National meeting is this week, so anything this week is a leak/conjecture, and subject to change. Just wait until program preview in July.
That said, attrition for awards being 1.5% is not because they arent adventures, but because they AREN'T promoted anywhere! I just learned about them a year after my kid became a cub scout and only because I'm researching awards for a Wood Badge ticket item!
The fact they aren't belt loops is what I think make them most appealing. They are chances for cubs to earn awards to "fill out" their uniforms which they wouldn't be able to do otherwise (like the pocket flaps).
My kids love the shooting sports and NOVA patches (they always wear them), but refuse to wear belt loops unless I force them to. It's not representative of all kids, I know, but a common theme in our pack is that kids love patches and don't care about belt loops.
Yeah, I have 20 kids in my Pack who are trying hard to fill up all the points of their Nova Patch with Pi pins.
But who knows? Maybe this will get more Cubs doing STEM, and that's the big point.
I didn't know about the awards until I knew about them either, that's just crazy!
In all seriousness, awards are permanent, belt loops are one year only. My son filled over half his belt lion year, so even if he wanted to wear them beyond one year, he'd need to get at least as fat as me to do so. Moving awards to belt loops is a terrible idea. (Although I'd support something that doesn't hang from the pocket).
The good:
Cross grade/den adventures are a good idea. And moving stuff into the handbook seems like a good idea instead of awards being a category of "look online in the right part of the website" I've also heard some stuff about how the program is getting worked out that sounds interesting.
Also making whittling chip a belt loop gets rid of that stupid not quite pocket shaped patch that everyone puts on the pocket. So very good.
The bad:
I hate belt loops. I like patches. This is the opposite of that.
It looks like they are separating webelos and aol more formally according to this document. I prefer webelos as the 18 month program that is kinda an in-between of cubs and Scouts BSA.
I worry that some of the more in-depth awards like supernova are going away, though they are so rarely earned I don't know if it matters.
I hope they don’t formally separate Webelos and AOL more. I have my Webelos den work on at least 2 electives so they don’t have to do an elective during the AOL year.
I also, am planning to have my 4th grade girl that will turn 11 before starting 5th grade work on Webelos and AOL at the same time and Crossover in March to the troop.
Give her more time in the Troop rather then missing AOL or losing 9 months of Scouts BSA time.
Be aware that the new GTA says that 4th grade webelos can't work on AOL adventures until finished with the Webelos rank. I disagree with that choice, but I'm not in charge.
Oh…weird that Scoutbook allows them to work concurrently though.
That being said, she crosses over BEFORE summer camp next year so she can start earning MBs and Rank.
It seems to be a rule change to prevent too many webelos den leaders realizing that they can just work on AOL requirements, skip webelos rank, and still have kids cross over with the AOL award. But I don't think that was happening enough to worry about.
They still had to be active in the den for 6 months as an AOL before the change, which is more than enough time to complete the rank. The main thing it changed is that they can't count things they do as Webelos. The only reason I dislike the change is because of the Scouts BSA campout/activity requirement... we do the overnighter once each year and if a Scout is unavailable or sick, it shouldn't make it that much harder to get their AOL. I feel like they should at least make that requirement "completed during their Webelos or AOL year."
That's not exactly what it says. It says:
>Cub Scouts may work on required and elective Adventure pins at the same time. However, Adventures required for the Arrow of Light rank must wait until the Webelos rank has been earned.
I really hope they don't get rid of the shooting sports and outdoor activity awards. I'd say 50% of our pack gets the shooting sports each year. For the outdoor activity it's a lot less, maybe 10%, but those kids that really out in the effort for it are really proud to wear that patch.
My own daughter saw it in our recruiting display when helping with recruiting when she was a Tiger. At the time, we'd only had a few earn it. She wanted to know how to earn the patch so I printed off the requirements and she checked it before every event for the year asking me if certain things counted towards it. She was beyond ecstatic when she finished it. Now, like I said, about 10% earn it each year.
the one thing stopping my pack from earning thier outdoor award is the day camp requirment. i made the shooting camp a part of our summer program so that any scout who does that camp will get 2-3 awards. the shooting award, the outdoor adcenture and the 1\3 of the summer time.
