From: jim.speirs@canrem.com (Jim Speirs)
To: dannys@iis.ee.ethz.ch (Danny Schwendener)
Subject: Working with... Hyper Boys in Spring
Summary: The autor's favorite springtime activities


Article #R145.
==============


Working with... Hyper Boys in Spring
David Goss
The Leader, March 1977


This article was written in the shade of a silver maple tree in a
downtown square in my home town, but most of the ideas were thought up
in late winter, when the idea of warmer days to come was all that kept
me plugging through the slush and mud. I hope some of these ideas coax
you and your lads outdoors. 


A Young Man's Fancy

"In the spring, a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of
love." So say the familiar lines. Most of my Scouts wouldn't have been
caught dead with a girl on a Scout night.

Except once.

One of the lads had quite a steady relationship with a member of the
local Guide company. I decided we would test this relationship. Two
patrols in the troop were given her phone number and the following
instructions:

"Diane is supposed to have eyes only for Scott. Your mission is to
call Diane, dream up a good reason for her to come and meet you on the
corner of Guilford and Winslow Streets, and then to convince her that
Scott is not keeping true to her. Finally, one member of the patrol is
to arrange a date with Diane. You may make only one phone call, so
work up a good story which will be certain to convince her of your
sincerity."

Meanwhile, I had tipped off Diane, and told her to expect the phone
calls, but under no circumstances was she to agree to leave her home,
or to meet with the patrols.

On the night of the event, the Scouts worked out their stories. They
called Diane. They begged and pleaded, sent messengers to her door,
implored her to come to her window to witness her unfaithful suitor.
But their efforts were to no avail. They got nowhere at all with
Diane. But they did get out, and they did do something a bit different
from the routine troop meeting. And they did it themselves. These are
the three criteria I always use in setting up outdoor activities in
the spring.


Hot Coal Cooking

One of our favourite springtime activities was cooking supper over hot
coals. Usually I'd select two boys to light the coals, provide them
with 20 pounds of charcoal, and tell them where we wanted the fire
prepared. They would leave right after school to prepare everything.
The rest of the troop would arrive at headquarters at 5 p.m. with
their foil wrapped dinners, to find a map on the church door
indicating the location of the cookout fire. The boys would then walk
to the fire location where the leaders and the two firelighters would
be waiting. After everyone had a chance to cook their foil packages we
would round out the evening with a few outdoor games.

As a variation, we sometimes had supper at the church hall following
an outing. On these occasions the boys would have been told to meet at
some phone booth a certain distance from headquarters at precisely 5
p.m. At 5:05 p.m. the phone would ring, and the caller would give the
locations of four pieces of a map. These would be rather difficult map
pieces to get: with one left on a certain bus to pass by the phone
booth; another left with a local mechanic in the service station who
had, unfortunately, gone home for supper, and the like. However, once
the boys had used their resources to procure the pieces, a good reward
was in store for them, for the maps indicated four houses nearby where
they would call for a hot casserole supper dish which they then
transported to headquarters. At the church hall, members of the group
committee were busy preparing the tables for the coming banquet.

Still another variation was to have four parents set up their
barbecues in their backyards, and have the troop members travel from
home to home in order to try a little food at each fire. Simple items
like hot dogs, kabobs and fritters, with a cool drink at each stop
seemed to satisfy our boys.

On other occasions, I recall cooking on hot coals ten feet off the
ground, trying to cook a meal on the back of a bike rack while
pedalling from headquarters to some distant point and returning before
the meal burned and cooking a meal in a fry pan while hiking over a
nature trail. In fact, our lads became so well known for hot coal
cookouts, that we were even requested to put on a demonstration for a
Scouters' training session.


Baseball

Scouts are notorious baseball players. At least mine were. They were
so bad that I figured I'd better find a troop somewhere they could
beat. So I arranged a game with a suburban troop, certain that they'd
be much too busy hewing logs and hauling water to know a horsehide
from a cowhide. Don't let those suburban boys fool you! They beat us
43-0.

Still, we always play a game or two of ball every spring. The type I
favour is the kind where all of one side bats regardless of how many
are out, and when everyone has batted, the sides change. The other
team then comes up and goes through the batting order. Another game we
had a lot of fun with was playing ball using a plastic ball and bat;
using a ping pong ball and paddle, following the above rules was also
fun.

Two programs I never got around to running, but which I think would
work well in a troop with a few older lads. were tennis and golf
instructions. Of course, both would be very basic introductory lessons
and would probably be arranged through some amateur in the group or
church.


Natural World in the City

Despite man's best efforts at covering the earth with asphalt, there
remains in every city, places where modern Scoutcraft skills can be
tried out. For instance you might try:

- Bird counts, bee counts or butterfly counts.

