Your Turn to Talk: Brownie Maker Badges

I recently surveyed the members of Girl Scout leader Facebook groups about this year's new Maker badges.  Since I get really annoyed when I finish a survey and do not think, because of the wording of the questions, or the types of questions asked, that my opinion was really heard, I always finish my surveys with a "say what you want" question.  Here is what people had to say about the Brownie Maker badges.  I also picked up some comments that were made on Facebook in response to my posts asking people to take the Brownie survey.

• I really wish that Girl Scouts would keep the popular badges, like Painter, Potter for Brownies, and Jewelry making for Juniors. They keep trying to add STEM twists to everything and my girls are just not always interested in that. It makes it feel too much like school and after being in school all day, and sometimes also having tutoring like Kumon, they don’t want to do more and more worksheets or lecture-type learning.
• We did art and design as a troop and craft and tinker alone with my own daughter. These badges seem very similar. We might do the second in our second year because they like to craft, but I don’t see as much value in basically repeating with slightly different steps. Also, I purchased the booklet for art and design but did not even look at VTK. Based on the questions asked in this survey and what I remember from the booklet, they do not seem to completely align.
• My troop did the retired Painting badge because my older troop had done it as Brownies and really enjoyed it.
• Sometimes I feel like badges are too much like school and not enough fun. I really want to earn a badge in one night as not all my girls can come every meeting.
• My troop had already picked to do the pottery badge before it was discontinued. We had a field trip to a local pottery studio where we hand crafted clay animals. We thought craft and tinker was the closest fit based out of the new badges.
• We did the Painting Badge this year because we could still find the badges.
• My girls enjoyed the crafts I came up with. The VTK had way too much talking and vocab. I also can't often arrange field trips because of schedule conflicts.
• We used the badge booklet, which seems better than vtk for these new badges. Is be interested to answer the questions based on the steps of the booklet since I feel we followed those fairly closely.
• I really think they missed an opportunity here. I feel like they should have kept the brownie/junior specific art badges and made these CSA badges. The older girls could apply what they learned from the specific BJ badges, expanded them and potentially start their own business.
• Normally we follow volunteer toolkit, but because I was looking for a badge to earn while making their wings for their fly up ceremony I chose to go off script. We did incorporate the discussion points where it made sense.
• This scout year we earned both the Brownie Potter and Painting badges that are now retired. We mostly followed those VTK plans.
• I am hoping we will do one of the new craft badges in Juniors. If we do, we will likely follow the VTK plans. It just depends on which badges the girls choose as juniors.
• I do wish they hadn’t retired the art badges for brownies and juniors. Why couldn’t they just add to them?
• I hated how much of these badges were focused on customers and marketing and talking to people outside of meetings. I don’t want my girls to think everything is about sales in GS, and guests are hard for us. I feel like GSUSA forgets that girls can learn a skill just for the sake of learning a skill.
• They seem to be trying to turn everything into STEM — even arts and crafts. Why couldn’t they keep the previous badges in addition to the new ones? They certainly could coexist.
• At the younger level- the specific painter and pottery badges were SO much better. It allowed newer leaders and younger girls to explore a specific art. The new badges are overwhelming for leaders how are not seasoned or art not crafty.
• I create the year’s curriculum and schedule in the spring before based on girls voting preferences at end of year party. I had heard painting (we earned in our first year of brownies) and pottery (we earned this 2nd year of brownies) were ending, I purchased all patches I thought we would need ahead of time prior to their retirement.
• Now moving to juniors, we will try out the new makers badges.
• Honestly, my girls LOVED the painting badge - I hated to stop them before they finished, so it took us 3 meetings to finish all the projects. And my older daughter loves the inventor badge as a brownie, (and I love that you can turn it whichever way you need it to fit). I got all the badge booklets for the new badges, and they were honestly overwhelming and confusing, and I'm a 2nd time brownie leader who previously had to figure out how to adapt badges to be earned on zoom. I'm also bummed my current brownies won't be able to earn the healer & drawing badges as juniors, and those were some of my older daughters favorite. I didn't want to buy them ahead of time though to have on hand, since I had no idea how many we would need 2 years later.
• We did fun patches for sewing instead of the maker badges.
• I like the arts badges, but let them be art. I don't see the necessity to add the STEM concepts. Too much of Girl Scouts is STEM focused. Let these be art and creativity without being scientific
