May/June update

Meeting this week Wednesday May 20 hosted by Emily and Aliyah, 6 to 7pm at the council

Please turn in pancake breakfast ticket money on Wednesday so we can turn everything in ASAP, hope you all enjoyed your pancakes today.

We have fall registration packets, please come in at the next meeting and fill out your paperwork, it get's easier each year as you just update any new info on the forms. Registration fee is due and this year we get a new blue polo shirt for our uniform. Make sure you have your check book with you so we can get it all done quickly.

I have an order form for new Hoodie sweatshirts and crew neck sweatshirts if anyone is interested, I highly recommend getting one as they come in handy as a "uniform" top in a pinch, we literally wore out our three red jackets. I will have the form at the next meeting, we only have until June 5 to get the order in and i don't know when they will be ordering another round.

Camp Shiwaka is session 1 this year, June 22 - 26, please sign up soon so we have a final head count. We are assigned fire ring 7.

Our end of year swim/ice cream party will be Friday June 26 after Camp Shiwaka the time will be either 3 to 7 or 4 to 8, still finalizing this event. After a fun week at camp together it will be great to end the year with a party, thanks to the Kirchhoffs for hosting!!

A few plans for next year: we will be Discovery level starting in the fall which means the council will host some events to get all the Discovery level kids together for some training and fun. We will have new dark blue polo shirts for our uniform and they will have their collars to wear at all ceremonial events (kiniya, grand council fire, thursday night shiwaka sleep over etc). You can decorate the collars but please leave a spot in the very middle of the back for our group symbol. We will be making our group symbol patch next year with our new name Wakin Yolo Gidi's, yay!

As we move into a new level we will continue to earn beads and patches along the 5 trails (family, self, community, outdoors, creativity and future). I am excited for us to start on an "Outdoor Progression" patch called "Fire Tender" which is one of the original Indian patches that look so great on the leather collars. There are 7 activities to complete including taking a hike, learning about knots, learning about proper camping techniques, fire building and fire safety, using a pocket knife, compass training and a few more things. The kids learn much of this at Camp Shiwaka but we will go over in a little more detail at some of our meetings. We will plan and go on a hike to complete the progression. The next outdoor progression is called "High Adventure" which is another beautiful patch and will be more advanced techniques in hiking, compass, camping etc. We may start this progression next year, maybe at camp shiwaka or the following year. My plan is to work on outdoor progressions along with our "business meeting" format (the kids will continue to rotate through president, vp, etc) at our meetings and finally, we will continue to have "kid run" meetings as well. I am so excited to include more outdoor hiking events and a visit to Los Cerritos Wetlands will be on our calendar as well, we need to see what happened to all the seed bombs we through a few years back!

I hope everyone will continue with us to the next level and please let me know if you have any programming suggestions (outings, field trip ideas, special guest speakers you may know etc) I welcome any and all suggestions from you guys, thanks so much for hanging in there with us!