Last year, GSUSA came out with three new "Think Like A...." Journeys. The plans for them can be accessed on VTK or at the website of Girl Scouts Farthest North. Unfortunately, those plans are long and repetitive and many leaders find them difficult to use.
I reviewed the plans and prepared my own summary. I hope you find it useful.
Vocabulary:
Brainstorming: is what happens when you and your troop get together to come up with ideas
Conflict: is when people argue or don’t agree about something
Engineers are people who like to know how things work. They design and build things people use every day like computers, phones, roads, bridges and cars
Prototype is a sample when you want to show someone your idea. It could be a drawing or something you made to show what your idea looks like
The Purpose of the Journey is to learn to Think Like an Engineer and to use those skills to conceive, plan and carry out a Take Action Project. Girls carry out activities to learn engineering skills and spend some time at every meeting on the Take Action Project. Girls will learn to brainstorm to solve a problem, design prototypes, test them to see what does and doesn’t work, then improve their designs.
The full plans are on Volunteer Toolkit (leaders can access their level) and on Girl Scouts Farthest North http://fairbanksgirlscouts.org/council-patch/ (all levels available)
Meeting 1:
Introduction
Daisies, Brownies, Multi: Draw a picture of an engineer. Tell them that are are about to learn what engineers do and how they solve problems and you want them to draw a picture of what an engineer looks like. Save the pictures to use in a later meeting
Juniors: Using pictures from magazines or catalogs, create collage poster of things they think were designed or created by engineers. Discuss the items and why they picked them
Daisies: Explain that engineers are people who work with others to create things. They use their imaginations to solve problems. They invent and build things.
Brownies, Juniors: Show Design Thinking Process Poster. Discuss the steps engineers use to solve problems. They find a problem, brainstorm ways to solve it, choose one idea and design it, test it to see if it works, and if not try again.
Design Challenges:
Daisy Design Challenge: Build Fairy Houses. If your girls are familiar with the flower friends you can tell them that the house is for the Flower Friends friend who is a fairy. Or, you can have them build a house for a small doll or an imaginary fairy. The GS plans recommend having the girls work in teams to design/build one fairy house. That encourages teamwork but leaves the leader in charge of deciding who gets custody of the house. Use your judgment. Suggested building supplies are leaves, twigs, rocks, acorns, glue, modeling clay, construction paper, cardboard, disposable cups, markers/crayons, craft sticks, glitter/stickers etc. The plans recommend 15 minutes to build and test the house. Before turning the girls loose with craft supplies talk about what things will be needed in the house and while they are building, as questions such as how will the house protect the occupant from rain. If they are having problems, try using questions to direct them.
Brownie and Multi-level design challenge: Helping hands. Girls create a tool to reach inside bag that is out of reach. See meeting 1, page 7
Junior Design Challenge: Break into pairs and build a structure out of 8 sheets of newspaper that is strong enough to support the weight of several heavy books. Compare the strength of a tight tube vs a loose one and show different shapes, which is stronger? How can you assemble the tubes to make a strong stable structure. See pages Show off structures to the group, discuss problems and solutions and teamwork.
Take Action
Daisies, Brownies, Multi Tell the girls that when engineers solve problems they help people. Girls Scouts help people too by creating Take Action Projects to make a difference. We are going to keep a list of problems you want to solve. Read some of the Take Action Ideas from the Take Action Guide (in VTK or at page 20 or Page 23 or and start a list of the girls’ ideas.
Juniors. Tell the girls that nearly 4 billion trees are cut each year just to make paper and that finding new uses for discarded paper helps conserve one of our most important resources. That’s something we did with the paper structure challenge: instead of throwing away old newspaper it was used to build something new. Talk about recycling, re-using paper. Then tell the girls we will be doing a TAP, and ask if they have any ideas.
Meeting 2:
Introduction
Daisies: Draw a picture of a flower friend acting like an engineer designing something (or just have them draw an engineer designing something)
Brownies or Multi-level: Draw your favorite water places
Juniors: Draw a building that an engineer might design. It can be a tree house, a shelter, a skyscraper or any other building.
Daisies: Talk about working together as a team, how everyone has different strengths, weaknesses, talents.
Brownies or Multi-level: Using a gallon jug to illustrate, talk about how much water we use for various things. Page 6 Point out that not having enough fresh water is a problem engineers are trying to solve.
Daisies Talk about how we can experience conflict when working in groups and some ways to resolve that conflict. Engineers discuss their conflicts and find a way to work it out.
Juniors: Talk about how engineers use their imagination to solve problems, review design thinking process.
