New group of Scouts

Last night was my 11-year old Scout meeting. I'm starting with a new group. It's not completely new. I have one hold-over from the last group who doesn't turn 12 until October. I'm supposed to have two new guys starting but only one showed up last night. That always tweaks me as I now have to figure out how to go over that information with him at another time. The first couple of meetings I always go over all of the basic Scouting junk. It's stuff I tend to not go over again later on because it's kind of boring. Of course I also have two more new guys starting in January, so I guess they'll get it again. I've never quite gotten the hang of having guys starting at different times. I much prefer to have a group start all at once and bring them along together. I suppose this is just an opportunity for me to get my program a little more organized rather than "free-form" the way it is right now. The other part is that I'm getting pressure to have these first two guys done with Tenderfoot by our next court of honor in a month. Personally I don't quite agree with it. I don't run my program following a rank timeline. Instead I go with monthly/block focus areas. All of the things get done, but we go all over the place on the "Trail to First Class" requirements. I don't really know what I'm going to do. I suppose I could push the rank timeline with these guys and switch to the block method once the next group starts. Thinking about it I suppose following rank timelines could give me more opportunities to repeat/reinforce information. As we do stuff for Second Class I can make certain they still remember what we learned for Tenderfoot. That just means that I'll totally have to reorganize my program. Could be fun, though. I'll have to try it out...