Thursday, March 18, 2010

Outdoor Webelos Leader Skills training

Last weekend I took the Intro. to Outdoor Skills for Webelos Leaders class. I'd registered after some mis-communication with the council office and the course leader, so I was honestly a little skeptical. I know that less-than-stellar registration and pre-information doesn't always mean the event itself is not well planned, but it just doesn't give you a good confident feeling going in.

As far as the actual outdoor skills, I don't think I learned much I didn't already know. I re-learned how to tie a bowline knot. Being left-handed, by the way, makes it a little tricky for righties to show you how to tie.

I did learn quite a bit, though, about presentation of the outdoor concepts to scouts. Yeah, we all know, that telling the kids how to do something is the least likely method to get them to remember. But it is also the most accessible, right? Tell them to turn to page 142 in their handbooks and read it.

So, I got some good ideas on how to work on outdoor concepts with the boys. Making animal and plant identification into a game? So much better than flash cards. I think we should have included scorpions, though.

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