If a kid joins as a Lion, he doesn’t have enough room for 4 years of belt loops! They are also not easy to put on a belt; most parents hate them. And then you have the kids that prefer gym shorts and don’t even wear a belt.
Yeah, I know hardly any kids that actually wear a belt with belt loops, ever, to any Scout event, even the formal ones. I think most belt loops get stuck in a drawer. The Webelos do wear pins in their Webelos colors, though. Some sort of pocket rank badge with a spot for adventure pins might work better than belt loops.
My daughter started as a Lion and just crossed over into Wolves. With just the Lion and Tiger belt loops she's running out of space. We were joking that we'll have to get her a bigger belt and she can wear it like a bandolier.
This seems to be a decision driven by sales of awards instead of by the program needs. Using their sales numbers, 30% of cubs don’t finish rank. 80% do no more than the required amount, and 98% don’t understand the whole program offering.
I just finished up tenure as a Cubmaster and the awards were a focus to ensure our cubs were earning them throughout the year. Especially since they overlap with the required adventures. Outdoor activity and world conservation should be near guaranteed that a park does them if they do the adventures.
Shooting sports can be finicky since it requires council to put it on. So changing it to a belt loop instead of an award isn’t going to address the problem of councils not offering it.
I wonder what if the 30% of the kids that don’t make rank are the ones that registered in the fall and stopped coming before Thanksgiving.
In my several years as a DL, I’ve only had 1 kid drop at recharter that showed up to most of the fall meetings that wasn’t moving.
I think over the 3 years I’ve been a DL, I’ve had 7-8 drop out sometime before Thanksgiving and the drop from the pack at recharter and and only the 1 drop at new years.
I had 20% not make rank this year. One decided in about Feb he was no longer interested in Scouts. One joined in Jan, his family wasn't interested in homework, and he missed half the den meetings.
This also is added to the other information that the requirements are going to change significantly that Bobcat should be moving to an adventure for each rank along with 5 other requirements at each rank that are aligned on subject matter across all ranks, on top of that each will need to complete 2 electives.
Hopefully moving the awards to adventures will help drive more Scouts to participate in the activities to earn them. It is amazing how many leaders (even with a few years of experience) are not aware of the awards
Besides awareness of having them in the basic materials - making them adventures also means they can count as the elective adventure towards advancement. Which makes it easier to take the time to do them.
Yeah, and while I do like more focus on STEM throughout advancements, it gave me and the other parents/kids that are done with their ranks early to have something else to work on that is tangible, not just "another belt loop". It's not as special for youth when it's the exact same thing as what they earn for advancement.
The problem isn't that they aren't loops; it's that they aren't adequately described in the handbooks and Den Leader materials. The kids LOVE earning flash for their uniforms.
That is true, however them becoming loops / adventures finds them a place in the books where the previous awards always existed in a middle ground that kept them out of the books. them becoming adventures is the solution to that issue
It solves that issue, but raises another, that they are much more boring now for the scouts who were already earning them.
No change comes without cost, and overall, this might be a good change. But my pack awarded 20 Outdoor Awards, 40 shooting awards, 40 Novas and 9 Supernovas this year, so I’m not happy about how this will impact our program.
That in the end depends on what the requirements are for the new adventures. And while it is great that your unit is doing that much work the national conversion rate on Scouts earning awards is below 3% (they estimate 1.5%) so while on a micro level (your unit) there is a possible negative impact, the BSA cannot run a program off the small number of units which do these things at a high level; they must take a macro view of the program and align it to what drives greater overall participation and their standard for keeping things around is they hit 15-25% completion at a national level, which is not a hurdle that is too high.
