Using the Wayback Machine to Find Old Websites

 There is a very handy website called the Wayback Machine that you can use to find websites that are no longer available.  Basically the Wayback Machine makes a copy of the website as it appears on certain dates. If you know that XYX website had something last June, you can put the URL in the Wayback Machine and it will return a figure like this

followed by a calendar.  The figure above shows how many times that website was changed in each month of that year.  If you click on the year, there is a calendar under that figure that shows now many times the Wayback machine snapshotted that website that day.

The figure above is the one I got by searching for Girl Scouts River Valleys.  GSRV used to have a set of meeting plans that were very popular among leaders, but they are not there any more.  I don't know exactly when they were taken down but I know they were available in 2020, and I remember that they had been moved to a volunteer site, so I searched for https://www.girlscoutsrv.org/ .  Then I clicked on one of the dates which took me to an archived copy of GSRV's website as it was on that date.  From there I looked for the volunteer website and clicked it.  I navigated to this site, where you can click and get to the plans for your level. 

One thing I will say is that you have to be patient, the website runs pretty slowly and for the GSRV plans, when I tried to pull them up, it gave me error messages and redirected me but when I was patient, I got them. 

Here are some other plan collections that have been taken down: 

Girl Scouts Greater Chicago

GSUSA

This doesn't work for everything--several councils had plans that were on drop-down menus and the Wayback machine didn't pick up the things on the drop-downs, just the headings.  

Find Meeting Plans Online

 One thing I know people read this blog for is ideas for meeting planning.  If you poke around, you'll see what my troops have done for various badges over the years.  I wrote a post a year or so ago with links to on-line resources, but I decided to write another one because in the last year, some councils have put up resources for badge earning. While most of those resources were aimed at individuals or at troops meeting virtually due to Covid-19, looking over the plans could spark ideas for those meeting in person as well.  

Financial Literacy Time

GSUSA has gone to a lot of trouble to turn the necessary evil of fundraising into a fun and educational process for the girls.  Each level has a selection of "Financial Literacy" badges that often coordinate with the skills and processes for selling cookies.  My troop started their financial literacy badges this week.

Last year my Daisies earned two of their financial literacy leaves: this year we are working on Money Counts and Making  Choices.  My Brownies are working on Philanthropist.  For Money Counts the girls have to learn about different types of coins and paper money and they have to figure out the cost of fun.  For Making Choices they have to learn the difference between needs and wants, learn to set goals and learn to help others with what they need and want.

Philanthropist which requires the girls to learn the meaning of Philanthropy, find out what every person needs, investigate how to hep people who are hungry, find out how to help people who need clothing, and find out how to help in times of emergency.

My meeting plans for these badges are loosely based off the plans of Girl Scouts River Valleys and VTK.

Making Games Badge: Comparing the GGGS, VTK and River Valleys Plans

Okay, I'll admit it.  I'm old school (and old). I've always seen badge requirements as, well, requirements.  When the badge insert said pick one of these three, well, I picked one.  While I might have tweaked it slightly, like playing softball instead of baseball because I had a softball, I didn't figure that tennis is a game with a ball, so playing tennis is like baseball.  When I joined some online Girl Scout groups and found that many people were "adapting" the badges much more in the manner of substituting tennis for baseball rather than substituting softball for baseball, I raised my eyebrows, but as someone else said, "there are no badge police", so I pretty much kept my mouth shut.  Still, what happens to program integrity when "everyone" is "adapting" things too much?

For the record, I think much of today's Girl Scout program is overly idealistic and aimed more at grant writers than at girls.  I've made my opinions about Journeys and TAPs well-known on this blog, so I won't mention them here, but I will say that it seems to me, based on things I've read and the badge requirements themselves, that one of the goals of the program writers was to get girls out of their meeting rooms and into the community, or, at the least, to get leaders to bring the community to the meeting.  Many of today's badges, in the badge packet requirements, ask the girls to visit someplace, or to speak with an expert on something.  

Girl Scout Way, Making Friends and Friendly and Helpful

This week our Brownies finished Girl Scout Way and continued work on Making Friends.  Our Daisies earned their "Friendly and Helpful" petal.

Girl Scout Way and Sister to Every Girl Scout

My plans for this meeting changed the weekend before the meeting.  I had planned to continue work on Girl Scout Way, and start Making Friends for Brownies.  For Daisies I had planned to do the "Friendly and Helpful" petal.  However, over the weekend a troop of Girl Scouts in Wisconsin was doing a roadside cleanup when they were hit by a drunk driver.  Three girls and a leader were killed.  I decided to change the petal to "Be a sister to every Girl Scout".

As the girls came in I had cards for them to color--From the Bayou State to the Badger State  Our thoughts and prayers are with you in this time of sorrow.

Investiture, Rededication, Bridging and Juliette Gordon Low

My troops have always taken in new girls every year, and of course, we lose some too.  For that reason, I have never liked to have bridging ceremonies at the end of the year.  I just don't see any reason to buy all that stuff if girls aren't coming back.  Also, my worst attendance during the year is in the last month; it just doesn't seem like the best time for a big ceremony.

