Fun, CUBed!

Although I was never good at math, I do understand exponents.  And I do understand that CUBe is 3-way fun for Scouts and their families!

The Saturday before we left for our vacation, we attended what has become an annual Cub Scout event for us.  CUBe stands for “CUB experience” and it’s a great opportunity to get out as a family and enjoy doing lots of different kinds of activities.

This year’s theme was “Cub Olympians” and many of the packs created games or activities that tied in to the Olympic games, whether summer or winter.  Due to time constraints, we skipped the lines for bb’s and archery and instead spent our time making the rounds to the other events.  The weather was gorgeous and we brought a picnic lunch which we enjoyed at the pavilion.  We managed to see most of the boys from our den and quite a few others we recognized from the neighborhood or from our pack.

We started off by making Ranger beads…

And then headed over to the obstacle course (which was fashioned after the biathlon in the Olympics.  Very clever!)  First, Crisana took her turn…

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dThN8ajEi5c[/youtube]

And then Trey took his:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpimKwf3_lY[/youtube]

After that, it was off to have a snack under the trees.

Next up was the rock painting.  Each child chose a smooth river rock and attempted to paint a snake design on it.  Our designs didn’t end up looking much like snakes, but boy did our kids have fun painting.

Next up was the paper airplane station.  There were many different “models” of airplane to choose from.  They decorated their planes and then sent them on a test flight.  Trey’s was quite good at doing loop-the-loops.  Crisana’s was quite good at flying straight into the ground.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2NnjQtvkts[/youtube]

We  headed down the hill to the Lifesaving station, where Trey got to practice his lifeguard skills once again.

At this point, it was nearing lunchtime.  I took the kids to one more booth – which turned out to be a form of broomstick hockey – before Matt took over and I headed to the car to get our cooler.

Matt was able to take them to get their faces painted, hammer some nails, and practice knot-tying while I was gone.

Crisana chose a puppy dog for her face paint…

…while Trey earned his “Bear” stripes.

After lunch, it was off to woodworking, where the project was making a stand to display a pinewood derby car.  The project was for scouts only, so Crisana helped me take the cooler back to the car while Matt helped Trey sand his pieces of wood…

…and put the pieces together to make the stand.

We were nearing the end of our day of fun, but we couldn’t leave yet.  We stopped at a mock archery game where Crisana showed off her skills.

We closed out our day with a visit to the bottle rocket launcher site.  We had brought our own bottles this year to be sure we had the chance to launch.  Matt, ever the engineer, helped create designs that were aerodynamic yet aesthetically pleasing.  It’s always so much fun to watch the bottles take off and see where they end up landing.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yd2ss_DYnE[/youtube]

Our day of 3-way fun ended up being one of our best yet.  I might even say it was Fun to the nth power!