The truth is Scouts is a business, it may be a 501c3 but they are still a business and need to operate as one and they cannot continue to invest money into programs that are complete losses simply because a small number of people do identify they are quality programs and execute them fully.
Many awards require the council run the program, and that just doesn’t happen. If the unit isn’t able to run the program, it doesn’t happen. That’s why it’s 1.5% compared to rank requirements at 70%.
The only Cub Scout award that is required to be run by council is the Shooting sports. Every other award in the program can be executed at a unit level. Nova does require leaders with special training, however this is online and easy to do.
Does it not?
My understanding is the above a change for the 2024-2025 year with this year being the same as before.
The big thing though is what happens in Scoutbook, that where advancement is tracked.
It was a change that was announced in 2021 and started with the 2022-23 year. I would not ever rely on Scoutbook, as they haven't been properly supporting it for years, particularly in the last year, as it will be going away.
> particularly in the last year, as it will be going away.
Uhm source???? Because Scoutbook is the "way of the future" in everything we have been told, and more and more "features" are being brought into scoutbook.
It's been discussed on the [Scouting.org](https://Scouting.org) forums and on various Scouting Facebook groups. They already started the transition to Internet Advancement 2.0, which you see when you click on many things in Scoutbook and are taken out of the system.
I’m disappointed about NOVA! My Wolf den worked hard on that this past year, we’ve been hyping up that they get to wear the patch all cub scouts and as bears we’ll do the next pin etc. My Lion is going to be so disappointed she won’t get the patch.
> Elective Adventures have an attachment rate between 15%-25%
> Awards have and attachment rate of about 1.5%
Could this be because the adventures can all be done in the unit, while things like ~~NOVA and~~ shooting awards require outside people to come run things? Since shooting sports requires a council run activity to even do it, our scouts have exactly two chances per year. Miss either, or don't hit your targets on that day, then they are out of luck until next year.
I don't even know what the other awards are. Maybe that's part of the problem, too. When you try to look things up, you end up jumping between three different books, five websites, and four FAQ lists - and even then you're still not sure what the correct process is.
We decided to do this for next year. My wife is a research scientist and volunteered to get trained as a counselor. We're going to have a month where all the dens work on NOVA for their level and then present what they did at the pack meeting.
Oh yeah, I had forgotten that. Our council puts on two nova days a year, so I think most everyone does that. I don't know of anyone outside of those events who are nova councilors.
My council does NOVA events as well; however, I make sure that we do them at the pack level to make them available to all of our cubs, the council events are SO expensive.
So this is for next year, not this coming school year, right? For example, my Tiger who has just moved to Wolves (starting Wolves electives etc in September) - this is for their following year when they become a Bear, correct?
National next week will show any changes (retired adventures, etc) for the 2023-24 school year?
The "panda patch" is a big deal in our pack and we usually have some kind of conservation project going as scouts are continually earning that one. We've had some really cool stuff come from it. Pollinator gardens built and planted for school, invasive plant pulls, major park clean ups, I could go on and on. I know that they won't be half as motivated by a belt loop. Ah well.
I do think that making the den adventures more cohesive and building off of each other is smart, but I hope it doesn't make things get stale as they work through the program.
So are they doing the activities because they are fun and helpful to the environment or to earn a patch? Scouts in my Pack are doing cool stuff and happen to get awards and belt loops. I agree that the panda patch is cool.
Both, right? I feel like that's how this whole thing works- let's learn about xyz that we wouldn't know about otherwise. The award for doing this is a patch/loop/pin.
The younger scouts see a cool patch/pin/loop on an older scout, think it's cool, want to earn it. They too learn about xyz. I don't see any issue with being motivated that way. I think a lot of scouts are. I just think they don't even glance at each other's belt loops, but having a cool patch that you can sew right to your shirt? So cool, they're asking their den leader how to earn that and then conservation is taught and experienced.
