Ken,

It's great that you're trying to provide some guidance on what your new scouts need to bring. There is a lot of great information in the handbook, and fieldbook, and it's a good place to start. Like anything though, having a list of items doesn't always mean you'll have the "right" version of the item. "Extra Clothes", for example, is a real wild card for some boys.

One thing that has helped our troop is to engage the parents of our scouts in the preparation process, in addition to the boys. For example, I sent an email to the parents before our first winter trip of the year, since we had a lot of new scouts who hadn't done any cold weather camping before. I think "lists" are important, but, I also think that some elaboration about the items on the list is also vital to success.

If I can find it, I'll enter portions of that email as examples of what I mean in a follow-up post. It's like many concepts discussed here, having the gear is only part of the problem, knowing how to use it, and what's appropriate for various scenarios is at least as important.