Junior Paddleboat

 As the virus numbers climbed and the weather got cold, I moved to Zoom meetings and I decided to try mechanical engineering.  The Juniors made paddleboats.  

Requirements

According to Badge Explorer, the requirements were:

Explore how paddle boats work and engineer your own paddle boat.

• Explore how paddle boats work
• Design and build a rubber band-powered paddle boat 
• Test your rubber band-powered paddle boat 
• Analyze and share your results 
• Brainstorm ways to improve your design

When you've earned this badge, you'll know how to build and test a paddle boat and understand buoyancy, potential energy, and kinetic energy.

Sources

I used the plans in VTK, along with the plans from Girl Scouts of Southeast Florida. 

Our Meeting

I had asked girls to find some things they thought would float and some things they did not think would float.  I had also asked parents to have a buckect/pan/sink of water available.  We tested things and talked about why some floated and some didn't---and why some floated for a while but eventually sunk.  

The initial hypothesis was that light things floated and heavy things sunk.  I then asked if it was easy to pick up a coin and of course they said yes.  I asked if they had ever seen boats or ships on the river or lake, and they said yes.  I asked if they could pick up the boats/ships and of course they said no and then I talked about weight vs size and how that held stuff up--made it buoyant.  

Next we reviewed potential and kinetic energy and how we could store energy in various ways, like twisting a rubber band or lifting things up high.  

The parents had picked up packets with rubber bands and pencils and I showed the video on the plan from GSSF.  The girls then made the boats, tested them and adjusted them.  

We had trouble getting the boars to move.  I think the rubber band for the propeller should have been smaller.  We did find that moving the pencils down further on the container helped.  Still getting the wheel situated so that it spun and hit the water was hard--and the power source did not last long  

VTK As A Planner: What Do Leaders Think?

 This is the second post in my series about what Girl Scout leaders think of VTK, the online leader dashboard.  It is the result of a survey promulgated on Facebook groups for Girl Scout leaders.  As I said in the first post, I think the people who responded tend to me more experienced than the average Girl Scout leader and more likely to go beyond the obvious when planning meetings.

What Do Girl Scout Leaders Think of VTK? (Part One)

 

Several years ago, GSUSA introduced its online leader's platform Volunteer Toolkit.  VTK, which is accessed by clicking on the "My GS" tab on your council's website, logging in, clicking "my account" and then "Volunteer Toolkit" is supposed to be sort of an online dashboard for leaders.  If you utilize it fully, you select an award to work in at a meeting, set a date for the meeting, choose activities for a meeting, read a script for the meeting, send meeting reminders, record attendance and submit reports to council.   There are also training materials and resources available in VTK.  However, it has been my impression that many Girl Scout leaders do not love VTK.  This post is the result of a survey of members of various Girl Scout leader Facebook Groups. 

Junior Flowers Badge

 

Today my Juniors started the Flowers badge, and in developing the plans I looked at VTK as well as at the "at home" plans of several councils 

Is Girl Scouts for Big Girls or Little Girls--or Both?

 Most of us have read the statistic that a huge number of today's women leaders were Girl Scouts.  Of course GSUSA would like you to draw the conclusion that the Girl Scout experience was a major factor in making these women into leaders.  However, for those of us of a certain age, if you were looking at activities that "every" girl, particularly "every" middle class girl did, the big contenders were dancing lessons, piano lessons and Girl Scouts.  For those of us who grew up before Title IX, girls' sports were not a given.  Are these women leaders because of their Girl Scout experience or are they leaders because they grew up in middle and upper income households and Girl Scouts is one of the things those girls did that poorer girls who are less likely to achieve leadership positions, did not?