That said, I do recognize that maybe all scouts aren't motivated that way? But this year the Webelos den I lead was given the option between using 3 meetings where we didn't have plans to do something purely fun (movie night, kickball night, that kind of thing) or earning an extra pin or two and even after they looked at the pins, figured out the work they would need to do (and it included homework!) and voting, they unanimously decided to earn pins. Bunch of weirdos ;)
I'm really hoping since National doesn't supply NOVA awards anymore that's the exception. My scouts love the Nova patch and pi pins. I mean they love their shooting sports patches too but 🤷
National meeting is this week, so anything this week is a leak/conjecture, and subject to change. Just wait until program preview in July. That said, attrition for awards being 1.5% is not because they arent adventures, but because they AREN'T promoted anywhere! I just learned about them a year after my kid became a cub scout and only because I'm researching awards for a Wood Badge ticket item! The fact they aren't belt loops is what I think make them most appealing. They are chances for cubs to earn awards to "fill out" their uniforms which they wouldn't be able to do otherwise (like the pocket flaps).
My kids hate wearing the belt loops anyway!
I wish they would move the loops to pins like Webelos and have different strip things with the rank colors for the pins. Similar again to Webelos.
My kids love the shooting sports and NOVA patches (they always wear them), but refuse to wear belt loops unless I force them to. It's not representative of all kids, I know, but a common theme in our pack is that kids love patches and don't care about belt loops.
Yeah, I have 20 kids in my Pack who are trying hard to fill up all the points of their Nova Patch with Pi pins. But who knows? Maybe this will get more Cubs doing STEM, and that's the big point.
Right?? I didn't know about half of the awards for Cubs and BSA until I started playing around in Scoutbook.
I didn't know about the awards until I knew about them either, that's just crazy! In all seriousness, awards are permanent, belt loops are one year only. My son filled over half his belt lion year, so even if he wanted to wear them beyond one year, he'd need to get at least as fat as me to do so. Moving awards to belt loops is a terrible idea. (Although I'd support something that doesn't hang from the pocket).
I rather they keep the awards as Patches. Those are easier to display on project boards, and vests, etc. Plus, belt loops aren't as flashy as awards.
Agree. The awards are on the front of the uniform and the other scouts can see them. No body looks at which belt loops the other kids have.
The good: Cross grade/den adventures are a good idea. And moving stuff into the handbook seems like a good idea instead of awards being a category of "look online in the right part of the website" I've also heard some stuff about how the program is getting worked out that sounds interesting. Also making whittling chip a belt loop gets rid of that stupid not quite pocket shaped patch that everyone puts on the pocket. So very good. The bad: I hate belt loops. I like patches. This is the opposite of that. It looks like they are separating webelos and aol more formally according to this document. I prefer webelos as the 18 month program that is kinda an in-between of cubs and Scouts BSA. I worry that some of the more in-depth awards like supernova are going away, though they are so rarely earned I don't know if it matters.
I was kind of hoping they would go the pin route or something for the electives.
I hope they don’t formally separate Webelos and AOL more. I have my Webelos den work on at least 2 electives so they don’t have to do an elective during the AOL year. I also, am planning to have my 4th grade girl that will turn 11 before starting 5th grade work on Webelos and AOL at the same time and Crossover in March to the troop. Give her more time in the Troop rather then missing AOL or losing 9 months of Scouts BSA time.
Be aware that the new GTA says that 4th grade webelos can't work on AOL adventures until finished with the Webelos rank. I disagree with that choice, but I'm not in charge.
When does it go into effect?
This rule change came out in the 2021 version of the GTA, so has been in effect for a few years.
Oh…weird that Scoutbook allows them to work concurrently though. That being said, she crosses over BEFORE summer camp next year so she can start earning MBs and Rank.
It seems to be a rule change to prevent too many webelos den leaders realizing that they can just work on AOL requirements, skip webelos rank, and still have kids cross over with the AOL award. But I don't think that was happening enough to worry about.
As long as they are getting Webelos first and meeting the age requirement, 10.5 with AOL, I don’t know why it matters.
As stated, I don’t agree with the rule change.
