Tiger Scouts: Ideas for den activities in the DC area

Local town and county Nature Centers and Parks. Check out Fairfax County Parktakes Magazine for Tiger Scout activities. We visited Frying Pan park in Fairfax County. The staff provided a wonderful historical presentation in the school house, the farm house, and then on the farm itself. The farm animals were a big hit, in particular the pigs. We visited in the winter when there were many young pigs. Of course, the boys enjoyed the gift shop as well and then hung out at the small playground and had a bagged lunch – after washing their hands!

Our pack holds some type of fire safety meeting each October, which is fire prevention month. This is a great way to satisfy the ‘visit a fire station or police station’ activity. More on this under pack activities.

We did a great guided hike and nature center visit with a rowdy bunch of tigers at Long Branch Nature Center in Arlington. The staff was very experienced with children and very patient. They had hands-on activities for the boys which is always good. They have some live animals in the nature center and also a creek that the staffed help us to explore. I’ve heard that a great activity at this location is watching the flying squirrels. I believe the activity is at night and can involve sleeping over in the nature center on the floor, but you should check with the nature center staff. This park also has historical significance since it was one of the cash drop sites for $50,000 for Robert Hanssen, the disgraced FBI agent who was a spy for the Russians.

We did a hike at Roosevelt Island. We hiked the loop around the island stopping to see the monument to Teddy Roosevelt in the middle. This was a very fun hike with an opportunity for many nature lessons - poison ivy can be seen, as well as many birds – and also history lessons.

A grandfather of one of our scouts was a retired US Navy Admiral. He provided us with a tour of the Washington Navy Yard, mostly of a retired ship that is docked there, the WWII era destroyer, the USS Barry. The insight provided by the tour was great with both historical and technical information. For example, the tour guide demonstrated how sailors of the World War II era navigated, communicated, and controlled the ship.

For our sporting event, we attended an eighth grade basketball game. One of the scouts had an older brother on the team, so there was an instant connection for the boys. During half time, one of the dads arranged for the scouts to go out and take shots on the court.

The Newseum is a great place for the communications achievement. Since it was closed for moving/renovating at the time, we found that WJLA does tours of their studios.