Making Faith in God more integrated
with Scouts.
Talked about the responsibility of different people: PRIMARY PRESIDENT: responsible to have teachers and leaders
informed, have an orientation with them. Suggest names for these
callings. She stressed the importance of the 11 year old scout leader
and what an important calling it is to getting these boys started in their
boy scout years - their 11 year old scout leader can make or break scouting
for them so consider this position very prayerfully. Orient families
about the program. She or a counselor serves on the scout committee.
Signs FIG books when program is completed. ACTIVITY DAY or DEN LEADER: Make sure it happens. Work
together - scouts and FIG should dovetail - they are not two separate
programs but should intertwine with one another. Keep gospel the focus
in scouting, open with prayer, reinforce gospel principles, use church music,
etc. We want boys to develop character, to prepare to receive and
honor the Priesthood. BOY/GIRL - their responsibility is to figure what they
want to do, what they want to work on. They check off their own
activities as they are done. Recommend getting the square knot in
Bears or Webelos when there is a little more maturity than in wolves.
Recommended an article about scouting in the Church News Sept 20, 2003 by
Elder Hammond. She said if you have not caught the vision of scouting
this article is a good one to look at.
Music.
Since there wasn't a music workshop this time, she emphasized the following
points:
A - Know the Song;
B - Sing the words as you teach;
C - Give children a reson to listen to the words;
D - Bear testimony of the principles being taught in the song;
E - Sing the song again and again in a variety of ways. Some ideas
that were suggested were to practice by leaving out a certain word,
emphasizing a certain word, can make a cube with different things like -
girls only, boys only, acapella, leave out a word, la-la-la, performance
position, etc. She said what performance position is it that you know
the words, know the notes, and know in your heart that the words are true.
For performance position you could have the music leader explain how they
should stand tall, hold head straight, chin level, sing loudly and clearly
without shouting, etc.
She said the music leader should teach, but sing more than they talk.
Never expect the children to sing louder than you do.
"Latest and Greatest": Some new things - the GAK is now online if you want to print off
pictures rather than buying them. Go to resources on the lds. org
website and you can find it there. Quote President Hinckley: "Effective
teaching is the very essence of
leadership in the church." - have teachers take teacher development
class. There are different ways to do this like having team teachers
if you can so one teacher can go to the class on Sundays, have a one- hour
class before each quarterly activity day, etc. We should:
Live what we teach, Love those we teach, Teach the gospel by the spirit, and
Help those you teach to be responsible for what they learn. She also
said we should love those WHO teach, meaning that we need to recognize the
good work our teachers do. She gave the example of how if you teach a
great RS lesson, people line up to tell you how great it was, but if you
prayerfully prepare a Sunbeam lesson and everything goes wonderfully, all
your little students just walk out the door and no one tells you how great
it was - so we as presidencies can do that. She also talked about
visiting classes and different people gave suggestions on how to make that
work or if they think it was important - basically just that it creates a
situation where a teacher may feel comfortable asking us something that they
may not seek us out about, but if we are making ourselves available in that
situation it will make it easier for them to express their needs or for us
to see the needs.