Wolf Elective 1: It's a secret!

After my den earned their Wolf rank last year we had a meeting where we did elective 1 which  involves invisible ink and secret codes.

I made code books for the boys, though they were not as big a hit as I thought they would be.  One scout in particular was not comfortable with writing a message in code.  Luckily I had also brought a telegraph key (for sending morse code) which had more hands-on appeal, and that went over a bit better with him.

The code books include the pigpen cipher, morse code, pig latin, turkish irish, braille, and a cryptograph wheel.  Most of these can be found in multiple places on the web but I included sources I used for further reference.  Pig latin was by far the most popular of these and I now hear it nearly every day from my son, so be forewarned!  Click here to download a copy of the code book.

For the invisible ink bit I used an electric sandwich maker to reveal the ink.  The Wolf Handbook says to use a light bulb but bulbs do not give off heat like they used to.  I just stuck the page with the lemon juice writing in my heated sandwich press, closed it, and checked it in a couple minutes.  Most of the invisible messages were revealed quite nicely with this method.

After the codes we flipped through the back of the Wolf book and did some of the quicker electives, like measure your hand using inches and centimeters, and say "hello" in another language.  As we looked through the book I asked my scouts what electives they would be interested in doing in our future meetings.  Two that they chose which we spent the most time on were "Let's Have a Party" and "Be an Actor."  They also chose to visit a library, which surprised me for some reason.  I am so glad I asked for their input because we had a blast with the electives they chose and the library meeting was definitely my best den meeting ever at that time.

Bike safety battle mat

Bike Safety Battle Mat

Here is our Crystal Caste mat serving as a hands on bike safety display for our bike rodeo pack meeting.  Much better than the poster that I was originally thinking of making.  I made it by drawing a neighborhood on the mat with Vis a Vis markers, then getting my husband to make the figures.  The images we used are from other sites so I didn't feel comfortable including a template for them here.  He photoshopped them to have a mirror image at the base so you could fold them in half and have the image on both sides.  The images were printed on card stock.  I glued the sides together, trimmed off the excess paper, and stuck the figures in plastic bases.  Our meeting was outside so I used sticky tack to hold the pieces to the board.  They could still be easily rearranged to create various scenarios for discussing bike and pedestrian safety.  All the scouts from Tigers to Webelos seemed to enjoy it.

The ducks are crossing...what would you do?