Scoutmaster Program Patrol [SMD003]

As part of our yearly planning we schedule in a month where the assistant scoutmasters and I plan and run the meetings. It’s usually one of the shorter months where there is a school vacation planned, which by us the month of February.

There are a number of reasons we do this.

The first is that it is customarily the month where new boys bridge into our troop, and since they have little experience with boy scouting we want to set the correct tone for the way meeting run, and it gives the existing boys the idea of the expectations of meeting planning and execution. It’s something to aspire to.

The second is that it gives us the opportunity to bring in more complicated topics. Usually, its’ more advanced cooking techniques, but other years its been government orientated or team building.

Lastly, it gives the other assistant scoutmasters a predefined task to communicate to the boys, letting them see it’s not all about the scoutmaster, since I’m the one that does most of the talking at the end of the meeting, and the other assistants are handling individual skills or general health and safety issues.

To accomplish this we try and follow the same structure as the boys. We have about 40 minutes of program and about 20 minutes of game type activity. So we look at the theme, look at the how many weeks we have to work with. It’s usually 3-4 depending on how the calendar falls.

So with a theme of cooking, we break that into 3 segments; two 15-minute segments, and one 10-minute segment, plus the game. At least one of the 3 weeks is a double 25 or 30-minute session.

With a topic like cooking we might start with a session on cooking in a Dutch oven, move through the other sessions and after the game have a cooked tasting prior to the end of the meeting.

The game is also cooking themed, like carrying eggs on spoons, or building with graham crackers, the point is not to resort to dodgeball, as most of the boys opt to do.

I’ve included a breakdown our previous years’ scoutmaster service patrol schedule to give you an idea in the show notes.

Your adult planned meeting may be different, but this is what works for us.

Take what you like and leave the rest, and as we say in Woodbadge, feedback is a gift, leave yours below in the comments, with the hope we can all learn together.

I’m Scoutmaster Dave, and this was scoutmaster program patrol.