Hyping the Skills Showdown

As previously mentioned, I'm putting together the November campout for our Troop, a Skills Showdown. I'm trying to make it a very different event from the traditional November campout, a "skills weekend." In addition to actually planning special games and activities, I'm trying to really hype the campout during our weekly Troop meetings. I'm trying to get the Scouts excited about the kind of things we'll be doing, as well as build curiosity and interest around the mystery of the weekend because I'm not divulging many details.

During the opening of a Troop meeting (4-1/2 weeks from the campout) I announced the Skills Showdown by tearing up the old skills weekend sign-up sheet and debuting the Skills Showdown sign-up. I ran through some ideas during the opening and closing: more competition and less learning, camping at a new location, and a stone soup. I believe this did a good job of whetting their appetites for something special.

3-1/2 Weeks Away

At the next Troop meeting's opening (3-1/2 weeks from th campout) I started by asking the Scouts if they remember what the Skills Showdown would bring--and they did: camping at a new spot, special dinner, some sort of games and activities.

I followed that up by telling them that dinner would include more than just stone soup: we were having a smorgasbord, or buffet. Each patrol was going to be responsible for making at least one dish, and then we'd get everything together so that we could all taste and share in each other's food. The Scout's reacted positively to this and thought it sounded fun, but their reaction was a little underwhelming--just as I anticipated.

"What's the twist, Dan?" I said. The Scouts sort of resounded, "there's a twist?"

"The food you make, you can never have made before on a campout." The response to this was more excitement and confusion. I had a list of ideas of food they could make that I read aloud. Sherree helped me create this list, and we tried to pick things that we thought the Scouts liked to eat, but probably hadn't considered for campouts before: pizza (real toss-it-in-the-air kind, not french bread, bagel, or english muffin), stuffed shells, baked mac & cheese, sausage & peppers, nachos, pigs in blankets, hamburgers (real hand-formed, tasty-spiced; not ready-made), etc. I also told the Scouts I didn't expect them to figure out tonight what their patrol would cook, I just wanted to get them thinking. I reminded them that the sign-up sheet was here for them.

At the closing of the meeting, I again went up to talk a little about the Skills Showdown. I had a list of supplies they would need: tents, clothing, utensils, rope, first aid kit, spatula, etc. I wanted to convey to them that these supplies might relate to the activities that we would be doing--and they do--but I honestly just assembled a list of anything I could think of! I could see some Scouts giving consideration to what I was saying, but I'm sure they couldn't draw any specific conclusions. I shared a few other points that I believe were more useful: that this was a competition and there would be winners, that we would be using the buddy system, that we would be using the Patrol Method, and that we would be doing activities covered by the Tenderfoot, Second Class, and First Class requirements. I believe I left them with some intriguing information that made them think for at least a few minutes.

I feel like I'm doing a good job of building excitement about the Skills Showdown and am really raising the Scouts expectations of what this campout (and campouts in general?) can be.