The wonderful world of Justice and Mommy aka Mary!

Sunday, September 6, 2009

BSA Family Award Journey Part 1


As I was gearing up for this Cub Scout year I began to plan out what achievements and awards we would work on and what would fit well with the Wolf Scout advancement requirements. Some things like belt loops can be earned quite easily while other things like pins and awards require more work and involvement, so I decided a mix between the easy and hard would work best for us. I have identified several things that Justice can earn this year both on his own and with his unit; but, the award I am most excited about is the BSA Family Fun Award.

This award is able to be earned by both the boys and their families which makes it quite unique from most other awards. The point of the program is to strengthen the family by spending more time together by doing things like playing games together, reading and doing community service. You also develop a deeper bond by learning about one another as you do things like explore your heritage, develop a family council and learn how to communicate with each other. Last but not least, you have the opportunity to strengthen your relationship with God by visiting a new church, having open family discussions and helping those who are less fortunate in your own community.

To make things easy, they have broken the program down into five categories that will strengthen your family- Shaping Your Family Identity, Developing Personal Skills, Building A Family Team, Connecting With Your Community and Facing Family Challenges. To earn the basic award each family must choose two activities from each category and complete them over the course of several weeks or several months. Once that award has been achieved, you can earn pins in each category by completing two more actives in each area.

After reading over the Fun For The Family book and pouring over the activities, I realized this was much more than just an award we could earn. This was an opportunity to take a good family and make it a great family. We could use this program as a way to make permanent changes in our family and continue to make use of the activities even after we have attained our goal.

With so many things to choose from, I decided we would develop a family motto and make a poster of it which could be displayed on our living room wall. We could use that motto to help us relate to each other better and help us to make better choices even when things are rocky. After talking with Justice we settled on "Have Love, Faith and Hope Like Christ" If we can model ourselves after those three principals, we can accomplish anything.

Justice seemed to enjoy making a family motto and seemed to be excited about the things we would be doing throughout the year as part of this project. We have decided to bring back the Sunday Dinners of long ago where the good china gets used and everyone gets dressed up. We have decided to play more games together and turn off the TV more often to read aloud. We have also decided to try and save our money for a big treat at the end of the year and will be exploring many other aspects of this project as the weeks and months progress.

I will be using a portion of our blog to track our journey and hope to use it as a tool in the future, so stay tuned for more instalments as time goes on. If you decide to try any of these things at home, please leave a comment and let me know how it worked out for you!
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posted by Mary Gerber at 9/06/2009

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