Successful Tiger Scout Meetings

Congratulations on becoming your Tiger Den Leader or assistant leader! What a wonderful leadership role and experience. We couldn’t be happier for you starting your journey. During your Tiger Scout year, we want to offer you as much support as we can for planning your Tiger Scout meetings. Please check out our other Tiger Scout posts, especially planning your first meeting and your beginning of the year campout. These two meetings help you to earn Tiger rank within your first month of scouts!

As you dive into the Tiger books and adventures, it may seem a little overwhelming at first. The important thing to remember is that you can take it one step at a time. Firstly, start with the required adventures. Then, complete the one elective adventure that the scouts need to make Tiger rank. After that, explore the adventures that seem interesting to your scouts. This is where you make scouting your own! You do not need to complete all the elective adventures.

Leader Tools for Ease at Tiger Scout Meetings

As you plan your Tiger Scout meetings, there are a few tools that will make your scout leader journey a little easier. As you are already volunteering your time, anything that can make scouting a little easier is a must!

Leader Binder

Having a Tiger Scout Leader Binder can be incredibly helpful! This is the one stop place for everything! We keep our adventures, agendas with sign-in sheets, roster, product sales, reminder notes, extra sign-in sheets, scouting calendar, newsletters, and any other important information. We also have a special pouch (a pencil holder for binders) to keep our leader stamps.

Leader Stamps

With each meeting, you will need to record the adventures that you complete for each scout. We found that having a special signature and date stamp was extremely helpful. One leader, or parent, could quickly stamp each scout’s book that attended the meeting. This was a great tracker for families, as we asked our scouts to keep their own books. Our Agenda has the adventures (and handbook pages) we planned to complete during the meeting. Then we could quickly stamp the pages in the handbook and the adventure tracker in the back of the handbook.

Sign-in Sheet

But as leaders, we needed another method for tracking attendance. So, we had each scout sign in at each meeting and event. The sign-in sheet was a quickly typed list of scout names where each scout could write their name when they attended. We printed this for each meeting, outing, pack meeting, pack event and council event. The sign-in sheets were a wonderful record when we needed to double check a scout’s requirements met. Be sure to date each sign-in sheet, then attach it to your agenda.

Reminder Notes

For each meeting, we typed a quick reminder note. This note included the date, time and place of our next meeting. It also included any reminders, at home work, and adventure requirements that families may need to remember. We had these notes available at the start of meetings, so parents could enter important dates into their calendar during the meeting or take the note home to enter later.

Agenda for Each Scout Leader

We type up our agenda for each meeting and outing. Then we print out an agenda for each scout leader, plus an extra for the volunteer who stamps all the scouts handbooks. This extra agenda is great because you can give to any parent who needs to leave early, snap a picture and send to any scout who missed the meeting, and staple to your attendance sign-in sheet for easy recording of the scouts adventures in Scout Book or any other program you use. We cover Tiger Scout meeting agendas in more depth below.

Agenda for Tiger Scout Meetings

While you write out your agenda, keep track of the adventure requirement met with each activity that you complete. We would type it right on the agenda, right after the activity. This made it easy to enter the advancements worked on at each meeting. One leader would collect the agenda (we made copies for all the leaders) and the sign-in sheet. Then they easily added the advancements for each scout who attended the meeting in Scout Book. Plus, leaders always knew which advancement they were working on for each part of the meeting. See the below agenda for a visual.

Also on the agenda, we would add the signature page of each advancement that we worked on throughout the meeting. We put this right at the top so that it was easy to stamp the correct pages throughout the book. We could quickly flip through each book, stamp and date the pages. Then we would flip to the end and record the adventures met.

We divide each agenda into 7 main parts. The parts of the agenda stay consistent each week, but the items on the agenda change to reflect our current adventures we are working toward earning. We will look at each piece in-depth to help make planning tiger scout meetings a snap for you.

Advancements/Pages to Sign

At the very top of the agenda, we type the exact adventure requirements that we focus on in this meeting. Be sure to type the specific requirement. For example: Tiger Tag Part 2. This way you know that you completed Tiger Tag part 2, but might still need to complete Tiger Tag part 1 and Tiger Tag part 4.

Include the page number of the specific adventure requirement where a signature is required. Having both the adventure name and page number makes it easy to stamp the scout handbooks. You can quickly find and stamp the pages, then turn to the back of the book and stamp the requirements too. This helps families know what they still need to complete.

Gathering Activity for Tiger Scout Meetings

Our gathering activities are usually an individual (or adult partner) creating activity. We purposely plan these activities to be independent and need little leader support. This opens the leaders to network and answer parent questions in the beginning of the meeting. Plus, you might need a leader to set up an activity for later in the meeting.

Always provide all the supplies and directions that the scouts will need. The directions can be to view specific pages in their scout handbook or a printed out step-by-step direction that you type. If you make your own directions, be sure to include picture support as most scouts are learning to read. You can organize supplies as an assembly line where scouts take one of each item they need. Another idea for organizing supplies is to create individual scout packs where each pack has all the supplies a scout will need. A Ziploc bag works great for creating scout packs. We use both methods throughout the year depending on the activity.

Creating activities can be anything that scouts need to make or write. We love to tie these to our adventures, whether it be the adventure we are currently learning, the adventure we just completed, or a reflection on an earlier adventure. Some creating activity samples include coloring, drawing, writing, building a model, designing, and constructing.

