KISMIF.org – Awesome Cub Scouting

There has been a lot of brain research to come out recently (as discussed in The Minds of Boys by Michael Gurian) confirming what many of us already knew about how boys are different than girls. Some of these findings are discussed in the November 2005 Scouting Magazine article: “The Minds of Boys“.

In particular, boys’ brains tend to shut down if they are having to just sit passively for a long period of time and be talked at. If you want boys to have fun or learn something, you need to make sure that what you are doing is an activity, preferably a fun one. If you just talk on and on while the boys are having to sit and listen, they will be bored silly and won’t want to come back.

Keep your den and pack meetings focused on activities rather than the boys having to just sit and listen. If you need to cover something instructional, turn it into a game, a quiz, a contest– something where the boys are actually involved and doing things.

And preferably it should be something that gets them out of their chairs. Get them physically moving around. Play active games. Look at stuff. Go outside. These are the kinds of things that boys enjoy.

The more activities that you do with your Pack or Den, the more your boys will be having fun and will want to come back each week. Make sure that the time they have to just sit still passively is kept to an absolute minimum. Link