As a troop, we do a fair bit of Pioneering considering some round us do absolutely none.
There’s several ways to learn pioneering, but first of you’ll need some knots under your belt. A good place to learn about knots is the king of animated knots, found here:
http://www.animatedknots.com/indexscouting.php
Once you’ve learnt a few, you’ll need some projects:
http://www.pioneeringprojects.org/
But they don’t all need to be huge things! Start off by making a smaller trial model. This’ll give you a good idea of what materials you’ll need and if you get the scouts to do it as well, you can check they know enough about knots in their patrol to build one.
There’s games & challenges to be made with pioneering. Try:
-Making a stretcher with poles (can use square lashing and sheer lashing as well as practicing the clove hitch)
-Chariots – making an a-frame which one of the patrol rides whilst the others pull him round the room (can scuff your floor if they literally drag him…)
-Making a pioneering burglar alarm
– Mini catapult/balistars
My pioneering instructables:
http://www.instructables.com/id/Simple-Pioneering/
http://www.instructables.com/id/Simple-Pioneering-Build-a-Monkey-Bridge-from-woo/
Other instructables:
http://www.instructables.com/id/Scout-Project-Trebuchets-Pioneering/ – I’ve seen a much simpler verson of this made from chop sticks. See http://howtomakestuff.com/2008/09/22/how-to-make-a-catapult/ , though if you’re doing an introduction into pioneering, use elastic bands instead.
Other resources:
http://www.shurdington.org/downloads.htm (specifically the pioneering!)
http://www.thedump.scoutscan.com/scouts.html (some pioneering on here too!)