Setting up Your Scout Calendar

You are amazing! We need more volunteers like you! Every time you step up to plan something for your troop, you are doing so much for your child and the other children of your troop. Plus, scouting often times reaches outside of your troop to impact the world around us! But now that you’ve taken on the scout leader role, there is so much you will need to do. We begin by taking a peek into how to set up your scout calendar.

Scout Leader Tips for Creating a Scout Calendar

Setting up your scouting calendar can feel overwhelmed at first, but it doesn’t have to be this way. Read our tips below to help you create a scout calendar without the stress.

Use Different Colors

This is such a helpful hint that I’m going to start with this one. As you block out your calendar, use different colors for different events. We like to have our own personal family color for our busy nights with work or kids, vacations, and birthday or special events. School and local, community events should have their own color too.

Use a different color for everything scouting. For this I try to have a dark and light shade of a color. Blue works really great because you can usually find two shades of blue. We use one shade for large council and pack or service unit events and the other shade for troop or den specific events.

Creating a visual calendar lets you easily glance at your scout calendar and see what’s going on. You’ll know right away if this month is a busy month. You will also be able to tell which what events the month is busy. Is this a heavy scouting month due to sales or a busy school month because of parent-teacher conferences. Color coding takes but an extra moment but is way worth the use of different pens.

Be Flexible

Now that you have become a leader, you need to work on setting your scout calendar. There is no right or wrong here! If you find that your families love to travel in the summer, take those months off. However, if many of your scouts are busy with a sport during the fall instead, maybe plan less meetings then. If scouting is the thing for many of your scouts, then you can basically plan meetings all year. How your calendar looks will really be determined by your scouts and their needs.

Survey your Families

Start by planning a time to meet with your families. We like to do this in person, but you could also send out a quick survey too. Ask your scouting families about their typical busy times during the year. Figure out which nights of the week your scouts are available. We tend to find that Cub Scouts are available on the night the pack meets. Figure out the best time for your meetings when parents are most available. Finally, ask about weekend trip, outing, and camping availability and preferences. Knowing up front if your families loves the outdoors and camping will help so much when planning meetings and events.

Set Your Scout Calendar

Now that you’ve got the information from your families, it’s time to pull up a calendar and start setting dates. Take the day of the week that works best for your scouting families and compare this with your calendar. Is there a week you have a late night, special event, or vacation? If so, mark this day off the calendar. Mark off busy weekends and times of the years for your scouts. Think about vacations, school events, and after school curriculars.

Also keep in mind the selling seasons for scouts. Cub Scouts tend to sell popcorn in September and have a December fundraiser too. Girl Scouts tend to sell nuts and candy in October and cookies January to March. These tend to be extra busy times for both scouts and leaders. You will also want a few families to assist you during these months as so much is going on.

Check Scouting, School, and Local Events

Once you have an idea for the dates of scouting meetings, you can look at dates of other events. We try to do our best to plan scouting meetings around our scouts schedules as much as possible.

Check Council, Pack or Service Unit Large Event Calendar

I try to look at the events that my pack or service unit already have planned. There usually tends to be one planned for most months, so this often counts as our extra event. If you have months without an event, feel free to look at some of your adventures or badges to see which ones might fit well with a trip.

I will plan trips during those months without many extra events by the service unit or pack. This way your scouts can still get together for a fun event. These are often great times for parents to get to know each other too as many parents love to attend these events to see what their scouts are working on.

Take out your calendar and mark in all the larger pack and service unit events in a special scout color. You will want to have camping trips, day outings, and even special events like pinewood derby added to your schedule. The sooner you can get these dates to families, the better. If you are so inclined, you can also check council events too. This may mark up quite a few of your months and will start to limit the days left for your troop or den meetings.

School Calendars

Next, go through the school calendar and mark school events with a different color. You will want to block off any days off from school. Some families love to meet on these days, some prefer to avoid these days, and others enjoy planning an outing on these days. Either way, you will want to have these marked onto your calendar. This includes winter break, spring break, and even the last day of school.

