Cub Scout Pack 48 – Berlin, NJ

March might have featured snowed out meetings, but it was also a lot of fun!  The Bears and Weblos went to visit the EMTs, our Lions held a park cleanup, and our Wolves split time between Emergency Preparedness and Coins!

For our March Pack Meeting, our Bears and Weblos Den hosted a Cub Carnival!  The other Cubs had a great time playing the carnival games that the older guys had planned out and made.

BIG thank you to all the parents and leaders who helped out, and to Carson’s Dad for bringing popcorn and cotton candy machines!

Despite the endless cold of this winter, the dens of Pack 48 had a great time in February!  Our Bears and Weblos planned out (and practiced) their Cub Carnival.  Our Wolves did some SCIENCE, including testing paper airplane designs and defying some of the laws of physis (Our Den Leaders Kevin and Shawn might be eligible for some sort of Nobel Prize now for managing that), and our Lions were visited by Ms. Kelly came with her EMT bag to talk to the Lions about First Aid.

Pack 48 held out first pinewood derby on Super Bowl weekend!  22 of our Cubs raced their cars, plus a pair of siblings!

A great time was had by all!  Big thank you Mr. Pascu and Mr. Smith for running the event, plus our Scouts Carson, Magnus, and Tim for their help!  Congrats to our six Scouts heading to the District Race in March!

Our February Pack Meeting celebrated the best that February has to offer… the Olympics!  Our Bears and Weblos opened things up with a flag ceremony.

After our monthly theme (“A Scout is friendly!”) we settled down for our events – hockey, curling, bobsledding, and an obstacle course!

There was also a “photo booth” for Scouts to pose with their medals!

Then it was advancements, our closing, and the end of another great pack meeting!

Next month – Cub Carnival!

January 13th to 14th, Pack 48 spent a night at the museum… the DINOSAUR museum!  In a whirlwind night at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, we made a fossil of a shark tooth, went digging for dinosaurs, learned about all sorts of ancient creatures from a paleontologist, went on a dinosaur scavenger hunt, looked at all of the many stuffed animals in the museum, saw a live owl demonstration, played a bunch of games, checked out baby and kid dinosaurs, and much more!

THEN WE GOT TO SLEEP IN THE DINOSAUR ROOM!!!  Pack 48 ended up spread out between the triceratops and the Hadrosaurus, with a few by the water dinosaurs too!

In the morning, we had breakfast, checked out the butterflies, and had a bit more dinosaur time (is there ever enough dinosaur time?) before heading home.

Where will we camp out next winter?  Franklin Institute?    The Battleship New Jersey?  The Philadelphia Zoo?  Adventure Aquarium?  Fort Mifflin?  No matter where it is, it will be fun!

Our Pack Meeting might have been a week late (thanks snow!), but we had a blast working on THE GREAT CUB MYSTERY!  Dens used invisible ink to write secret messages, wrote in secret code, and had to navigate a maze of lasers!   The dens then used clues to find our missing Cubs!

Our Scouts also helped design our new Cub Scout t-shirts that we’ll be ordering soon!  Yay!

Our next Pack Meeting is Thursday, February 1st from 7 PM to 8 PM where we’ll be having the Winter Cub-Olympics!!!

Sunday, January 7th, three of our boys braved the frigid temperatures (-4 degrees when we got to the parking lot!!!!) to go tubing at Jack Frost Mountain in the Poconos!  Despite single digit temperatures, everyone stayed toasty warm (layers, layers, layers!) and had a blast flying down the mountains on the tubes.

As many have heard through the media or through the grapevine, starting in Fall 2018, girls will be allowed to join Cub Scouts all over the country for the first time.

However, Pack 48 has been approached about helping test out particulars of how this is going to work by accepting girls into our Pack early.  We are only one of a handful of Packs around the country to be asked to do this.  After talking it over, the leaders decided to accept the offer.

Therefore, we are able to start recruiting girls in grades Kindergarten through 4th Grade to join Pack 48, starting NOW!  They will officially become members of the Boy Scouts of America on February 1st!

Girls will be allowed to participate in ALL Pack Meetings, campouts, and Pack activities, the same as any of our current Scouts.  In line with how the Boy Scouts of America has set up this new venture, girls will be placed in separate, girl-only dens for their small, grade-level den meetings (the den programs for each level will be IDENTICAL to what is being done now, so the girls are not missing out on anything).  Therefore, we are also going to be in need of a few brave men or women to take on the role of den leaders for these new dens.

So if you have a daughter in your family who might be interested in Cubs, or have family, friends, neighbors, co-workers, or random people at the supermarket who have sons OR daughters who might be interested in Cubs, invite them to get in contact with us by sharing the website, my contact info, or one of our Facebook posts!

Yours in Scouting,
Mike McCormick, Cubmaster

Pack meeting for tonight is CANCELLED due to the winter weather!

Meeting is rescheduled for NEXT Thursday, January 11th, at 7 PM at the Berlin VFW!