Cub Scout Neckerchief Slide Holder

Each month we make a neckerchief slide with the Cub Scouts. Part of this is because it’s fun, part because it helps them get started on a collection (which is one of the requirements they need to complete to get their Wolf badge).

In reviewing the steps to achieving their collection requirement, we realized the boys need a way to display their collection.

I’ve seen some pegboards used to display neckerchief slides, but that’s a bit more time and materials than we have available. We have a budget, and not a lot of time. So we came up with this idea: a dowel on a base to stack the slides on.

I used some 1x4s from my stash and purchased two 4’ lengths of dowel. Since 1x4s are actually 3.5” wide, I measured and cut eight 3.5”square pieces of wood. I also cut the dowels into 12” lengths.

After finishing the cuts, I measured and marked the center of each square and drilled a pilot hole. I also drilled pilot holes in each dowel, though that was a bit trickier.

I put a dab of wood glue at the end of each dowel and screwed 2” screws through the squares and into the dowels.

But I couldn’t stop there J

I dug through my stash of washi tape and found some yellow and blue- the Cub Scout colors. I used my label maker and made a label for each of the boys.

Little Miss Sunshine participates in all our activities, so I made one for her too, but I decorated hers with pink tape, at her request.

And I decorated mine in more of the blue and yellow tape.

Quick, inexpensive, and pretty easy. Hopefully the boys will be able to keep track of their slides and have a way to display their handiwork.

Sprout Cub Scout Neckerchief Slide

This month the boys are planting seeds and building planters, so I decided to do a plant-related neckerchief slide.

I used 1.5" wood discs as the base, then hot glued a short piece of thin green yarn for the stem. Then I hot glued a small piece of tan craft foam across the bottom as dirt. The leaves are foam stickers that came in a package from JoAnns that included hedgehogs, snails, and lady bugs. I peeled the paper backing off, then added a dab of glue to the wood before sticking the leaves on. The last step was to glue a piece of conduit to the back.

Before we went to scouts, I had all the pieces pre-cut and ready to go: all the boys had to do was glue the pieces together using a low-temp glue gun (under supervision, of course).

These were the only leaves I could find, and I think the whole thing almost looks a little like a tree, but they're living plants, so it's all good :) If I was more artistic, I might have cut and drawn our leaves, but I didn't have the time or energy to mess with that.

Blue and Gold Rope Knot Slide

Last month we did blue and gold pony bead slides, and I realized after the fact I should have saved the blue and gold themed slide for March, the month of our Blue and Gold Banquet.

Since I didn't, I did some googling and found this idea here. Since we did knots this month, it was an appropriate activity for the boys.

I bought some synthetic clothesline- synthetic rather than cotton so the ends could be melted together. I originally intended to spray paint the rope, but it's been so cold and wet recently that spray painting outside just wasn't feasible.  Instead, I used slightly watered-down acrylic craft paint. I let the rope soak in the paint for a little bit, then carefully removed each piece and laid them out on pieces of foil to dry overnight.

The next day, I cut the blue rope and the yellow rope into equal lengths and carefully melted the ends so they wouldn't fray. After that, it was just a matter of interlocking a blue piece of rope and a yellow piece of rope in a simple square knot. Then I hot glued the knot to a piece of conduit (the same conduit we've used on almost all of our slides- that one 10' piece isn't even half gone).

I did most of the prep work ahead of time, so the boys only had to do the knots and gluing. We just didn't have time for them to do the painting and I wasn't going to let 8 year-olds melt the ends of the ropes :)

The one thing that didn't turn out quite as I wanted: the blue paint rubbed off a bit on the yellow rope. I blame this on the acrylic craft paint- I don't think it would have been a problem with spray paint.

Cub Scout pony bead neckerchief slide

I wanted to do something presidential for February's neckerchief slide, but just couldn't come up with anything quick and easy.

In the end, after a good amount of time searching online for ideas, I found one here, using pony beads and boondoggle cord. The tutorial was very easy to follow, so I won't re-cap it here. The only thing I would change is the number of rows of beads. The tutorial said to make 10 rows, but I found that loose on my neckerchief, which is bigger than the boys' neckerchiefs, so I had them do 8 rows, and it worked much better- the slides stayed in place.

This proved fairly easy for the boys, with my supervision, but I did the knots for them. I did stripes, but some of the boys did checkerboard or other patterns. It was nice to do a slide that didn't involve paint :)

Pinewood Derby Neckerchief Slide

January's neckerchief slide was a little car in honor of the Pinewood Derby.

This one is very self explanatory- I drew a car on a piece of paper, cut it out, and traced it onto a piece of 1/4" oak. If we had a scroll saw, that would have been the ideal tool to use for this, but we don't have one so I used our jig saw instead and followed by using our Dremel to sand the pieces {mostly} smooth.

I painted the car and used a silver paint pen for the windows and black sharpie for the details. After everything was dry I hot glued the car to a piece of conduit.