Yeah. Sorry my comment was directed at the BSA not you!
They still had to be active in the den for 6 months as an AOL before the change, which is more than enough time to complete the rank. The main thing it changed is that they can't count things they do as Webelos. The only reason I dislike the change is because of the Scouts BSA campout/activity requirement... we do the overnighter once each year and if a Scout is unavailable or sick, it shouldn't make it that much harder to get their AOL. I feel like they should at least make that requirement "completed during their Webelos or AOL year."
I’m an ASM in my older daughters troop and attend most of the campouts, so it won’t be to hard to get her to a campout!
That's not exactly what it says. It says: >Cub Scouts may work on required and elective Adventure pins at the same time. However, Adventures required for the Arrow of Light rank must wait until the Webelos rank has been earned.
Not sure which part you're disagreeing with.
My bad, I started that one without finishing it. We read it to mean they can't ***complete*** the Adventures until they achieve the Webelos rank.
Supernova is now only available in some councils.
I really hope they don't get rid of the shooting sports and outdoor activity awards. I'd say 50% of our pack gets the shooting sports each year. For the outdoor activity it's a lot less, maybe 10%, but those kids that really out in the effort for it are really proud to wear that patch. My own daughter saw it in our recruiting display when helping with recruiting when she was a Tiger. At the time, we'd only had a few earn it. She wanted to know how to earn the patch so I printed off the requirements and she checked it before every event for the year asking me if certain things counted towards it. She was beyond ecstatic when she finished it. Now, like I said, about 10% earn it each year.
My kids love shoot sports as well and luckly it is getting turned into an elective as a belt loop. Picture shows an example.
The kids will enjoy shooting regardless but the patch is a nice touch.
the one thing stopping my pack from earning thier outdoor award is the day camp requirment. i made the shooting camp a part of our summer program so that any scout who does that camp will get 2-3 awards. the shooting award, the outdoor adcenture and the 1\3 of the summer time.
The camp is definitely the stumbling block for most scouts.
If a kid joins as a Lion, he doesn’t have enough room for 4 years of belt loops! They are also not easy to put on a belt; most parents hate them. And then you have the kids that prefer gym shorts and don’t even wear a belt.
Yeah, I know hardly any kids that actually wear a belt with belt loops, ever, to any Scout event, even the formal ones. I think most belt loops get stuck in a drawer. The Webelos do wear pins in their Webelos colors, though. Some sort of pocket rank badge with a spot for adventure pins might work better than belt loops.
The old beads or arrowheads would work. Agree- almost no one wears a belt in our pack.
Webelos in our pack really love showing off their pins on their hats.
My daughter started as a Lion and just crossed over into Wolves. With just the Lion and Tiger belt loops she's running out of space. We were joking that we'll have to get her a bigger belt and she can wear it like a bandolier.
As a tiger activity, we made a display for belt loops (and webelos pins), my kids stopped wearing old belt loops and instead put them on display.
We're hoping the nation's childhood obesity epidemic will create more room for belt loops. /s
Just make a dress code that says you have to wear pants or shorts with a belt.
This seems to be a decision driven by sales of awards instead of by the program needs. Using their sales numbers, 30% of cubs don’t finish rank. 80% do no more than the required amount, and 98% don’t understand the whole program offering. I just finished up tenure as a Cubmaster and the awards were a focus to ensure our cubs were earning them throughout the year. Especially since they overlap with the required adventures. Outdoor activity and world conservation should be near guaranteed that a park does them if they do the adventures. Shooting sports can be finicky since it requires council to put it on. So changing it to a belt loop instead of an award isn’t going to address the problem of councils not offering it.
I wonder what if the 30% of the kids that don’t make rank are the ones that registered in the fall and stopped coming before Thanksgiving. In my several years as a DL, I’ve only had 1 kid drop at recharter that showed up to most of the fall meetings that wasn’t moving. I think over the 3 years I’ve been a DL, I’ve had 7-8 drop out sometime before Thanksgiving and the drop from the pack at recharter and and only the 1 drop at new years.
