Woodworking badge is fun! Tonight Troop 60 Scouts worked with wood, building small hinged boxes with Nyle’s assistance–and his more explicit assembly instructions than the sheet of paper they received with their kits! 🙂

Scouts will finish their hinges and painting at home and bring them to the next meeting to share their creativity and complete the merit badge requirement.

At the end of the meeting, Advancement Chair Extraordinaire Melanie distributed completion checklists to the Scouts so they can finish missing items in the summertime if they choose.

Finally, we welcomed Mr. Rick Berringer to our meeting: Rick has been involved in Scouting for more than 5 decades! He recently moved to Natchitoches from Pineville and hopes to be a part of our Troop. Welcome, Rick!

Scouts continued their Woodworking merit badge at this week’s meeting, learning how to properly sharpen tools with Jim and then discussed the merits and disadvantages of different types of wood and the characteristics of each type. Austin finished his Citizenship in the Community badge with a poster presentation about Clementine Hunter to wrap up a fun and informative meeting: congrats Austin!

Also this week was the annual Scout Sunday breakfast with the United Methodist Men’s group, where Scouts represented Troop 60 and shared all of the exciting accomplishments they worked on since the last breakfast.

Troop 60 Scouts completed more than 200 community service hours, earned 24 rank advancements, and received 68 merit badges since the breakfast last year: what wonderful accomplishments!

Thanks to all the Scouts (and their parents, for getting them to the breakfast early on a Sunday morning!) for representing our Troop, and extra thanks to the Methodist Men’s group for hosting and welcoming us!

At the May 11th meeting, Scouts welcomed a potential new Scout, Gabe, and went Island Hopping: a team building exercise that requires planning, coordination, teamwork, and a pretty good sense of balance!  The teams were fairly evenly matched and discovered that planning and working together can overcome most any obstacle.  The first two heats required the Scouts to stay within the parameters of the game, with the islands (pieces of paper) and their spacing fixed.  The final heat allowed the Scouts to stretch their legs and their minds, utilizing planning and teamwork, to see how far they could move the next island out and still be able to keep one foot on the preceding island–and be sure that each member of the team could continue to move from island to island!  This game led to an excellent discussion of the need to asses the strengths and weaknesses of each team member and craft a plan that allowed for maximum utilization of the combined talent of each team.

After a successful completion of the final heat, JP led the Scouts in several variations of ways to work together to pass a series of balls between team members while following sets of directions that allowed for maximum variation in how the directions were interpreted to encourage creative problem solving.

Then the boys discussed ideas about hikes and bike rides with Mark, and shared with their visitor the procedures for opening and closing a meeting.

On Saturday, Finn and Gabe volunteered at the Cane River Food Pantry. Every month Scouts have service opportunities: check the calendar for dates! Thanks always for helping our community.

Next week Scouts will be working with Jim to wrap up some missing requirements for Woodworking MB. And as always, any unfinished requirements for Communication can be given to Melanie.

Have a lovely Mother’s Day weekend!

Last night we held a mellow meeting: it began with a surprise uniform inspection, with the Scoutmaster under examination first and then each Scout checking his buddy’s uniform using the BSA guidelines for appropriate Class A attire.

Then the Senior Patrol Leader led the Troop in a debrief of last weekend’s Hodges Gardens campout and hike, recapping the adventure, reviewing what we did well, and reframing things we can improve on in the future.

The Scouts did a great job of taking responsibility for their “boy led” troop and are becoming outstanding leaders!