This is an awesome budding leadership group for boys 8-12 years old. We meet weekly for 2 hours on Friday afternoons, with a featured monthly biography to inspire them to be great men, leading meaningful lives. The activities of the club are described below:
"knight presentations": when they bring examples of anything they are excited about (a step above "show and tell" which normally descends into "who has the coolest and most expensive toy"). It can be something they have built from home, their dad who is a police officer, an article from the National Geographic, a power-point presentation, their pet lizard, their favorite 10 books about dinosaurs, something they made at Cub Scout day camp...anything! Then the other boys have a chance to pepper them with questions and comments.
"knight-led activity": this is an activity that the knight designated for that particular week plans and carries out. We have decorated valentines for our mothers, played "Jack Pot" (like "Fly's up" for you old-timers like me!), played chess, made paper airplanes...you name it!
Lesson on knighthood: This is a 10-60 minute lesson/discussion about a particular virtue of knighthood the "Lady" (advisor) in charge of that month thinks could be helpful: friendship, courage, hope, mercy, intelligence...and, it can only last as long as their attention spans allow. They are young, active boys after all!
Book discussion: We like to either pick themes (innovators: Hershey and Disney) or contrasting individuals to meet different knight's interests (George Washington, Jim Thorpe, and Langston Hughes).
Book-related activity: just what it sounds like...we made fudge for "Hershey" and paper airplanes for the "Wright Brothers".
Field Trip: This is a fun element--we went to the gun museum as we studied Gettysburg this last month in our focus on the Civil War for this semester.
Our schedule is as follows:
1st week: 6 knight presentations, 1 knight-led activity
2nd week: 3 more presentations, Lady-lesson on Knighthood, I knight-led activity
3rd week: 3 more presentations, book discussion and book-related activity
4th week: Field trip
The best thing about this group is it is love of learning (which means, if they aren't having fun and aren't engaged they are learning and move on!), and knight-led. Sure, the advisors mentor and monitor, plan the bigger field trips and help with the discussion and book activity, but many times the knights help with those too. Everything else is conducted and carried out by the knights, either through their presidency, or by taking turns. They teach and inspire each other!
If you have concerns, you take them to your fellow advisors (yeah for support!), and then to the knights presidency (elected by themselves) for them to inspire the knights to be more sharing, caring, giving, etc.
For more information on the specific ways to start a group like this, go to americanyouthleadership.org
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