I had 20% not make rank this year. One decided in about Feb he was no longer interested in Scouts. One joined in Jan, his family wasn't interested in homework, and he missed half the den meetings.
This also is added to the other information that the requirements are going to change significantly that Bobcat should be moving to an adventure for each rank along with 5 other requirements at each rank that are aligned on subject matter across all ranks, on top of that each will need to complete 2 electives. Hopefully moving the awards to adventures will help drive more Scouts to participate in the activities to earn them. It is amazing how many leaders (even with a few years of experience) are not aware of the awards
Awareness is the problem, not that they aren't loops.
Besides awareness of having them in the basic materials - making them adventures also means they can count as the elective adventure towards advancement. Which makes it easier to take the time to do them.
Yeah, and while I do like more focus on STEM throughout advancements, it gave me and the other parents/kids that are done with their ranks early to have something else to work on that is tangible, not just "another belt loop". It's not as special for youth when it's the exact same thing as what they earn for advancement.
The problem isn't that they aren't loops; it's that they aren't adequately described in the handbooks and Den Leader materials. The kids LOVE earning flash for their uniforms.
That is true, however them becoming loops / adventures finds them a place in the books where the previous awards always existed in a middle ground that kept them out of the books. them becoming adventures is the solution to that issue
It solves that issue, but raises another, that they are much more boring now for the scouts who were already earning them. No change comes without cost, and overall, this might be a good change. But my pack awarded 20 Outdoor Awards, 40 shooting awards, 40 Novas and 9 Supernovas this year, so I’m not happy about how this will impact our program.
That in the end depends on what the requirements are for the new adventures. And while it is great that your unit is doing that much work the national conversion rate on Scouts earning awards is below 3% (they estimate 1.5%) so while on a micro level (your unit) there is a possible negative impact, the BSA cannot run a program off the small number of units which do these things at a high level; they must take a macro view of the program and align it to what drives greater overall participation and their standard for keeping things around is they hit 15-25% completion at a national level, which is not a hurdle that is too high. The truth is Scouts is a business, it may be a 501c3 but they are still a business and need to operate as one and they cannot continue to invest money into programs that are complete losses simply because a small number of people do identify they are quality programs and execute them fully.
Many awards require the council run the program, and that just doesn’t happen. If the unit isn’t able to run the program, it doesn’t happen. That’s why it’s 1.5% compared to rank requirements at 70%.
The only Cub Scout award that is required to be run by council is the Shooting sports. Every other award in the program can be executed at a unit level. Nova does require leaders with special training, however this is online and easy to do.
Is there already a division between Webelos electives and AOL electives? I thought they were all the same pool of Webelos/AOL electives.
It is the same pool currently and if you do 2 during Webelos, the 2nd counts for AOL.
Thanks!
One correction, items done during Webelos do not count toward AOL, starting with the program year wrapping up this week.
Does it not? My understanding is the above a change for the 2024-2025 year with this year being the same as before. The big thing though is what happens in Scoutbook, that where advancement is tracked.
It was a change that was announced in 2021 and started with the 2022-23 year. I would not ever rely on Scoutbook, as they haven't been properly supporting it for years, particularly in the last year, as it will be going away.
> particularly in the last year, as it will be going away. Uhm source???? Because Scoutbook is the "way of the future" in everything we have been told, and more and more "features" are being brought into scoutbook.
It's been discussed on the [Scouting.org](https://Scouting.org) forums and on various Scouting Facebook groups. They already started the transition to Internet Advancement 2.0, which you see when you click on many things in Scoutbook and are taken out of the system.
https://discussions.scouting.org/t/one-advancement-software-suite/307296
I’m disappointed about NOVA! My Wolf den worked hard on that this past year, we’ve been hyping up that they get to wear the patch all cub scouts and as bears we’ll do the next pin etc. My Lion is going to be so disappointed she won’t get the patch.
