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.  

Review of the Daisy Flower Garden Journey

I can say without a doubt that the worst GSUSA programming I ever tried to do "by the book" was the Daisy Welcome to the Flower Garden Journey. While I had led my older daughter's troop through Brownies and Juniors, I had never been a Daisy leader.  While I had a lot of non-Girl Scout experience with 7-9 year olds, I had never worked with kindergartners.  When my younger daughter became a Daisy, it was the first year of the two year Daisy program and I knew I had to do more than the petals over those two years, so when the nice lady at our council shop told me to buy the new program, I took it.

I no longer have those books (good riddance) but I remember reading through them and thinking that the stories were too long, too convoluted and had too many similar characters.  I wasn't real impressed with the activities, but figured maybe that was because I wasn't used to dealing with kids who were that young.  

At each meeting, according to the plan given in the leader's manual, you would read part of this story to the girls.  You would then do some activities, none of which particularly impressed me.  Finally you would do a project, and three options were given:  raise ladybugs, raise worms or plant a garden.  The kicker was that the project was supposed to be done for someone or some organization and was supposed to be sustainable--in other words you were supposed to find someone to keep it up after you were done. 

Daisy Coding For Good: Coding Basics

This year's new badges include a series of three "Coding for Good" badges for Daisies, Brownies and Juniors.  The basic requirements are available on GSUSA's Badge Explorer and meeting plans are in Volunteer Toolkit, to which most leaders have access.  While GSUSA has published a badge pamphlet for this set, it, like the sets for Cybersecurity and Robotics, is for background information only.  It is not in the format of three requirements and three options for each requirement.

One issue people have with VTK plans is that by giving leaders a script to follow (if desired) they make the plans very wordy and hard to skim.  This post and others like it are designed to summarize the VTK plans so that leaders can get a real feel for what the badge entails, and then, if they decide to do the badge, they can more carefully review the VTK plans.  In fact, I do not recommend that you do the badge without reviewing the VTK plans because their talking points are what connect the activities to coding.

My Great Day Responsible for What I Say and Do and Using Resources Wisely

There are different ways to handle badgework with a multi-level troop.  With my Daisies and Brownies, I have pretty much focused on the Brownie Program but have related the activities to Petals where possible.  Since Daisies is a two year program, I have no problem with it taking two years to finish the petals.

At our last regular meeting we worked on two petals:  Responsible for What I Say and Do and Using Resources Wisely.  For the other petals we did this year, I picked a petal that worked with the Brownie badge; this time I picked the Brownie Badge because it worked with the Petals.

Think Like an Engineer for Cadettes, Seniors and Ambassadors

A couple of years ago GSUSA released a new series of Journeys for Daisies, Brownies and Juniors, and last year, released two of them for Cadettes, Seniors and Ambassadors.  Even though this is mostly a blog about my experiences with Daisies and Brownies, I had a request to summarize the older girls' Think Like an Engineer Journey and since I was doing it, I figured I ought to get a few cents from AdSense for doing so (and more if you click on the ads on this page). 

What Do Girl Scout Leaders Think About Journeys and Take Action Projects

Last year I wrote a post basically saying that I thought TAPs were not developmentally appropriate for Brownies and Daisies and that, from what I could see, few troops did them as GSUSA envisioned.  A few months later I put a survey up on Survey Monkey and asked leaders who were members of several Facebook groups what they thought about TAPs.  This article is a summary of those survey results.

First, my Survey Monkey account is a free account, so while I got over 100 responses, I only get to see the first 100.  I did keep an eye on the survey as results were coming in and the percentage never moved that much. Therefore, among the universe of people who chose to respond to my survey, I believe the numbers are reasonably accurate.

Brownie Coding for Good Badges: Coding Basics

GSUSA has just released this year's new badges.  For Daisies, Brownies and Juniors, these badges included a new series:  Coding for Good.  Each level gets three badges, which, like the robotics and cybersecurity badges, were designed to be done sequentially.  Also it appears that like the robotics and cybersecurity badges, if you purchase the badge brochure, instead of getting a choice of three activities per requirement, you are given background information to use with the VTK plans.  In other words, your activities choices are to use what is in VTK or to come up with your own activities.