Scouting Saturday: Civics

So, this past week my scouts accomplished a couple of things.  Connor finished off his camping merit badge, and talked to the Scoutmaster about doing his Scoutmaster conference for Star.  We also figured out that there will be Boards of Review held... so before month-end, Connor should make Star.

William has been trying to get a lot of the activity badges finished off.  He is down to needing nine more requirements to complete all twenty of the activity badges.  Assuming the weather forecasts are remotely correct, he should have these done by the time I write a Scout post again (you won't hear from me Saturday... I'll be camping with the Boy Scouts!  So it will be a Scouting Sunday post next week.)  He also has five requirements (besides the two required activity badges) left for Arrow of Light, most of which he can do, he just needs to officially show it.  Those should all be completed by the time I post again also.

Thomas hasn't done much.  He's enjoying his Bear year, and he isn't motivated to finish every single requirement or anything like that.  For Bear, you only need to complete 12 of the 24 areas.  He'll have that done easily enough.

But on to subject I came on to post about -- creating a Civics unit that incorporates scout requirements.

First, Thomas is the only one who has "civics" requirements to meet this year, explicitly.  William earned his Citizen activity badge last year, and Connor has completed two of the three Citizenship merit badges (and he's waiting for William to cross over before starting on the third.)  So, this year's plan was based mostly on Bear requirements.  After doing this, Thomas will have completed the What Makes America Special and the Tall Tales areas.  I would have added the Law Enforcement section too, but the den is planning a field trip to the Sheriff's department to do that, so I'm leaving most of that out.

1. Learn how to raise and lower the flag properly.  Learn about the flag too, using Ben's Guide for part of that.
2. Display the flag on National holidays (need to do 3 for the Bear requirement).  Columbus Day will complete the requirement.
3. They will be participating in a color guard at pack meetings, and in an outdoor flag ceremony.
4. Learn what folklore is.  Listen to a couple folk tales per week, finding out where the tale happened on a US map.  Use American Tall Tales, by Jim Weiss for at least part of it.
5. We'll be using the Veteran's Day week of Amanda Bennett's Patriotic Holidays unit study in early November.  The scouts will be marching in a Veteran's Day Parade.  Yes, I promise to take -- and post! -- pictures.  
6. Talk about what makes a good citizen.  Ben's Guide has some good pages on citizenship for 3rd-5th graders.  Thomas will make a poster about that.  We'll also discuss what we can do to help law enforcement as part of being a good citizen.
7. And finally, wrap it up by having each of the kids write (or tell) why they think America is special, and discuss the character traits of Citizenship.

If you are blogging about scouting, any day of the week, feel free to leave a link in the comments.  I would LOVE to read what other homeschool scout families are up to!