Ranger Kids need more time...

Some advice please....

My RK leaders are having difficulty getting everything into the Tuesday night that they need to get done.  We only have an hour and 15 mins for rangers.  It's just not enough time for everything....What can we drop and what needs to go ahead?

suggestions?

Caveat: This is for Discovery & Adventure Rangers.

We make our own Outline for each week, and we use the Ranger Manual or Tracclub as a resource.  

Our Training Outline is set up for a One Hour Meeting.

Essentially, we take about 10 minutes for Opening Ceremony and Pledges, 5 to 10 minutes for Roll Call, Offering, & Chip Issue, 10 to 15 minutes for our Bible Merit time, and that leaves us with about 30 minutes prior to their recreational time in the Fellowship Hall (which varies, depending on how long the Pastor runs past 8:00 PM in the Sanctuary).

So we can split that time between "Advancements" and "Program Feature", or we sometimes only do one of the two.

I keep all of the Outlines on my computer as a Word Perfect or MS Word Document.  I copy the last week's Outline, change and add what needs to go in, rename it, and print it, so I have a listing of all of my meetings for the past 5 years and what we have done.  They stay in order in your Document File by naming them by Year, Month, & Day of the meeting.  Next Wednesday's Outline will be POI (Program of Instruction) 20151104.  

It only takes me about 10 minutes to update the outline from week to week, and it does a good job of forcing me to look at the Program Materials prior to the meeting, rather than attempting to teach it "cold".

We had a previous Pastor who, for a brief period of time, wanted all of the kids in the Sanctuary for the Praise & Worship & Offering (because that's the way they did it at his previous church).  That left us with only 35 to 40 minutes for the meeting.  I informed him that Rangers was not set up to run like that, and if I didn't have the boys for at least an hour, I was suspending the Program.

He conceded.

If you want a copy of one of our outlines to get some ideas, give me a P.M. and I'll email one out.  I will probably need your regular email address, so that I can send the Outline as an Attachment.  

Remember, nothing is "Set in Stone".  If you recall from your Military Days, a Unit Standard Operating Procedure is just a basic guideline that can be modified to suit your unit's particular situation.

Canadarangers wrote:Some advice please....

My RK leaders are having difficulty getting everything into the Tuesday night that they need to get done.  We only have an hour and 15 mins for rangers.  It's just not enough time for everything....What can we drop and what needs to go ahead?

suggestions?

I always drop the song they have to learn each quarter, as well as things like making walking sticks, Patrol flags etc (we have patrol flags already & don't make new ones. That way Patrols have a "history" in the Outpost) Often these things are under the "Physical" section

The latest leaders manual shows outlines for shorter meeting durations under the old standard 1.5 hrs. I recall there is a 1 hr meeting outline too.

Thanks.
All good advice. I forgot to mention that our first 10-15 mins is worship combined with the girls, and that's if we start on time. Tonight, they didn't start on time so we only had an hour and 10 mins with the boys. I will be talking to the pastor about it.