Pinewood Derby Awards

Updated 2/21/15 | If you found me through pinterest, that's so exciting! I'm so glad you found this fun idea for your cub scouts! As of today there are 348 repins. I never thought this would get that popular! I'm no longer in cub scouts, I know super sad but I'd love to see how you're using the idea in your packs! So comment below with a link to a post about it on your blog or email me at emailelliemurphy {at} gmail {dot} com and I'll share them at the end of this post!

I saw these last year on a friend's kid. I thought it was genius but I didn't have anything but a picture. They're relatively easy to make.

I had my brother cut a limb of pinewood into a bout an inch/inch and a half discs. Then I laid them out on some tin foil that I put on a cookie sheet. You want to make them at 200 for an hour or so to kill any bugs and dry out the wood. You want to give each disc some room, so while baking I only put 12 to a sheet.

While they are baking cut the ribbons. I cut mine about 26 inches long, but I'd add at least two more inches because it was a little short on  a few of the kids. 

To keep the ribbon from fraying I singe the ends. If you look closely, one end is starting to unravel. You don't have to worry about cutting it before singing it, just gradually bring the flame closer to it and it will burn away. It doesn't take much flame to get the job done.  

To attach the ribbon I recommend hot glue gun. Mine was mysteriously MIA so I borrowed a neighbors. And I have never used a glue gun that I have loved as much as this one. If you are looking to buy one, get this one! I'm going to hate giving it back.

So I put a little less than a quarter size amount of hot glue and then put the ribbon on just a little more left than you would think to. You'll see what I'm talking about below. I like to pick a side that's a little bit cleaner looking so it looks nice and the letters show up better.

Then you put a little bit more than a nickle on top of the ribbon and then put the other end on top. I like to push down on it pretty hard so that it will lay flat and not have bumps.

Here's the awards. I used a sharpie to write the awards on them. I put the year since I did these last year and plan to do them again next year if I'm still in cub scouts. (Let's all say a prayer I'm not!) The wood will tear up your sharpies so use a bunch of old ones or buy a new net and have the pack reimburse you. To make 24 medals it cost me about $20-$25. But I have some left overs, like hot glue sticks. 

We had about 15 medals already written on but came with the others ready so that we could award kids for whatever reason.  This was a multi-pack race so we had an honorable mention for each pack because we've had it happen, on accident, that a pack goes home without a single award. we also had the 1st - 3rd place medals ready. 

Here's the list we started with:

Most Patriotic

Best Use of Color

Spirit of Pinewood Award

Most Unique

Most Realistic

Most Creative

The Spirit of Pinewood Award was new to us. But we often have some kids who either don't have a car but are great helpers and cheer everyone on or have a car and do the same. And we just wanted a way to be able to recognize them. We loved it and can't wait to do it again next year!

Finding unbiased and fair judges for judging the non-race awards is really hard. But being a ward missionary has it perks in a situation like this. I had the missionaries be the judges, one set of elders and one set of sisters, and then a couple kids and their mom since they don't make it to cub scouts often. The elders were the best at coming up with additional awards.

We added these:

Most Invisible for an awesome camouflage paint job. 

Most Arrow-dynamic for a car that litterally looked like an arrow

Most likely to time travel for a car that was the spitting image of a deLorean.

Hottest Car on the Block for a car that had some awesome flames

Here's some pictures of the kids with their awards

let's be honest, that shirt didn't hurt his chances of getting an award
GO COUGARS!

Yeah, I realize I spelled hottest wrong, already have another one made for him.