With Willow Creek cancelled, Camp Wilson cancelled, and Boise School District extending the break until April 20th, Troop 33 will not be holding an in-person meeting until April 21st at the earliest. Instead, let’s try holding virtual meetings. March 24 will be a trial meeting to figure things out on-line from 6:30 to 7 pm. I will be sending out a Zoom invite. Topics during the virtual meeting will be completing advancement, working on merit badges, making modifications to the schedule, and finding the opportunities the situation creates.
This is a great time to practice and learn additional cooking skills. Scouts, are you helping out in the kitchen? There are many cooking requirements in rank advancement that can be practiced at home. And the cooking merit badge requirement number 4 is home cooking.
What about joining us Saturday for a virtual campout? Scouts find a buddy or family member to campout in your backyard. We will touch base occasionally in the evening including a campfire. Sunday, take a hike around your neighborhood. Cooking will be your choice of inside, backpacking stove, or food delivered. This campout will help you mark off an outing and help the troop not miss a monthly campout. Details to be posted in Scoutbook by Wednesday and an RSVP.
There are many, many Scouting activities you can do during this unusual time. Let’s see how many rank requirements can be completed over the next few weeks. Many require learning, practicing, and then demonstrating. Describing, sharing, and demonstrating can be done in a video conference. Now is a good time to connect with other Scouts virtually to work on requirements.
Many merit badges require some preparation, research, and a skill or project to be completed. Once ready, a counselor can be contacted; possibly virtually. A few Possible Merit Badges:
Art Astronomy, Automotive Maintenance, Chess, Citizenship’s, Cooking, Emergency Preparation, Family Life, Gardening, Home Repair, Medicine, Personal Management, Programming, Public Health, Reading, Safety
Public Health has a good game relating to our current situation
https://www.cdc.gov/mobile/applications/sto/web-app.html
How many merit badges can the troop complete by the end of May? How many can we start in the next few months? The booklets, worksheets, and resources are all on-line. The troop leadership is looking for merit badge counselors for each merit badge. David can be contacted for the citizenship merit badges. Parents, would you like to be a merit badge counselor?
This is a good time for physical fitness. If you are working on Tenderfoot, record your starting times and count requirement #6a with an adult. Create and carry out a plan to improve over the next 30 days. See Tenderfoot #6b for details. Scouts, adults, and youth, our situation presents an opportunity for daily exercise from walks around the neighborhood; physical distancing, or at home exercise plan. How many exercise hours as a troop can we record in the next three weeks starting this Tuesday?
Other activities include Good Turn daily, Duty to God, and more. The above list just scratches the surface of possibilities.Here is a web site with ideas. Do you have other ideas? Let’s start sharing and carrying them out together.
Scouting Rocks!
Brian Anderson
SMT33 B
