My youngest is in fifth grade. In March 2009 he’ll move on from Cub Scouts into Boy Scouts, and so will end my 12 years as a Cub Scout mom/volunteer.
Sibling 
, about six years ago
Each October we have a Halloween themed Pack meeting. The kids come in costume & bring along tombstones they’ve created with slabs of Styrofoam & spray paint (which decorate my yard each year thanks to the well-trafficked location of my home.) We have games, crafts, snacks, and for the past six years or so I’ve been in charge of taking Polaroid photos of each child.
I love taking the pictures. The kids get to be front & center, show off their costumes. I ask the shy ones to pose in character, and encourage the wilder ones to stand still long enough so the one shot isn’t a blurred ghost (although for Halloween the ghost-like images work sometimes!) Most of the kids have never seen a Polaroid photo. Sometimes when I hand a child a blank piece of cardboard, I get back a confused or disappointed stare. “Wait,” I say. ” In a few minutes you’ll see magic.”
This being my last year with the Pack, I was really looking forward to one last stint capturing the kids on film. But we ran into a problem- Polaroid has stopped making instant film! I have two packs left, so 20 photos- but we have nearly 45 boys, plus the siblings (can’t leave little brother out!) I went online (ebay, etc) to see what I could find- plenty of film out there but all much too expensive for a small Cub Scout Pack. We considered printing out digital shots with a small photo printer but part of the fun is getting the photos into the boys’ hands immediately. Taking photos, transferring to printer, printing out- just takes too long.
I sent out a request to the internet via Twitter, but as expected nothing came of it. I was planning to head out to local camera shops today (I think there are a few left around here somewhere) but I didn’t have high hopes.
So this morning when I saw an email from our Cub Master saying he’d found four more packs of film, I was thrilled! It’s a little thing, but trust me, when you find an activity that kids enjoy year after year, you want to keep it going as long as you can. And I admit it’s a selfish thing, too. Definitely .
So for me, and likely Polaroid, it’ll be one last evening shooting magical cardboard rectangles out of a bulky green machine.
Cub Scouts and Polaroids
My youngest is in fifth grade. In March 2009 he’ll move on from Cub Scouts into Boy Scouts, and so will end my 12 years as a Cub Scout mom/volunteer.
Sibling
, about six years ago
Each October we have a Halloween themed Pack meeting. The kids come in costume & bring along tombstones they’ve created with slabs of Styrofoam & spray paint (which decorate my yard each year thanks to the well-trafficked location of my home.) We have games, crafts, snacks, and for the past six years or so I’ve been in charge of taking Polaroid photos of each child.
I love taking the pictures. The kids get to be front & center, show off their costumes. I ask the shy ones to pose in character, and encourage the wilder ones to stand still long enough so the one shot isn’t a blurred ghost (although for Halloween the ghost-like images work sometimes!) Most of the kids have never seen a Polaroid photo. Sometimes when I hand a child a blank piece of cardboard, I get back a confused or disappointed stare. “Wait,” I say. ” In a few minutes you’ll see magic.”
This being my last year with the Pack, I was really looking forward to one last stint capturing the kids on film. But we ran into a problem- Polaroid has stopped making instant film! I have two packs left, so 20 photos- but we have nearly 45 boys, plus the siblings (can’t leave little brother out!) I went online (ebay, etc) to see what I could find- plenty of film out there but all much too expensive for a small Cub Scout Pack. We considered printing out digital shots with a small photo printer but part of the fun is getting the photos into the boys’ hands immediately. Taking photos, transferring to printer, printing out- just takes too long.
I sent out a request to the internet via Twitter, but as expected nothing came of it. I was planning to head out to local camera shops today (I think there are a few left around here somewhere) but I didn’t have high hopes.
So this morning when I saw an email from our Cub Master saying he’d found four more packs of film, I was thrilled! It’s a little thing, but trust me, when you find an activity that kids enjoy year after year, you want to keep it going as long as you can. And I admit it’s a selfish thing, too. Definitely
.
So for me, and likely Polaroid, it’ll be one last evening shooting magical cardboard rectangles out of a bulky green machine.