![]() Even if a boy doesn’t advance to that rank, he still learns a ton, has fun, gains leadership skills, helps his community, and makes valuable friendships. Nothing says that you have to become an Eagle scout to be a success. Honestly, though, you can be a casual scout and still have plenty of fun and learn a lot. A lot of that depends on your family, your kids, the sports and scouts schedules, and just how much juggling you can take. Add on top of that maintaining good grades, homework, studying for tests and trying to have some sort of free time-it’s really hard to manage multiple activities at a that level. Sports at the high school level demand near-constant practice, games, traveling, etc. So if you want to do an OK job at a bunch of things, you can, but if you want to seriously succeed you have to focus on just a few things. Something I didn’t realize when my kids were young is just how high the demands are on teenagers if they want to be seriously involved in an activity. I do know boys that have done it at the Boy Scout level, but it’s almost impossible to do both scouting and sports at a high level at the same time. Once they hit high school it gets harder to experiment. As the parent of a high school aged son I can tell you that elementary is the time to have your kids try out a lot of different things. And last year he was in band, drama, and scouts without an issue. My middle son did football for a year and scouting, and it was busy but manageable. ![]() In elementary school, yes, without a doubt. One of Chelsea’s questions to me was whether it’s possible to do scouting and sports at the same time. This is after cleaning up a local river during a clean-up day. My oldest Nick is the one in the hat, and my middle Nate is at the bottom with the glasses. They are Scout, Tenderfoot, Second Class, First Class (where my son is now), Star (where he’ll be at the end of the month), Life, and finally the one everyone knows – Eagle Scout. Boy scouts has multiple ranks, and this time they’re based on achievement-not grade.But if you’re serious about your son learning the skills and becoming an Eagle scout, ,you need to find a troop structure that will support that. So if you just want your son hanging around with other boys, goofing off and having fun, there are some troops where that’s pretty much what they do. Again your experience will vary by troop.Every year there are probably between two and five different Eagle projects going on. ![]() Our troop practices a lot of scout-led activities, where the boys are the ones leading the other boys to practice leadership skills.In our case, our troop is very serious about hard work, camping, learning survival skills, etc. Sure the kids still have lots of fun, but there’s a lot of hard work involved. This is when, in my experience, scouting gets serious. Boys Scouts start in sixth grade, when the kids enter middle school.So if you are looking for something specific in scouting, make sure you join a pack that aligns with what you’re looking for (and get involved!) There are some with hugely active parents and some without anyone to take on a role. Some packs are very active in activities, camping, outdoors, etc. It also varies a HUGE amount by pack (the group of scouts). Kids activities are planned according to their attention spans and skill levels.Tigers = first grade Wolf=second grade Bear=third grade Webelos 1=fourth grade Webelos 2 = fifth grade.Obviously there’s a big difference between what a first grader and a fifth grader can do in terms of skill level and attention span, so they divide the kids into groups based on their age. This is the kind of scouting kids do in elementary school. Cub Scouts are what most parents are actually familiar with, and what many people might think of when they think of boy scouts.Let me break them down a bit with a quick overview of scouting. So if you’re not the parent of a scout, these terms might not make sense to you. Yes I carved that watermelon up there, if you were wondering.Ĭub Scouts? Boy Scouts? First Class? What Are You Talking About? This is not endorsed by the Boy Scouts and all opinions and observations are my own. My middle son is in Cub Scouts but will transition to Boy Scouts at the start of the next school year.īefore I start, this is simply the tale of one family’s journey in scouting. Right now he’s a First Class and is on track to earn his Star scout by the end of the year. I thought that was a great idea, given that my oldest is now a high school freshman and has been a scout since he was a Tiger in first grade. My good friend Chelsea over at Mama Fish Saves dropped me a line the other day to ask if I might be interested in writing a bit about my two boys experience in Boy Scouts.
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