Scout Troop Meeting Activities

• Include in your Scout meeting plenty of activities. Brand X Pictures/Brand X Pictures/Getty Images

  When planning for an upcoming boy or girl scout troop meeting, you want to be sure of the topics you need to discuss. On top of that, you want your scouts to interact with each other through positive, team-based activities that develop their cooperation with each other while promoting the Scouts' message.

Things Common and Unique

• Start off your meeting with an icebreaker activity that helps the scouts learn more about each other. First, divide the Scouts into groups of about five people each. Sit all of the groups down at separate tables. Hand a player from each group a writing utensil and a piece of paper. He becomes the recorder of the group. The members of each group have to come up with as many things they all share amongst each other. Things like experiences, family life and interests work better than things like physical features. The recorder writes these things down on the paper. Once two minutes have passed, tell the groups to come up with as many things unique to their group members as they can. Continue for another two minutes then ask the groups to read the listed items to everyone. See which group came up with the most things in common and the most unique things.

T-Shirt Relay

• No Scout meeting remains complete without a relay game. Start this game by gathering the Scouts to an open area. Divide the Scouts into two or more teams. Line each team up so teammates stand side by side. Hand the right-most player of each team an over-sized t-shirt. Ask these members to put the shirts on and have all of the teammates hold hands. When you say "go," the right-most players pull the shirts over their heads and past their shoulders onto the players beside them. The t-shirts should pass through the lines without the teammates breaking hands. The first team to have the t-shirt at the left-most end of its line wins the game.

Silence

• To see how well your Scouts can work together using only nonverbal communication, play this game during your next meeting. Start by having all of the Scouts write down the dates of their birth on index cards. Tape these cards to the front of the players' shirts. Then, tell the players they have to arrange themselves in a line according to the chronological order of their birthdays--from oldest to youngest. The crux of the game, however, rests on whether these players can do this without speaking to each other. If you want to add a sense of competition to the game, divide the Scouts into two teams and have them race against each other to achieve the correct order first.