- Tree, wildflower or weed census in a vacant lot.

- A tree planting ceremony with the local civic improvement council
present.

- A troop garden plot with a vegetable growing project.

- A wild, edible food search--some easy ones being dandelions, cat's
tail, strawberries and teas made from various berry plants.

- A litter hunt with each group assigned to collect different colours
of cardboard litter and to return to troop headquarters to cut up the
cardboard and produce a collage of some sort or logo meaningful to the
Scouting program.

- Paint a natural picture by gathering wild weeds and making colours
from them suitable to do a painting.

- Study a square foot of soil and see how many different animals and
plants you can identify. Compare a city patch of land to a suburban
one, or a patch of land from a park to one located near an industry.

- Do a biodegradability study. Select a number of items which normally
get thrown out in your garbage. Cut them in two and have the members
of the troop bury one half of each under six inches of soil in various
locations around the community. Store the other half of the items in a
safe place. After a month, return to the buried items and dig them up.
Compare them to the stored half to see if they have decomposed at all.
This experiment will make your boys aware of how long a discarded tin
or paper container remains by the roadside as pollution.


Things That Fly

Our troop has been fortunate in having a square just opposite the
meeting hall which has a high hill as its main geographical feature.
So, over the years we've tried to fly a number of projects from the
hill. The most successful have been kites built from many plans,
ranging from elaborate box kites to simple garbage bag models. Other
flying projects have included mini-parachutes, paper and stick
airplanes, hot air gondolas, boomerangs, frisbees and model airplanes
which were demonstrated by an interested person. Each of these
programs gave us an excuse for spending all or part of our meeting on
the hill where one of the best views is available of the sun setting
over our city. I don't know if any of the boys enjoyed the last rays
of daylight, but it certainly made my day after a stint of pushing a
pencil in a busy office.


Bicycles

The rediscovery of the bicycle has widened the horizons of our outdoor
program, and it can do the same for yours. Until the last few years an
outdoor excursion for our boys meant a visit to one of three or four
locations within walking distance of headquarters. Now, with nearly
all the boys owning or having access to a ten-speed, we have been able
to travel clear across town. This has enabled us to visit beaches for
swimming events, local historical attractions, distant nature trails,
the children's zoo and other unfamiliar surroundings. We have also
held a number of bicycle safety courses, complete with tests of skill
administered by our local police. Once our boys became skilled we
passed on their information and skills to our group's Cubs and
Brownies. All good fun and 'learning by doing' comes right back to the
basics of good Scouting.


The Good Turn

The first days of spring usually show that garbage as well as snow,
fell regularly during the winter. Our troop has usually taken a bit of
time each spring to try to correct the situation around our meeting
hall. We usually started with a clean-up of the grounds around the
building, the church cellar and the troop room. A steady diet of
clean-up doesn't appeal strongly to boys, so I usually made a game out
of it. For instance, the television commercial where the fellow comes
rushing out of his house and has his garbage bags break in front of
his neighbours, appeals to the sense of humour of the boys.

So we issue garbage bags and challenge the boys to see who can pick up
the heaviest load without breaking the bag. The suspense really keeps
them working and the odd broken bag really 'breaks' them up with
laughter.

Other ideas include litter chases, building a litter monster, or, if
recycling is available in your community, making a fund-raising event
out of a good turn.

Don't carry things too far though. I often get annoyed at being called
by some well-meaning community agency and being asked to have the
troop act as litter chasers during a walkathon or similar event. Being
a service organization doesn't mean we have to accept the lowest job
on the totem pole. One litter event per year is enough for most boys,
and is plenty, to make them aware of the problem of a throw-away
society.

Other good turns include straightening road signs, cutting brush from
these signs, tidying a picnic site, checking local nature trails for
windfalls and walking hazards, preparing flower beds for senior
citizens, collecting waste newspapers, leading a hike for a local
hospital or handicapped group, distributing flyers or posters for your
local Canada Week celebrations and taking part in flag ceremonies or
parades in summer celebrations in your community.

If the above activities are carried out properly they will help to
make Scouting visible and attractive in your town, as well as provide
an outlet for the energy of your active boys.

Many Scouters are reluctant to move outside their troop meeting hall
for troop night activities. Their greatest concern is that some of the
boys might misbehave and bring shame to Scouting in general.

There is no denying that there will be some mischief on your outings.
There always was on mine. You must remember that you are much more
aware of your boys' shortcomings than the general public.

With me, it simply comes down to a balance between the rewards of an
outdoor program on a spring night and possible criticism from isolated
incidents.

The outdoors decision is simple to make and one I hope this article
will encourage you to make if you too, have 'hyper boys in spring.'