Starting a Scout group - need help with organization

[rhianna813]

Hi All - am posting here because Scouting is sort of learning outside the classroom. But personally I do not homeschool so this level of organization is new to me.

We are starting a SpiralScout group for boys and girls age 5 – 7 range. Probably be 6 -8 kids. DH and I will be leaders and follow badge ciriculum from SpiralScouts and add our own ideas, creativity. Group will include school attending and homeschool kids. We'll meet at out house, at parks and take field trips.

We want to have “duties” for the Scouts to help with at each meeting. I am trying to figure out which jobs would make good Duties and now to divide the Duties.

Here are possible jobs. If you think of others let me know!

*Attendance – mark kids off on an attendance sheet.

*Scout Pledge – we say the Scout pledge and I will have it written on a large sign. Each Scout will need to recite it once alone to earn a badge. Otherwise we will say it together. Any job ideas here?

*Candle lighting – we light candles at the beginning of the meeting. I am thinking these kids are too young to light the candles.

*Candle Extinguisher – the kids love to use the snuffer to put them out.

*Wheel of Year calendar – we will have a turning seasonal calendar to find Todays Date at each meeting. Scout job to turn the calendar to find the date.

*Snack – a parent will bring snack each time but not sure we should pull a Scout away from the meeting to help prep/serve it?

Once I decide the Duties – do I pick ONE scout to do all of them at meeting and rotate each meeting? That seems easiest. Or rotate different scouts for each Duty at each meeting? That seems harder to organize and track.

Thanks for any recommendations!

Rhianna

[lmonter]

Rotate the duty like once a month.  So if you have two meetings a month, the same child does attendance and another child does snack cleanup and so on.  They can rotate duties so they all learn.  It works, even if it does feel a bit chaotic to the leader (I was in girl scouts from 6/7yo through 12th, btdt so to speak).

ETA:
The pledge - a child could be in charge of leading it/starting it.
Candles - could use battery votives until the children are more controllable around open flames.

Snack - yes, one child to set up, another to clean up.  Unless it's in another wing of the building, they should be fine and not feel left out.

We also did a flag ceremony (US flag), did the Pledge of Allegiance to kick off our meetings, and then at the end we did another flag ceremony to take it down.  I could fold up a flag properly (yup, there's a certain way) better than half the boy scouts in our town I believe.

[Ravin]

Rhianna, please take a look at SpiralScouts's rules. A circle with children from more than one family has to have leaders who are not related/spouses. If you've just established a Hearth (at most 2 families, usually just 1), you can get away with just 1 leader or spouses.

We gave SS a go last year (when DD was in first), but between health and money issues, we just couldn't get it going in a stable fashion, esp. since anyone who showed up to a meeting besides the 2 families with parents committed as leaders didn't seem to come back. Rather disappointing.

[AAK]

Since you use a wheel for the calendar, you can make a wheel to keep track of the duties as well.  

I like having more than one child with a job at a time, but too many and it does get crazy, esp if one is running late.  I would have two kids for opening duties, and two kids for closing duties.  Whomever brings snack can serve snack (make sure that rotates fairly too).  Make sure that all kids know that they always have the job of keeping our space clean.  They can put their own scraps in the garbage, take care when in the bathroom, etc.  

Opening:

Take attendance, light the candles, set the calendar, and lead the pledge.

Closing:

Snuff the candles, put away pledge poster, lead closing ceremony (I would include rotating the job wheel at that point.  That way, the kids who will be doing the opening jobs for next time know to get to the meeting a couple minutes early if possible.  Snack kid knows too.), tidy up. 

[rhianna813]

Oh that is too bad.... yeah I can seea lot of  Circles/Hearths come and go. We had a huge Circle in our town with about 30 kids and 4 sub Hearths. It lasted for about 5 years but Leaders started getting burnt out and kids interest waned and duties were passed around too casually between the parent volunteers. Soon no one was sending in the renewals or paperwork to HQ. Yeah, they didn't like that LOL

Last fall we disbanded the group. I was never a leader, buy acted as an outreach coordinator. Mostly keeping the huge waiting list of kids.

I definitely experienced a lot of parent flakiness too. One of our Hearths had the maximum amount of kids because only 3-4 would show up for meetings at any given time. I am hoping to that won't happen with our Circle. We are mostly inviting scouts from our previous group who are commited.

I checked the FAQ about Leaders - it says " For a Circle, you need two leaders, usually one male and one female." I know there are cases where they let 2 women lead if there are no men who can be leaders. I can't imagine they would turn away spouses. We had 2 sets of spouses in our Circle, but I am not sure if they were legally married. If that matters.

Rhianna

Originally Posted by Ravin 

Rhianna, please take a look at SpiralScouts's rules. A circle with children from more than one family has to have leaders who are not related/spouses. If you've just established a Hearth (at most 2 families, usually just 1), you can get away with just 1 leader or spouses.

We gave SS a go last year (when DD was in first), but between health and money issues, we just couldn't get it going in a stable fashion, esp. since anyone who showed up to a meeting besides the 2 families with parents committed as leaders didn't seem to come back. Rather disappointing.

[Ravin]

The "no spouses" is because of the 2-deep rule, which is modeled on the Boy Scouts' rules on the matter. There is an online training which is required for leaders; you might want to look it up and review it. You might be able to fulfill the 2-deep rule with spouse-leaders if you always have a 3rd parent volunteer comitted to being at all meetings and activities, though. I'm not sure about how they interpret that.

[rhianna813]

I got nervous and asked about the no spouses thing to their ProtoCircle list and they said spouses are a-ok and very common. For 10 or less FireFlies we only need 2 leaders, no parent volunteers. But if we have 11 or more FireFlies we need a 3rd leader/volunteer.

I think we won't be able to see or take the Leader training until after we sign up and pay for the Charter. We are only starting the ProtoCircle part now.

Rhianna
 

Originally Posted by Ravin 

The "no spouses" is because of the 2-deep rule, which is modeled on the Boy Scouts' rules on the matter. There is an online training which is required for leaders; you might want to look it up and review it. You might be able to fulfill the 2-deep rule with spouse-leaders if you always have a 3rd parent volunteer comitted to being at all meetings and activities, though. I'm not sure about how they interpret that.