Girl Scout Way, The Promise Center and Three Cheers

Our first October meeting was kind of disjointed.  We started with the Daisies doing a coloring sheet and the Brownies working on a badge selection sheet.  Unfortunately, the Brownies didn't get far before our opening circle, during which we talked about the Girl Scout Promise.  I explained that the number one most important thing is serving God and that's what we remember when we hold up our number 1 finger.  Next is serving our country (two fingers) and other people (three fingers) and what ties it all together is the Girl Scout Law (thumb and pinkie).

We learned to sing the Girl Scout Law with hand motions.

Three Cheers for Pets?

This year I have a combined Daisy/Brownie troop.  Most of my Brownies were with me last year and are first year Brownies, but one came from another troop and had, of course, earned several badges.  Therefore, I am trying to not repeat those badges, particularly at a meeting, though I will repeat some of them via outings.

I have one Daisy who was with me last year, and she didn't join until after cookies in the spring.  She earned one or two petals last year but that was it.  My Daisy schedule, therefore, is wide open.

I looked at the requirements for the Daisy 3 Cheers for Animals Journey and the Brownie Pets badge and decided they would work well together.

Bugs and Gorp

Used with Permission

We are  jumping all over the place this year.  We are still working on the Snacks badge.  This was the third snack we made, which is an energy snack.  While the photo shows only the raisins, M&Ms and peanuts, we added Cheerios for bulk.  Each girl was allowed to add as many (or few) of the ingredients as she wanted, but she was only allowed to use the amount in the recipe.  We used plastic sandwich bags to hold the trail mix,.  Here was our recipe:

3/4 cup Cheerios

2 Tablespoons raisins

2 Tablespoons M&Ms

1/4 cup peanuts

This finishes our Snacks badge for the girls who have come to all the meetings; however we had a very sparsely attended meeting two weeks ago when we made cookies.  That requirement was to make something sweet, and one choice was a holiday treat.  We'll make some sweet no-cook snack for our Christmas party and finish this badge.

We started our Bugs badge.  I got a bunch of books from the library and each girl picked a favorite bug and made a poster.  She drew a picture of the bug and put some facts down like what it eats, where it lives etc.  

My co-leader is into monarch butterflies and she had some caterpillars to show the girls.

The school to which her daughter and most of my girls go has a butterfly garden and not surprisingly they were the favorite bug of many of the girls.

We need to finish Girl Scout Way as well.  We celebrated Juliette Gordon Low's birthday at the poorly attended meeting; I think we'll celebrate more at our Christmas party.  We'll perform the action story for parents.  We start the dance badge next week and will do a dance for our parents at Christmas too.  We may also do skits on the parts of the Girl Scout Law.  Then I'll have three badges to hand out to the girls.  It has been a busy semester!  

Working on the Snacks Badge

We had two items on the agenda this week:  we were tie-dyeing t-shirts to wear at our day at camp, and we were working on our snacks badge.  You can see the instructions for the t-shirts here.  I have a very crafty co-leader; I would never try a project like that.  Here is how one came out:

We started the meeting with the pledge and promise.  I had the girls count off by fours and sent one group outside with my co-leader to make t-shirst.  I drafted an extra mom so the other three groups all had adults with them.  I had tables set up with solid and liquid measuring cups, measuring spoons, pitchers of water, and bowls of sugar.  Each table also had a 13X9 cake pan, a knife and a cutting board.  I gave the leaders scripts to follow to talk about the difference between the measuring cups.  Each girl got to measure the amount of sugar she was asked for (1/2 cup, 1/4 cup or 1/3 cup) and we talked about how many of each it would take to make one cup.  We measured more sugar with the measuring spoons and then water in the liquid measuring cup.  Again, each girl got to pour and measure.

About the time we were fininshed measuring, the first group came inside.  We sent group 2 outside, and group one took their place at the table to learn about measuring.  The other groups started on their savory snacks.  We made Ants on a Log and Spiders.

Ants on a Log.

Slice celery into portions about as long as your finger. Fill the hollow with cream cheese, peanut butter or some other thick sticky substance.  Place raisins across the top.



Spiders

2 Ritz Crackers
4 Pretzels
2 raisins
Cream Cheese, peanut butter or some other sticky substance.

Spread the cream cheese on both crackers.  Break the pretzels in half to make eight legs.  Put the legs on either side of one cracker.  Top with the other cracker.  Put a little cheese on the raisins and use it to stick them on the cracker like eyes.

We continued to rotate girls out until they all finished both snacks and shirts.

Since I have a girl with a peanut allergy I did not use peanut butter; I think the kids would have liked the snacks better if I had.  Still, most of them did eat their snacks.  

We have now had three meetings.  We have planned the year, and we have finished two of five requirments for the Snacks Badge. We have also finished two of the five requirements for Girl Scout Way.  Next meeting we are celebrating Juliette Gordon Low's Birthday.  We'll have a party that includes cookies we are going to make, and we will hopefully hear from some adults who were Girl Scouts when they were kids.  We may or may not finish Girl Scout Way next meeting.