• I like the general idea but I think the specific badges are better. Ie pottery jewelry painting etc. this is too broad and can be used for anything. In my opinion that doesn’t teach them enough about any particular subject.
• I like the concept of the maker badges, but the way the requirements are written is so vague as to be useless. The older badges focused on a specific type of craft were much easier to develop meeting plans around.
• We already did potter & painter badges, so our troop wasn’t interested in pursuing the new badges. We focus more on Journeys and submitting, so adding in these new badges didn’t fit our schedule.
• We did the badge over two meetings, field trip with vocab and design discussion the first meeting. Second meeting was designing and then creating art along with more discussion. We were content to teach the kids design concepts, but I was disappointed that there weren’t more concrete, fun ideas for crafts. our troop loves to craft and I have a huge craft supply closet, but it was so open ended it became overwhelming.
• The spirit of the new badges is very difficult from those that were retired. There are already SO many STEM “design process” badges. Our girls have earned several, but they want to develop their art skills. There should be opportunity for that too.
• These badges are too STEM focused. The girls miss when things were just Art themed, paint, make games, draw, jewelry, clay. They're putting too much emphasis on Engineering of the art. Too many steps. They come off as journey effort and that's no fun. I'm avoiding them as much as I can and sadly will opt for fun badges to cover the old now retired art badges.
• This was a good badge to use up a lot of extra craft supplies and let the Scouts get creative. At first I was really upset to see the Pottery and Painting badges go (we did those ones too), but I can see that these can take that over pretty easily with more freedom of the type of craft. That being said, we barely used any suggestions from the VTK, but I almost never do. We talked about function and material types and tinkering, but then spent a lot of time trying different trying techniques.
• we kind of miss the old badges but the VTK is very helpful
• I am very much a “spirit of the badge” person and not a rigid “GSUSA says to do this, this, and this, so that’s exactly what we are going to do”. That’s why I prefer using the badge pamphlets over VTK. The pamphlets give all the options and leave room for modification, whereas I find that the plans on VTK give you one suggestion for each option and don’t give you room for alterations, even when it makes sense according to the goal of the badge. Also, doing precisely as the VTK says kind of goes against “girl-led”, I think. By explaining the various steps and concepts, and then giving them free reign to come up with their own craft and tinker with it, I feel it drives home the meaning more,
• Our Brownies had already earned Potter and Painter, which were a lot more appealing to them than generic “make something” badges. I’m already regretting not buying the Junior art badges before they disappeared.
• I thought the badge requirements were very tough. I tried to look for overlap in projects with other badges so we could earn more badges for the girls.
• We did Painter and Potter last year, so we didn't even really look at these. It is a bummer to see legacy badges and ones the girls really enjoyed being retired for more general stuff. The girls enjoy having new things each level rather than just new levels of the same thing, which feels much more school like.
• I think (and my 30 girls in all levels) agree that there is too much "school work" with badges now compared to the badges from before that were more about doing.
• It was fine. We stressed the idea that nothing is perfect the first time and mistakes and tinkering is part of life. That’s a message my brownies need to hear over and over
• As a multi level troop, we like the legacy badges more - it’s nice for the levels to have different focuses. We were able to buy brownie painting badges over the summer and our daisies and juniors earned their maker badges with us due to other leader schedule conflicts - it worked well for this date, but now our troop probably won’t do these badges again for a couple of years. The brownies did the potter badge last year and loved it, they were looking forward to junior jeweler and drawing, it’s a shame that GSUSA is taking away the progression and differentiation for levels to explore with these generic badges. Our multi level troop still prefers different badges so the girls do not need to do the same activities. Outdoor art is enough of a multi level art option - bring back the legacy badges.
• We don't use the VTK for any badges. My girls love to learn and be creative and the VTK plans feel too much like schoolwork so we do a lot of outside the box thinking. These badges have potential to be really fun if leaders use flexibility to earn them. My girls would like to learn to knit/crochet and sew so we'll probably use these maker badges to do those crafts since our council doesn't offer a brownie badge for either craft.

Thanks to those who participated in this survey.  If you are looking for badges, please see my list of Badges for Sale.