Design Challenge
Daisy Design Challenge: Make a Puff Mobile. Divide the girls into teams of 3 or 4 to design and build a puff mobile. The power source is a pinwheel so give one to each team and talk about how wind power makes it move. Each team gets a pinwheel, lifesavers, tape, construction paper, straws, paperclips, and scissors. They first spend 5 minutes drawing their design and then 15 minutes building and testing. Leaders use questions do guide--does it work, what could we change, where does the wind come from etc. Remember, the goal is to think like an engineer and to come up with solutions, not to design the perfect car.
Brownie and Multi-level Design Challenge: Design a water collection device. See Meeting 2, page 7. Talk about prototypes Girls should work in teams. Discuss design process and how you used it; share designs.
Junior Design Challenge: Using the materials provided, teams of 3-4 girls create a y shelter for one person. If preferred, they can make it doll-sized to fit a provided doll. See pages 6-7 Start with a sketch, then build a prototype. Then show examples of shelters, let girls show off theirs, discuss. Ask for improvements to each one.
Take Action:
Daisies: Review some possible take action projects and gather more ideas from the girls. Discuss the most important things we learned about working as a team.
Brownies and Multi-level. Discuss how TAPs are like design process--identify problems in the community that we could address with TAP
Juniors: Ask for possible TAPs. Write down. Use Take action guide if necessary
Meeting 3:
Introduction
Daisies: Set up mini-obstacle course with cones etc. Tell the girls that today we are going to design a way to get from one place to another but first they need to find the best way to get from one end of the course to the other.
Brownies and Multi-level: Have the girls write their TAP ideas on index cards; hang up. Ask for any other ideas.
Juniors: Do a “shake it up” dance. Pretend the earth is moving under your feet. We will be building a structure that will withstand an earthquake and now we want to earth to move. Discuss the skills engineers have and which of those skills each girl wants to have. Skills include being smart, making things, helping people, working together, inventing new things, designing things.
Design Challenge
Daisy Design Challenge: Set two chairs apart from each other and tell the girls that a creature wants to get from one chair to the next; what could they design to help the creature do so. Give them an assortment of materials to work with and have them work in teams to create something. Materials can include straws, craft sticks, toilet paper rolls, toothpicks, paper clips, tape . If the girls’ design isn’t working, use questions to guide them towards changing their design--what works, what doesn’t, how do you think you could fix it?
Juniors: Do Seismic Shake up pages 7-10 Design a structure out of coffee stirrers stable enough to withstand energy released in earthquakes. Then have a shake dance contest
Take Action
Daisies. Tell the girls that when they found a way from one chair to the other, they solved a problem just like an engineer. Have a list to display of the ideas they had for their TAP from last meeting. Read it and ask if they have any new ideas. Talk about the projects, then use fist to five voting to pick one.
Brownies and Multi-levels and Juniors. Engage the girls in a discussion of the projects they have suggested. Pros and Cons. Use fist to five voting to pick one. Talk about how a TAP is like the design process.
Meeting 4:
Daisies Girls draw a skill they think they are good at.
Brownies and Multi: Decorate name tags with something that makes you feel like you can do anything
Juniors: Do 20 Jumping Jacks to get energized to get brain power working
Daisies: Discuss engineering skills; each girl picks on and wears it on a nametag-adults may wish to write these.
Brownies/Multi: Discuss that there are Brownies/GS around the country and around the world and that we are a powerful force. Discuss what confidence means--it means believing in who you are and knowing that what you say and do can affect others for good. Confidence is Brownie/GS power. We use that power to Take Action and make the world a better place.
Daisies, Brownies, Multi and Juniors Review what take action project was selected. Use the design process of define a need, brainstorm and design ideas to plan the project. See page 6 of meeting four guide for examples. Encourage teamwork and at the end talk about engineering skills used and what each group did
Meeting 5:
Daisies, Brownies, Multi:
Draw what an engineer looks like. Compare these drawings to the ones from the first meeting; discuss differences.
Talk about what an engineer does (designs and builds new things, solves problems, helps people) and who can be an engineer (anyone who likes asking questions, using their imagination and solving problems)
Ask the girls what their TAP is and why it is important
Work on TAP
Plan a celebration of the TAP/Journey completion
Juniors
Have girls write a work or slogan that makes them feel powerful on a poster board
In opening circle have each girl say what the TAP is and why it is important and how it makes the world a better place
Go over to-do list for TAP;
Work on TAP
Plan a celebration
Meeting 6:
Daisies, Brownies, Multi, Juniors
Decorate the room with photos of their Journey/TAP. Greet guests.
Share with their guests what the did during the Journey and their TAP
Awards presented
Celebrate--songs, dances, games, food, fun,
Complete GSUSA survey
This really helped me plan my troop’s journey!
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