From: jim.speirs@canrem.com (Jim Speirs) To: dannys@iis.ee.ethz.ch (Danny Schwendener) Subject: Taking Meetings Out Article #R96. ============= Taking Meetings Out Linda Florence The Leader, October 1989 Add to your repertoire of outdoor ideas for meeting nights with some of these suggestions. Often an activity aimed at one section can be adapted or expanded to suit another. We hope some of these thoughts trigger your own new approaches suited to your members and locale. Discovery Soil Chefs: Sharing (p. 23) offers ideas to help Beavers become familiar with green patches near the Pond. One thing they can discover is what happens to nature's cast-off leaves and dead plant matter. After a few visits to their patch to see the changes taking place, they can make their own soil. Cubs might take it further by learning how composting works and starting composts at home to make soil for star and badge "growing" activities in the spring. Bring in kitchen scraps (peelings, leaves, eggshells, apple cores) and collect dead leaves and other organic material from your green patch. Give each lodge (or six) a plastic bag, two cups scraps and leaves, one cup soil, and some water. Cut up or tear the scraps into small pieces, put them and the soil in a plastic bag, and add water to moisten the mixture. Blow into the bag to inflate it slightly, close tightly with a twist tie, and give it a good shake. Over six to eight weeks, ask a member of each group to take home the bag shake it well each day, and return it the next week. At the meeting, open the bags a minute to let in more air and reseal. How long does it take to make soil? Have each group plant some seeds in the soil they made. One Minute Field Trip: Here's a particularly good activity for Beavers or Cubs on cold winter nights. Set boundaries for the search area and a 60 second time limit. Send out Beavers in lodges to locate, but not bring back, two different things. Send out pairs of Cubs to find two things or sixes with a longer list of items to locate in the time limit. Gather to talk about what they found and where. At the next meeting, leaders can lead other groups to their finds (or to signs of living things they found). The items on the list might include: something smooth; something rough, a living thing; a dead thing; a source of food; something brown; a type of shelter; something circular; something really neat; something very old; something very young; two things that are alike; the tallest thing; something that is changing; something with more than two colours; something moist; something strong-smelling; a loud sound; something you dislike; something hard; something soft; your favourite thing. All About Town. Cubs, Scouts and Venturers can gain from these activities. Cubs work in sixes with a leader in a more restricted area than Scouts, who travel in patrols without a leader. You can have each group tackle an activity a night or give each group a different assignment and collect all the information during one or two meetings, depending on how far afield they must go. 1. Compare prices. Give each group a list of items ranging from food and clothing to toys, appliances, gas and services. Ask them to find the best price in the neighbourhood for each of the items. 2. City Nature: Give groups field guides and send them to a well-urbanized area (the main shopping street, perhaps) to see how many different kinds of trees, plants, weeds, birds, animals, and insects or other critters they can spot. 3. Identify a number of different methods to travel from one point to another in your town or city. Test them out at the same time of day to learn which is quickest, cheapest, most comfortable, most accessible to disabled people, and most reliable. 4. Go out to collect interesting street and building names in a given area. Find out why they have these names and learn some town history. 5. Take photos of signs, unusual features on buildings, interesting roof tops, and the like in an area of your town. Number the photos and photocopy a set and a sketch map of the area for each group. (Patrols could do this to challenge other patrols.) Send out groups to find the things in the photos and mark their numbers on the appropriate places on the map. Challenge Fire Contest. Give each six or patrol an uncooked piece of spaghetti, a tin of water, and matches. Challenge them to make a fire and boil the spaghetti until it is soft enough to tie into a reef knot or bowline. Add challenge for Scouts by asking groups to build different types of fire lays and time the process to see how long it takes to boil water over each. Compare to stove or BBQ coal heating. Fire Lighter Test: Scouts can make various fire lighters and go out to test the effectiveness of each for starting a fire with dry wood and wet wood. 1. Shred 7.5 cm lengths of sisal and soak in linseed oil. 2. Roll four newspaper sheets into a tight roll and tie every 5 cm. Cut into lengths between the ties and soak in melted paraffin. 3. Cut candles into 7.5 cm lengths. 4. Cut dry sticks into fine shavings. 5. Try ideas they come up with themselves or have read or heard about (e.g. dryer lint, shredded milk cartons, etc.). Simply Fun Sasquatch Hunt: Have Scouts or Venturers make a trail of Sasquatch foot-prints (chalk? mud? in the snow?) for Cubs, and find five or six cooperative neighbours. Prepare a wild sketch of the Sasquatch and give each friendly neighbour part of the creature's description (e.g. 3 m tall and hairy; long green fuzzy arms; mad red eyes; etc.). Departing at intervals, sixes follow Sasquatch prints through the neighbourhood and to the doors of people who have spotted the beast and can give partial descriptions. Back at the meeting place, sixes pool the information they received and, with markers or crayons, draw a large colour picture of what they think the Sasquatch looks like. When they are done, bring out your master drawing so that they can compare. It takes a little imagination, organization, and preparation to put more outdoors into your program, but it pays off in enthusiastic young people eager to do and learn because Scouting is fun.