Family Events

You will also want to consider family events too. Most schools have a curriculum night in the beginning of the school year to introduce parents to their child’s teacher and class. Schools have set parent-teacher conference times that you will probably want to avoid. In the spring, many schools offer an open house or other event for families. We try to avoid scheduling anything scouting during these times since we know families are extra busy with school related events.

Special Events

If you happen to know about other big events offered during the year, add those to your calendar too. Many schools have concerts, plays, family nights, and book fairs. If the dates are announced, great, add them to your calendar. If they aren’t announced yet, we suggest checking with the school’s PTA or PTO to see if they have any insight. It’s okay if you can’t find these dates yet, schools always add more events throughout the year. Just remember, you may need to cancel or shift a meeting to accommodate added school events.

Keeping open and honest communication with your families will make these changes easy to handle. We announce our schedule early in the scouting year and provide a copy for each family. Then we remind families to let us know if they notice any conflicts throughout the year. As the school announces new events, you can check your scout calendar and let parents know if you need to cancel or move a meeting.

Local Events

Many towns offer events throughout the year too, so you will want to add these to your calendar with yet another color. You will want to check for any special events going on in your town that you may wish to schedule scouting around. Sometimes you may want to include your troop or den in the special events, other times you might want to skip planning events on these days. Check out dates for parades, tree lighting ceremonies, elections, town anniversary celebrations, movies in the park, community service, Halloween trick or treating, 4th of July celebrations or carnivals. Block these off as scouts to attend as a group or no scouts today.

You may also want to check in with families about other extra curricular events your scouts take part in. If some of your scouts dance, you may need to plan around a dance recital weekend. If your scouts play baseball, there may be a special tournament or play-off game. As there are so many options, it is always best to check in with your families to see if they can think of anything special coming up in their child’s life.

Scout Calendar Each Month

We have found that planning 2 meetings a month and an extra event tends to keep scouting a priority while allowing the kids to enjoy many different activities. We usually meet during the school year and take the summers off, maybe just planning an event or two. If you want to plan a meeting for every other week, be sure to plan the 2nd and 4th weeks of the month. (Otherwise, sometimes you will have 3 meetings a month – 1st, 3rd, and 5th weeks).

Usually having one consistent date helps with families to be able to attend meetings. However, feel free to do what works best for your families. Our meetings are usually where we work on badges, patches, advancements, and journeys or awards.

Add Your Scout Meetings and Outings to Your Calendar

Now that you’ve blocked off all the events and special days in your community, you can go through and start scheduling your scout calendar. Start by adding your den and troop meetings onto your scout calendar. You will want to know which day of the week you plan to meet. Then go month by month and try to schedule two troop or den meetings per month. If one month you can only schedule one do to other events, that’s okay! No not force two meetings, just do your best to offer two meetings when you can.

Then look at each month and see what scouting events you have scheduled. If you color coded the events it should be really easy to see how many scouting activities are scheduled each month. If the month is already pretty busy, you don’t have to add an additional outing or event. On the other hand, if the calendar only has your two scouting meetings, feel free to add an additional scout outing on an open weekend or evening.

Share your Scout Calendar with Families

With your meetings and events planned, you now have your scouting calendar for the year. We usually type up the calendar and share with families so that they are able to add these to their calendar. On our calendar we add everything scouting related that we can. Add your monthly den or troop meetings, add service unit or pack events, and add any council events your group may wish to attend. Google calendar is such a great thing! You can create a special Google scout calendar to share with your families.

We like to have our scout calendar available in multiple different ways for parents. We print copies of our typed up scouting calendar to give to parents at one of our first meetings of the year. This is great for families who prefer a physical copy, but many families also like an electronic copy too. So we like to send an e-mail or calendar invite with all our scouting dates too. Finally, post a copy of your scout calendar on your scout website, communication app, or other social platform that you use.

Always caution parents that meetings and events may need to change, might get cancelled, or new ones added at the last minute. There is so much to do with scouting and it changes so often! Plus, as you meet your scouts, you may find new adventures you would like to take together!

Now that you’ve got a general idea of your calendar, be sure to check out our hints on setting up your room. We’d love for you to leave us a comment below and let us know if you found these tips helpful or have other scout leader tips you’d like to share.

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.