Re: perforated blue cards and summer camp

It is a fantastic advantage to have pre-printed Blue Cards for the scouts on their 1st day of camp.  We have 37 scouts taking 92 Merit Badges this week.  The SM was dreading the 1st afternoon, writing out & signing 92 cards.  We would have spread that work out by letting the scouts fill in all the information, then giving the card to the SM to sign.

Two weeks ago, at our regular troop meeting, all the scouts filled out a form indicating the merit badges they wanted to work on.

The SM compiled the forms into a spreadsheet to submit to camp for their activity/area's planning purposes.  

As TM owner, I took that same compilation & pre-printed the 92 blank Blue Cards with the scout's information on them all, and signed them in the comfort of my home while watching the Red Sox beat Atlanta Braves.

I ignored the possibility that some of the scouts might already have partials on some of the MB's, mostly because it could be wasted effort if they change their minds on MB selection at camp.  I will reconcile that when they come back from camp.

The camp receives up to 300 scouts/week for 7 weeks.  They do not have the staff availability to enter all scouts/MBs into MB tracking s/w.

Pre-printing on regular paper is a good alternative to the actual blue card perforated card stock, but then you need a good paper cutter to seperate the two cards/page.  Depending on the qty of cards printed, one of the two options will work well.

YIS,
John Nojeim
Advancement Chair
Troop 3 Groton, MA