Collecting Belt Loops and Requirements

I recently ran across a program that is perfect for the Collecting Belt Loop and the Wolf Den Collecting Requirements in section 6.

Topps, Upper Deck, Major League Baseball and others, have started an organization called Baseball Card Clubhouse. Participating stores will give your scouts a free Baseball Card Collectors kit with baseball cards and a baseball card collecting patch!

This fulfills:

• Wolf Requirement 6B Make a collection of 10 things and put them together in a neat way.
• If they show and explain their collection to someone else, that satisfies the Wolf Requirement 6C.

Collecting Belt Loop:

• Begin a collection of at least 10 items, title and label your collection.
• Display your collection at a den or pack meeting.
• Visit a show or museum that displays different collections.

For more information or to find a participating store near you, visit www.baseballcardclubhouse.com

2008 Year of the Volunteer

Scouting Magazine has a short survey online to help provide them with a focus group for the magazine. They have an awesome iron on that they are sending to anyone who completes the 5 minute survey. Unfortunately, I can not find a picture of it online! But it is a goodlooking Iron On for the Adult leaders.

Visit www.scouting.org/bsasurveycenter
Password is SCOUTING (in all capital letters)

Who doesn't love slime?

Are you working on the Science Belt Loop or the Science Pin? Here is a fun and easy experiment, and more importantly all around fun project. Making home made slime is quick, easy and you probably have everything you need at home. This "slime" is the same stuff that that is also known as "fart putty" if you are familiar with that.

Supplies needed to make Slime:

Bowl number 1:

• 4 oz of Elmer's Glue
• 4 oz of water
• food coloring of your choice

Bowl number 2:

• 1 cup of water
• 1 tsp of *Borax powder

Mix the Elmer's with the water. Then in a separate bowl mix the water and the Borax powder. When the Borax is dissolved, slowly add the Borax mixture to the glue mixture, stirring constantly. You will see the slime start to come together. Remove the slime from the remaining water and kneed the slime until it is firm and consistent. Throw away the remaining water.

Store your new slime in a tight container or zip lock bag. The fun of putting the slime in a container is that if the slime is the same size as the container, it will make farting sounds as you push it in with your fingers... what boy doesn't want that?

Be sure to refrigerate your slime when done. Do not eat of ingest your slime.

*Borax is a laundry booster. If you don't already have some at home, you'll find it in the laundry aisle at the supermarket.

Tent Care: Mildew Removal

I recently purchased a tent and the handy tent set up guide had this recipe for eliminating mildew. Now I haven't tried it myself, but it is worth a try.

Mix 1/2 cup of Lysol in 1 gallon of HOT water. Sponge the mixture on the tent and let it dry. After it has dried, mix 1 cup of salt and 1 cup of concentrated lemon juice in 1 gallon of HOT water. Sponge the mixture on the tent and let it dry.

Store your tent in a cool, dry place. Storing tents in hot areas will cause the water repellent to deteriorate. There is nothing worse than finding out that your tent isn't water repellent, than on a camping trip in the pouring down rain... can you tell I'm speaking from experience here?

Wildlife Conservation Belt Loop

One of my favorite belt loops to teach is the Wildlife Conservation Belt Loop. When I was researching the Food Chain, I remembered an activity that we did in high school many years ago and the activity was called the Web of Life. If you are looking for a way to teach Wildlife Conservation, check out this website http://www.kidsplanet.org/wol/index.html.

After drawing the food chain, we sat in a circle and had each boy be a "character" in the story. Some were plants and trees, bees, wolves, ticks etc. Then every time they mentioned a character, we strung string between the two connections. Such as bees pollinate the plants, so the bees get strung to the plants. Then the squirels and deer get strung to the plants and so on. Pretty soon you have a very nifty little web going on showing how everything is interconnected to another. Then when you are finished you can show how if one part of the web of life becomes endangered (such as bees for instance) everything else become endangered as well. Have the boy with the bees drop his string. Then everyone who is connected to the bees drop all of their strings and so on until no one is holding a string.

