Campfire Pack Meeting

In October we had our second annual Campfire Pack Meeting.  We made s'mores and had our Bobcat ceremony.  At the den meeting right before the pack meeting, the boys made campfire neckerchief slides.  This was our first go at making our own slides, and the boys really liked it.

I went to Home Depot and bought a length of 1/2" PVC, which is super inexpensive, and you get a ridiculous amount of 1" pieces from each length.  Side story, I have two Home Depot stores are that close to me.  The one that is slightly farther away has a much nicer staff that will pretty much do anything for you.  Example, I saw a PVC pipe "club house" on Pinterest and set out to make one last summer.  The awesome guys in the plumbing section not only cut all of the PVC to the specified size, they actually helped me build the ENTIRE thing in the middle of the aisle, marked all of the pieces, and carried everything out to the car for me.  The clubhouse was 5'x5' and nearly 10' tall.  Look.  For reference, that's a 6' high fence.  

The Home Depot that is closer to me, they aren't quite as accommodating.  When I asked the gentleman to cut the pipe into 1" sections for me, with a MACHINE, he directed me to the plumbing tools and told me to buy a manual PVC cutter.  Ah, well.  I learned how to do something new, and it IS easier to store one length of pipe and cut pieces off as needed rather than having a ton of 1" pieces taking up space in my supply drawers.

Back to the neckerchiefs.  I used this template for the slides.  I printed the stencil on card stock, and I did all of the tracing on to the red, orange, and yellow foam.  The boys cut out the pieces, glued them together, colored the popsicle sticks to look like logs, and glued them on top.  Our Boy Scout helper then hot glued the foam onto the PVC.

This is my tester slide.  You'll notice on the top picture that all of my pen marks are on the back slide of the slide that no one will see (thank you Alpine District for the tip!).  These were a really cute way to get the boys excited for the campfire, and a physical memory of the night.

Until Next Time,

CubMom

Cub Scout Obstacle Course

Did you see the article a month or two back in Family Fun magazine about using pool noodles to make outdoor games?  I used that article as the basis to make an obstacle course out of pool noodles, duct tape, and wooden dowels.  I bought 45 pool noodles from the dollar store, had the duct tape on hand, and bought 2 bags of 12" dowels and four 36" dowels from the craft store.  It was a little bit of an investment, about $60, but I won't have to remake it every year, and I was able to give the components to our PE teacher to use for gym classes (which means I don't have to store it either!), and can use it when I need it going forward.


Here is a shot of the entire course.  Obstacles are broken down below.

 Javelin Throw

 "Tire" run

 These were supposed to be hurdles, but the boys ended up crawling under them instead!

 Not a good angle, but this was a set up in a zig zag

 I cut a noodle in half to make a ring toss

 and ended the course with a ball toss, using two noodles taped together to make the ring.

This actually kept them busy for close to an hour.  They wanted to go through over and over again!  I spent maybe an hour or two assembling everything, and then getting it all set up outside, so I definitely think it was time well spent.  


Until next time,


CubMom