Part of a new sub-series on the blogger brothers – cub scout pack ideas.  Tagged “cubscouts”.

Intent

My belief:  Pack meetings should be fun.  The den meetings are where all the work is done, so, when the boys get together as one big group, its great for the kids to get to do something unique.

In this article I’ll show you how we do the Snow-Ball Fight… safely.

Setup

First, the boys range in strength.  So, to ensure no one gets hurt, the boys need to be separated in space, otherwise some will have a tendency to throw while too close, which could cause injury.

So, form two teams, and setup a barrier between them.  A sort of no-mans-land.  Then the two teams must stay on their respective sides.  They must throw across the chasm.

In our case, we used 8 folding tables, that we lay on their sides.  The legs facing the inside of the no-mans-land.  Using these tables we ensure there is about 10 feet of space in the no-mans-land, that the children will need to clear before the snow-ball makes it to the opposing side.

The tables also provide a neat way for the boys to “take cover” from the enemy barrage.

With your barrier setup, go to each side, take small stacks of your mis-prints(the recycled paper) and spin them into the air.  This will cause the flat sheets of paper to fall like snow over the spay you threw.  This will be their “snow” which the boys will need to form into balls.

I recommend having at least a thousand sheets of paper.  They ball them up quick.  If you ask the whole pack for their misprints, it shouldn’t be too hard to find someone who can snag mis-prints from the office.

Supervision

The parent’s/leaders job during the battle is to ensure the children don’t cross the barrier, and to ‘shovel snow” out from no-mans-land.

There is a large number of snow-balls that will fall short.  To make sure this “treasured ammo” is not retrieved by boisterous children, the parents need to keep throwing it out evenly to the two sides.

Done… Cleanup

In our case of about 40 boys, they could do this for the whole pack meeting.  Every once and a while, I’ll give them a break, and call a cease fire.  During which time, they’ll re-group and gather more “snow”.

At the end, I take two recycling bins, and place them equally distant from the two teams.  I then challenge them to “shoot” the snow balls into the cans – as fast as they can – and the team that finishes first wins.  It helps to have the parents cheer on the teams, and capture the misses.

That’s it!  The kids love doing this and its a ton of exercise for them.