We had our March Pack meeting yesterday with our Cub Scout group. It is a constant challenge for our leadership group to come up with interesting ideas and activities for Pack meetings. One the one hand, we’d like to give them an opportunity for a life lesson of one sort or another. On the other hand, we’re dealing with boys that can’t sit still for very long. Most of the time, we opt for more active activities just because that’s what the target audience demands.
Sometimes we look to the monthly Cub Scout themes for inspiration. This month’s them is “compassion” and we hit upon an idea that struck us all as having potential- we would pair the Scouts up, blindfold one of them and then have the other direct them through the halls of the school without any physical contact. Then, we would sit them down and have them describe a picture of an animal to an adult pretending to be blind.
The blindfolded walk went well and there were some interesting ideas used to help lead the blindfolded Scouts around. Most of the boys used there voices to guide their partner. One thing that worked against us was most of the boys had the halls memorized, so they knew where to turn or what way to turn. There were few, though, that used clapping patterns to guide their partner through the halls. They’d create a steady clap for the other Scout, even going as far as clapping on their left or right to direct them in a certain direction.
Towards the end of the course, we had some parents setup a little obstacle course to navigate so the blindfolded boys really had to listen to their guide. The guide had to concentrate pretty hard as well.
In some ways, the second activity proved more interesting. The boys had a tough time figuring out how to describe the animals, initially. For starters, they misunderstood the aim and thought they needed to describe the animal without using the name of the animal. For instance, the group I was with was trying to describe a giraffe, but they didn’t want to call it a giraffe. They weren’t making the connection that I was pretending to be blind and, therefore, while I may have heard of a giraffe I had never seen a giraffe.
Once they got past that, the next hurdle was color. They told me things like “yellow body with brown spots.” I had to explain that, as a blind person, I don’t really know what brown or yellow means. I could possibly imagine colors, but I have no way of knowing if what I imagine is the same thing they are talking about. This observation seemed to strike a chord as they all grew quiet, perhaps realizing for the first time some of the things a blind person can’t experience.
They continued to struggle with other aspects like using shapes for description, until one of the boys started drawing shapes on my hand and saying “this is a circle” or “this is what round is.” After that revelation, they managed to find their way in describing the animal in a way a blind person might be able to understand.
After our activities, I tried to tie that all back into the concept of “compassion.” Explaining that it’s useful to understand the problems or limitations other people experience and how that allows us to have compassion for them. There’s never any way to know for sure if this stuff actually struck a nerve, but we were able to hold their attention with these activities for quite a while. I’ll take that.