It is one of my favorite visuals to illustrate why conservation is important.

BSA Family Activity 8

This weeks BSA Family activity comes from the Developing Responsibility section of the Teaching Responsibility portion of the BSA Family Award. If you choose one of these activities and have completed one of the Being Prepared activities, you will have completed the 2 requirements for the Teaching Responsibility Section.

From the Book: The purpose of these activities is to help family members become responsible people by doing their part to help others.

Choose one of the following:

• Complete a family service chartlisting all chores and the family member assigned to each job. The family decides how often to rotate jobs on the chart. Wolf Requirement 4E


• Get a plant or pet and teach your child how to take care of the of it. Discuss with your child how the plant or pet depends on its owner. It takes a lor of work to be responsible for living things. Wolf Elective 15C (plants) Wolf Elective 14A (pets)


• Let children pick their favorite meals or snacks and help prepare them and clean up. Wolf Requirement 8B (plan the meals that your family should have for one day), Wolf Requirement 8C (help fix at least one meal for your family), Wolf Requirement 8D (fix your own breakfast) and Wolf Requirement 8E (with an adult, help to plan, prepare, and cook and outdoor meal).

Most of these are requirements that you'll be doing already, so go ahead and work them into your BSA Family Award!

Citizenship Belt Loop and Pin

The Citizenship Belt Loop and Pin works nicely into the Wolf Den program.

To earn the Citizenship Belt Loop:

• Develop a list of things that you can at home (Wolf Requirement 4E)


• Make a poster of things that you can do to be a good citizen.


• Participate in a service related project. (Pack Food Drive, etc)

To earn the Citizenship Pin:

• Go with parents to vote (November)


• Participate in a parade (Pack activity)


• List ways that you can recycle (Wolf Requirement 7E)


• Conduct a home energy audit (Wolf Requirement 7F)


• Create a collage about America (American ABC's in Feb)

BSA Family Activities 7

This weeks BSA Family Activity is from Section 5 Handling Difficult Situations. The section that we are looking at is Loss of Loved Ones. Choose one for BSA Family credit.

From the BSA Family Workbook: The purpose is to help each family member cope with the pain and confusion of the death of a family member or loved one, and to understand that each person does not deal with grief in the same way.

• Plant a tree or perennial flower in memory of a deceased loved one. Wolf Elective 15B Plant and raise a flower bed, Beautification Scout Award


• Look through old family photographs. Look for pictures of relatives who have died and talk about them. How did they die? How old were they? How were they related to you? What do you remember about them? Heritage Pin


• Learn about Memorial Day. As a family, do an activity to commemorate Memorial Day. Flag Placement Ceremony

FLW Fishing Patch

We just received our FLW Master Angler Patch in the mail. My Wolf Cub was so excited. He can't wait to show it to his Grandfather (the one who took him fishing to earn his patch). Not only is this a fun patch to get and receive, but it also offers an extra bonus of opening up dialog for my Wolf Cub and his Grandfather. Every time he looks at his fishing patch he will remember the time spent "on the boat".

I would encourage you to work on the Master Angler Patch with your Cub Scout.
http://wolfden126.blogspot.com/search/label/Belt%20Loop%20Fishing for the qualifications. FLW has said that if they don't catch a fish that's ok. You can just provide a picture of them trying to fish. After all that's why it's called "Fishing" and not "Catching"!

Weather Belt Loop

The Weather Belt Loop is a very educational and fun Belt Loop for the boys. The three requirements are:

1. Draw a poster that shows and explains the water cycle. There is a great resource on the KidZone website http://www.kidzone.ws/WATER/index.html

2. Set up a simple weather station to record rainfall, temperature, air pressure, or evaporation for one week. Check out the Franklin Institutes web site http://www.fi.edu/weather/todo/todo.html for instructions on how to make a weather journal, barometer, hygrometer, rain gauge, weather vane and compass.

3. Watch the weather forecast on your local news.

This was a fun activity for the boys and doing some of the experiments that are on these websites really helped demonstrate the water cycle.