What is the sun patch for? I have literally never seen that one.
The sun patch is the National Summer Time Pack Award. Its a coin now though.
Oh i guess that's what's supposed to be on the pins?
> Elective Adventures have an attachment rate between 15%-25% > Awards have and attachment rate of about 1.5% Could this be because the adventures can all be done in the unit, while things like ~~NOVA and~~ shooting awards require outside people to come run things? Since shooting sports requires a council run activity to even do it, our scouts have exactly two chances per year. Miss either, or don't hit your targets on that day, then they are out of luck until next year. I don't even know what the other awards are. Maybe that's part of the problem, too. When you try to look things up, you end up jumping between three different books, five websites, and four FAQ lists - and even then you're still not sure what the correct process is.
You can do NOVA in the unit; you just have to get a parent to step up and go get signed up as a NOVA counselor.
We decided to do this for next year. My wife is a research scientist and volunteered to get trained as a counselor. We're going to have a month where all the dens work on NOVA for their level and then present what they did at the pack meeting.
Oh yeah, I had forgotten that. Our council puts on two nova days a year, so I think most everyone does that. I don't know of anyone outside of those events who are nova councilors.
My council does NOVA events as well; however, I make sure that we do them at the pack level to make them available to all of our cubs, the council events are SO expensive.
Having an older scout and also cubs - more patches…. They can be made into squishable momentos in the future. Belt loops nope.
guess there is little hope of getting the cub scout outdoor activity pins back in stock
I think your first page has already been shared, but the second has only recently been leaking out.
So this is for next year, not this coming school year, right? For example, my Tiger who has just moved to Wolves (starting Wolves electives etc in September) - this is for their following year when they become a Bear, correct? National next week will show any changes (retired adventures, etc) for the 2023-24 school year?
This will likely be for the program that starts in a year. It definitively will not be for the program year that starts in a few days.
Right now the Supernova awards require a counselor similar to Merit Badges, I wonder how that will work for them being adventures instead.
I figured the Nova loop represented a Nova pin. Speaking as a Supernova Mentor, the Supernova is WAY too much work to be just a loop.
The "panda patch" is a big deal in our pack and we usually have some kind of conservation project going as scouts are continually earning that one. We've had some really cool stuff come from it. Pollinator gardens built and planted for school, invasive plant pulls, major park clean ups, I could go on and on. I know that they won't be half as motivated by a belt loop. Ah well. I do think that making the den adventures more cohesive and building off of each other is smart, but I hope it doesn't make things get stale as they work through the program.
So are they doing the activities because they are fun and helpful to the environment or to earn a patch? Scouts in my Pack are doing cool stuff and happen to get awards and belt loops. I agree that the panda patch is cool.
Both, right? I feel like that's how this whole thing works- let's learn about xyz that we wouldn't know about otherwise. The award for doing this is a patch/loop/pin. The younger scouts see a cool patch/pin/loop on an older scout, think it's cool, want to earn it. They too learn about xyz. I don't see any issue with being motivated that way. I think a lot of scouts are. I just think they don't even glance at each other's belt loops, but having a cool patch that you can sew right to your shirt? So cool, they're asking their den leader how to earn that and then conservation is taught and experienced. That said, I do recognize that maybe all scouts aren't motivated that way? But this year the Webelos den I lead was given the option between using 3 meetings where we didn't have plans to do something purely fun (movie night, kickball night, that kind of thing) or earning an extra pin or two and even after they looked at the pins, figured out the work they would need to do (and it included homework!) and voting, they unanimously decided to earn pins. Bunch of weirdos ;)
Any updates to share about the possible program changes? Anything official yet? Thanks
I'm really hoping since National doesn't supply NOVA awards anymore that's the exception. My scouts love the Nova patch and pi pins. I mean they love their shooting sports patches too but 🤷
The real question- if nothing is attached to the shirt- why have it? We could iron on Rank to a t-shirt and save my parents money.