Race Cars!

This week our meeting was about race cars.  Both Daisies and Brownies have badges that relate.

A Trip to the Apple Store

You don't have to spend much time on Girl Scout leader facebook pages before you hear about the awesome free field trips to the Apple Store.  Tonight my troop visited our local Apple store to work on robotics badges.

I have both Daisies and Brownies and both groups went.  Daisies worked on How Robots Move; Brownies did Programming Robots.   

Brownie Cybersecurity Badges

GSUSA recently introduced three cybersecurity badges at each level.  While you can find the requirements on the publicly accessible Badge Explorer, the suggested activities are on Volunteer Tool Kit.  While there is a badge packet for sale that covers all three badges, it contains background information.  It does not provide the choice of three activities per requirement. It is also freely accessible compliments of Girl Scouts Farthest North.  Click here to see it.  

Volunteer Toolkit provides two complete lesson plans for each badge--in other words, if you do it their way, it will take you two meetings per badge.  The plans give you word-for-word scripts to follow as well as any handouts or coloring sheets you will need.  They are great for beginning leaders but many people find them difficult to skim through to pick out the activities so as to decide whether to use them or not.

This post is an attempt to summarize all the Brownie Cybersecurity badges in one easy to follow place.

God Is Love: A Daisy Award

The God is Love award was created by and is promulgated by the National Federation for Catholic Youth Ministry.  It is aimed at kindergarten and first grade students and the award pin can be worn on the front of the Daisy Uniform.

To earn the award, Daisies complete a workbook that has three chapters, and they do three activities for each chapter.  The book moves from recognizing that God loves us to realizing that we have to share that love with others.

Is Girl Scouts Expensive?

One topic often discussed on Girl Scout leader facebook pages is money and the costs associated with running a Girl Scout troop.  There are complaints about the costs forced onto troops by GSUSA or our local councils whether through mandated training classes or the cost of program materials such has handbooks or badges.  There are also complaints about how little cookie money is kept by troops. Those discussions make me wonder:  Is Girl Scouts Expensive?

Finding, Keeping and Sharing Internet Resources

Back in the Stone Ages of the early 1980's, when I was an Elementary Education major in college, one of things we had to do was assemble and maintain a "teaching file".  We began this file in our first education class our sophomore year and it was graded both then and before we began our student teaching at the end of our senior year.  We sent off for materials companies offered to teachers, we made folders for projects we did in various classes and copied or clipped articles from teaching magazines.  All of these things were kept in what I could now call a file box.

I don't know if my university still requires "teacher files" but I'll bet if they do, many of the contents today's students collect are digital, not paper.  I'll also bet that like Girl Scout leaders, teachers find many of their resources online.  This article is to give you some ideas/techniques for finding, keeping and sharing resources on the internet.

As GSUSAs resources are covered elsewhere on this blog, this article will focus on other resources.

VTK: Yea or Nay?

It is my opinion, absolutely unconfirmed by GSUSA or anyone with any inside information, that we have seen the last Girl Scout Handbooks.  GSUSA started its move to digital with a few badges and Try-Its in the old prgram, and pretty much went in head-first a couple of years ago with Volunteer Tool Kit, which is their online leaders' manual.  GSUSA has made several improvments to the system based on member feedback, though honestly I don't know what those improvements are.