New Merit Badge Counselor

I'm new to Boy Scouts. I grew up with seven sisters (my half brother only lived with us some summers and his senior year) so Boy Scouts is a new vocabulary and new culture for me. Since I have FOUR sons, I will be learning all about it!

So....I signed up to be a counselor for a bunch of merit badges! I just finished Citizenship in the Nation with my 12 year old son, and now I'll be teaching that merit badge to our troop for two evenings this month. Now that I've taught it once, I realize that cramming all that information into two nights is pretty heavy going. There's writing involved, which boys tend to resist, and lots of lecture on history, which can be so exciting but often ends up boring. I want to make the teaching very visual, so the boys don't tune it out, and to make it more interesting for me as well.

I'm sure I'm not the first merit badge counselor that wants to do this. So I'm on a mission to plug into creative things already done by other Scout leaders. Then I'm going to create a post that connects resources I find into one post. I'm very motivated to do this for CitNation, since I'll be teaching it, but my goal is to do it for other merit badges as well.


Fingers crossed for luck!