Brain Storming the Pack Calendar
• Mark Eschbach
For one of my Woodbadge tickets I decided it would be a good idea to build a Pack Continuity binder. While talking with Pack Committee members we definitely felt like this would have come in handy given we didn’t have a shadow year or two. The three of us who took over the reigns from the previous generation of leadership ran with what we observed two to three years before. Our program year runs June 1st through May 31st every year. From this we’ve instinctively followed a the following calendar, although I think I could safely say we felt like we were fumbling through the first year:
- Summer Season
- No Pack meetings
- Generally summer outs have been (usually 1-2 planned)
- June - Hiking, Twilight Cmap
- July - Camp Lassen, Pack-o-ree, Pool Party/Water Related
- August - Pack Campout
- Committee
- Although the committe generally takes it there are few meetings to get things kicked off for the remainder of the program year.
- Annual Planning and Budget Meeting: August. We did this during a second pool party in 2016 and that worked fairly well.
- Popcorn leadership should be squared away to get things going by first Pack meeting. Probably better to kick this off at the Pack Campout.
- Late Summer and Autumn
- Creek Cleanup in September
- Overnight, generally falls closer to November due to getting back on track from the summer. Usually we try go to one of the retired military ships for this trip.
- Journey to Excellence assement meeting for Committee Chair, Cub Master, Recruitment, and Rechartering – this is because National overlooks most Packs doing a more academic year alignment.
- Rain gutter regatta: October is usually to late to do this because it’s too dark. We’ve discussed doing this over the summer but we’ve never moved it up.
- Recharting paperwork is generally due in November.
- Winter
- Blue and Gold is done at the Feburary Pack meeting, this generally invovles a lot of coordination and planning.
- Pinewood Derby - We’ve had this as late as March, but this interferes with Bridging usually. We’ve found January/Febuary gets everyone engaged again after the winter holidays.
- Scouting for Food is usually in March/April and we’re voluntold by the district when/where in prior District Roundtables. Generally not too far in advance. Expect it to conflict with base ball’s opening day.
- We’ve generally worked with Atria over the winter. We originally were distributing Christmas cards, then moved to valentimes cards. The format should be updated to prevent fly by scouting where the Cub’s don’t engage with the residents.
- Bridging has varied between Feburary and April. March seems like a happy point for most years.
- Spring
- Journey to Excellence Pre-assement in Apirl.
Additionally we have the following ongoing meetings throughout the year:
- Pack Meeting
- We’ve done the third or fourth Wednesday in the month. The fourth runs into problems with some holidays, especially Christmas one year.
- Over the years we’ve varied the start times from between 6pm to 7:30pm. We’ve found 6:30pm start time is a good balance between the older and younger children.
- Duration is usually one hour. This has worked with varying degrees of success and usually runs over. In truth 1.5 hours from 6:30 until 8pm would probably work much better.
- We’ve generally met at schools. For a long time we met at Pioneer, however now we meet at Birchlane.
- Reserveations should be set over the Summer, you can usually catch them during the administrative period in mid August before school starts.
- Invoices for school usage generally come midsumemr.
- Committe meetings
- Generally done the first Wendesday at the home of one of the committee members.
- It’s generally schedule for an hour. Some years we have been more succesful than others.
- In addition to standard Comittee Members (Chair, Recruitment, Cub Master, Treasurer, etc) we generally have most Den Leaders attend.
Recruitment is generally a year round event. Specially of interest: School Picnics and Back to School night; Children’s Activity Fiar (coordinate with other Packs and Troops).
Possible trip ideas: Marin Headlands Hikes have been done in June and July as a way to escape the heat; Gold Bug Mine was a fun day trip; Sutters Fort can be really fun but should probably avoid the hot days of Summer as it’s all in the open.
This post was brought to you through Camille’s notes on the calendar year and my editorial comments. I’m not sure on the best method to indexing the calendar and events. Since this is going into a continuity document I’m thinking it might be better to the event’s activity around the date and link to another section describing the event in detail. As a software developer this drives me crazy I can’t autogenerate a calendar but so is the ways of a living document which needs to be passed between leaders over the years.
I’ll eventually remember it’s not rigatta and figure out how to spell Feburaury.