I am hoping this post is of use to some of you out there, who are den leaders like me. This is the 3rd time I have held this calling but the first time I have actually had one of my own children in the den as well. Now that I have an 8 year old boy, I feel like I understand the mind of 8 year olds better and this time around, I feel like I am a much better den leader than in the past. Even though I live in the heart of Mormondom and you would think our dens would be HUGE but they are not. Our ward has combined the Bear and Wolf dens because our Bear den is very small. The following are some activities that we have done recently that have been successes. I should mention that my partner is an amazing woman who has one child and plans activities as I describe, "Globally" while I think "locally" meaning, she always plans these amazing activities outside of our homes and I plan activities in the comfort of my home (where my three younger ones are easier to keep track of.) Anyway, here is the list:
1. Visit an archary range. The boys LOVED this and with permission from the Scouting office they all were able to earning their Archary belt loop.
2. Toured Home Depot. We had the most WONDERFUL man give our boys a tour of the whole building and he spent a lot of time going over tool safety and how the various tools worked (fulling the woodworking sections for both Bear and Wolf). Afterwards, he gave each boy their own tool box, measuring tape and Home Depot apron. I don't know if that is standard at all Home Depots, but it was great for the boys.
3. Toured a Fire station (We have one around the corner from our neighborhood.)
4. Talked about knife safety and then carved pumpkins. (This was around Halloween of course).
5. Made chocolate chip cookies.
6. Made homemade pizzas (uncooked--like Papa Murphys) and they were able to bring them home for dinner for the family that night. (As you can imagine, a huge success with the mothers!)
7. Made stilts. (For the Wolfs, if they learned to walk on them, it fulfilled an elective requirement.)
8. Had a "bike rodeo" in our church's parking lot. The boys learned all about bike saftey and then did a bike obstacle course.
9. Homemade Ice Cream: My partner owns a hand crank ice cream maker and they all took turns until it froze.
Anyway, those are just a few that have worked really well.
3 comments:
YOu must be the most fun den leader ever!
wow-great ideas Janice. I fear greatly that a lot of these types of callings are in my future with 3 boys. The oldest turns 8 in October.
ear marking this post!!!
excellent ideas! i hope they do stuff like that in our ward! i cannot believe that my oldest has only 1 1/2 more years until he is a little scout!
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