On occasion, our gathering activity involves the parent partner. These are great because scouts work with their family. Some ideas include memorizing their address and phone number, practicing the Scout Law/Oath, exploring elective adventures to share which they would love to earn, and describing each adventure belt loop they have and how they earned it.

Tiger Scout Meetings Opening

For our openings, we begin with a scout roar to call attention, followed by a flag ceremony. Then our Tiger Scouts lead us through the Scout Oath and Scout Law. Ensure they are demonstrating the Scout Sign correctly. We conclude our opening by sharing any at home assignments from our last meeting or outing.

Talk Time at Tiger Scout Meetings

Talk Time includes so many different topics that it can be hard to include them all, plus they change from meeting to meeting. Our talk times tend to be half for parents and half for scouts.

During talk time we discuss any scout business that needs to be shared. This may include upcoming den, pack, and council events, plan for campouts and hikes, sales expectations and how-to, progress towards rank, and other pack and council initiatives.

The other part of talk time is to discuss any parts of the adventure that work best as a dialogue or discussion with the scouts. This may be showing how-to do something specific, sharing information about a topic, or presenting special equipment. Many adventures lend themselves to 1 – 2 parts that work best as talk time.

Tiger Scout Activities

This is where we do the bulk of the work towards meeting an adventure’s requirements. It is also usually the bulk of our tiger scout meeting. Most adventures need 1 – 3 activities to earn the specific adventure. So be sure to think about timing when planning your activities. This part of the meeting is usually about 30 minutes, so if you have 2 activities, that leaves about 15 minutes per activity. If you have 3 activities, you should plan about 10 minutes per activity.

As your scouts have sat and listened for about 10 – 15 minutes, this is the time to get them up and moving. Explain the directions of the activity and let the scouts get moving. This is the time to play the game, let them explore the equipment, build something together, practice a play or skit, or create art or other responses necessary for adventure requirements.

With Tiger Scouts the more movement you provide the better. Remember, most of these scouts are 6 – 7 years old and need lots of movement. If the activities will require the scouts to sit or work in one place, be sure to build in a movement break between talk time and each activity. Movement breaks might be a trip to the bathroom, a jog across the gym, or even some physical exercise or stretching.

Closing Tiger Scout Meetings

Closing is usually only 5 minutes and is mostly directed towards parent partners. Your scouts should be pretty tired after the activity portion of the meeting and ready to go home, so it’s best to keep this short. This is where we share anything we need parents and scouts to know about or do. In addition, we can share important dates, RSVPs needed, or at home projects. Be sure parents are able to ask questions if they need and take the time to give families reminders about events and product sales.

At Home Assignments

The final part of each meeting is assigning an at home project. We usually assign this during our closing but we wanted to provide a little extra detail and make it easy to find.

At home projects are anything from the adventure requirements that a scout needs to complete for multiple days or complete outside of our outings and meetings. There is usually 1 requirement per adventure that fits this part of the meeting. However, not every adventure has an at home requirement. For those adventures, be sure to assign a Duty to God requirement to ensure your scouts finish this required adventure. Another idea is to assign the at home project needed for the adventure you will complete at your next meeting.

Some at home projects we love are helping out around the house, displaying the American flag, family research, and bringing something to our next meeting.

Grouping Advancements for Tiger Scout Meetings

Some advancements fit really well together in the Tiger year. We loved grouping some together to make it easy to meet both the required adventures and many elective adventures. Required adventures are marked in bold and underlined, while elective adventures are marked only in bold.

Snack at Tiger Scout Meetings

Scouts in first grade love snacks! Having each family prepare and bring a nutritious snack from their culture to share at a meeting can meet multiple adventures. Games Tigers Play 2, Tiger Bites 6, and Family Stories 7

Playing Games at Tiger Scout Meetings

First, learn and play team building and problem solving games with a discussion on how the scouts helped each other meets Games Tigers Play 1 and Tiger-iffic 3

Second, make up a buddy game while discussing the importance of the buddy system meets Games Tigers Play 3, Floats and Boats 2, and Tiger-iffic 5

Third, let the scouts vote on an active team game and running a relay race meets Tiger Tag 2, Tiger Tag 3, and Tiger Tag 4

Tiger Scout Service

Getting the scouts involved in a pack service project that benefits their community meets many advancements Team Tiger 4, Good Knights 6, and Earning Your Stripes 6

Tigers Helping at Home

Having the scouts assist their family is in multiple advancements too. If you have the scouts help their family with a new meal time task, you could earn many different advancements Team Tiger 3, Tiger Bites 4, Tiger Circles 5, and Earning Your Stripes 3. However, we preferred to have the scouts try out jobs to assist their families multiple times throughout the year as their homework for scouting. It’s a great way to build the service piece of scouts in a way that works for young scouts.

Don’t forget to check out the Tiger Scout Outings, our Second Tiger Scout Agenda, October Tiger Scout meeting plan, and November Tiger Scout meeting agenda posts as well to help with making rank and meeting elective adventure requirements. We would love to hear from you. Drop us a comment with your thoughts on our Tiger Scout tools, agenda, and grouping of adventures. Additionally, if you have other ideas, let us know too!

Hi, I’m Nicole.

Here at Creatingbutterflies we provide families with practical solutions to real life problems for everything parenting, scouting, dual language, and enjoying time outdoors. We are a family of 6 with 4 wonderful becoming bilingual children who loves scouting, camping, and hiking with their family. Mom is an educator and dad is a firefighter/paramedic.