February 15th is National Gumdrop Day. How fun is that?
Did you know that gumdrops can help Cub Scouts complete requirements or electives? Yep, they can! Whether the boys are making their own gumdrops or building with store-bought ones, they can mark off several activities!
Read on to find out how!
Make your own Gumdrops
Tiger Adventure – Tiger Bites 6: With your adult partner, plan and make a good snack choice or other nutritious food to share with your den.
Bear Elective Adventures – Bear Picnic Basket 2a: With the help of an adult, select one food item, and follow a recipe to prepare it for your family in your kitchen. Clean up after the preparation and cooking.
Bear Elective Adventures – Bear Picnic Basket 3: Select and prepare two nutritious snacks for yourself, your family, or your den.
You can fulfill these by making your own homemade gumdrops!
Hoosier Homemade has a really simple recipe. They're made with only five ingredients – jello, applesauce, gelatin, lemon juice and sugar. They do have to be refrigerated for several hours, so you might want to make them one night and cut them out the next day.
Hoosier Homemade shows how to make heart-shaped gumdrops, but I'm sure our boys will want to pick out another shape! Check out these cookie cutters on Amazon. They have several small shapes in addition to the heart, so your son will have lots of choices.
Construct with Gumdrops
After the boys make your own gumdrops, they can build with them! PBS Kids has a fun activity showing how to make a gumdrop dome. The box on the left side of the page explains how to do an experiment by varying the number of sides on the base or using squares rather than triangles.
This will fulfill Webelos/AOL Elective Adventure – Engineer 4: Pick and do two projects using the engineering skills you have learned. Share your projects with your den, and also exhibit them at a pack meeting.
Gumdrops work great for other science-related activities. NASA has a neat project that shows how to build Gummy Greenhouse Gases. While the concept of “greenhouse gases” might be a bit too advanced for some of our younger Cub Scouts, they can still make water and carbon dioxide molecules to meet the requirement.
A Webelos den leader from New York built a Gumdrop Truss Bridge with her group. This was originally published in the March 2008 edition of Baloo's Bugle, but I made a pdf file of it so that it would be easier for you to use. What a fun pack meeting idea!
What other fun projects have you done with gumdrops?
Yours in Scouting,
Sherry
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Pam Smith says
I am finding it difficult to consider making gumdrops/ior building with them as a Cub Scout activity with the intent to pass off the requirements you suggested for the Bear dens. Although I love this project (I have been doing this for years with my own children; have done it at family reunions, etc.) and will most likely do it with my scouts, I will NOT use it to pass off any requirements; mostly because gumdrops are NOT nutritious!
Sherry says
Thank you for your opinion! And thanks for reading!