of past themes you may wish to use. CD Warmth from Inside, 2 AUG 09 Month Name Year Theme The Great Outdoors Scouter Jim, Bountiful UT Family Fun Those things which can best be taught June 1946 Family Fun outdoors should there be taught. LB Sharp August 1954 Annual Picnic I remember my first outdoor experience without adult August 1966 Family Fun supervision. My family had moved to southeastern Utah on July 1981 Family Picnic a secluded Ranch, nine miles from the main highway at the August 1983 Family Fun foot of majestic Mt Peale in the Manti La Sal Mountains. I and a school friend from the small two classroom school April 1987 Family ShowTime decided we wanted to go camping one summer. My father January 1997 Family ShowTime and mother took us up out on the mountain, north of town a few miles. We had a beautiful camping spot at the bottom of Outdoor Fun a canyon next to a flowing steam, protected stinging nettle Cubbing Moves into the June 1941 bushes. This was, and still is wild country. We were Backyard unpacked and my parents help set up our camp and left us on July 1944 Back Yard Camping our own. We were both city boys transplanted to this tiny June 1953 Summertime Adventure county town by our father’s employment. As night quickly fell, the sounds of nature started to get louder. There were August 1955 Outdoor Fun no light, just the moon, stars and the small flashlights we had August 1957 Good Old Summertime brought with us. We didn’t even have a camp fire as this July 1966 Summertime Adventure was such a wild area, there was not safe place to build one. We heard crickets, and then the distant howl of coyotes. We August 1967 Outdoor Fun imagined cougars and bears, both plentiful on the mountain, June 1971 Outdoor Fun just waiting for us to crawl into our sleeping bags to attack. July 1975 Summer Adventure The more we listened the more we talked the more scarred we became. Finally we picked up what few things we could July 1984 Fun in the Sun carry and started the three miles cross country back home. August 1989 Outdoor Festival Dirt mountain roads being what they were, we beat my July 1992 Fun in the Sun parents back home by a few minutes. My dad made us spend the night in the back yard, but we had a yard light to June 2003 Fun in the Sun keep us company. I never spent a night in those mountains August 2008 S'More Summer Fun in the year and a half we were there, but I learned a love of the outdoors. I hiked that mountain and saw the wonders there, in the full light of day. I still remember the day I hiked to the top of a hill and there before me was an unspoiled lake in the bottom of the valley surrounded by pine trees. BALOO'S BUGLE PAGE 3 The day would come after I became a Boy Scout and we If you saw a heat wave, would you wave back? moved back to the city, that I would begin to camp, but I Steven Wright would hike the rest of my youth, exploring the mountains The true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task close to my home. Sometimes I would take my dog and let garden; heaven is a playground. G. K. Chesterton him run as I hiked the mountain to a place where I could sit People rarely succeed unless they have fun in what they are and look out across the valley and the Great Salt Lake and doing. Dale Carnegie Antelope Island. I would try to see in my mind’s eye what it It is a happy talent to know how to play. all looked like before the first white man settled here. What Ralph Waldo Emerson was it like when Jim Bridger waded out into the briny waters in the winter of 1824-25 and took his first drink, then spit it When we seek to discover the best in others, we somehow out, realizing that it was not a fresh water lake.