One of My Favorite Webelos Den Meetings

Not surprisingly, my favorite Webelos activity pin to teach is Outdoorsman.  I try to work on this one in warm weather meetings, and have now done it once in May/June and now, this year, in September. 



Outdoorsman Activity Pin

Although Outdoorsman is all about camping and camping skills, it is possible to complete the pin without actually camping out.  Even though several of the boys in our den attend camping trips, I try to make a point of completing the pin in the context of weekly meetings for those who don't.  It takes three or four meetings to do the Outdoorsman right.

One of those meetings is a double-length meeting we hold in the back yard.  Each boy makes their own tin foil dinner, and we cook them on charcoal briquettes in our back yard fire pit.  In order to expose the boys to some other interesting outdoor cooking methods, I also prepare something in the Dutch oven (Rolls This Year) and in a Cardboard Box Reflector Oven (Brownies this year.)  We make the Cardboard box oven at an earlier meeting, which is a fun activity. Parents and other family members come and cook their own meals as well. When I did this for my oldest, we also used hobo stoves, but I skipped that this year because honestly they are a bit tippy and dangerous.

While dinner is cooking, the boys worked with their den chief to pitch a tent using the required taut line hitch and two half hitches knots, and planned a skit to perform at a campfire.   I quickly set a log cabin fire lay, and we sat down to eat.  I'm happy to say everything came out very well and most everyone enjoyed their meal.   You could certainly tell who preferred not to have their meat and veggies touch each other, though!

When dinner is done, we have a few minutes by the campfire to watch the boys skit which, being boy devised and led with only a few minutes planning, turned out to be one of the more chaotic moments of the evening.  I wound up the meeting by talking about what we had done and learned by the fire with the boys, while signing off on three requirements we've completed that night in their books.

All this takes about two hours.  More than our usual meetings, but the time goes by pretty quickly and everyone enjoys themselves.  Me included.