Well, this past year I moved from leading little girls to leading big ones. It has been different. One badge we enjoyed was Woodworker badge. We ended up doing it over three different meetings.
Requirements:
According to Badge Explorer, girls will:
Find out how to use wood to make stylish, useful things for yourself and others.
- Swing a hammer
- Keep it level
- Use a screwdriver
- Saw some wood
- Build something yourself
When you've earned this badge, you'll know how to use some basic tools to make simple woodworking projects.
Swing a Hammer
For Swing a Hammer, we did string art. I bought some wooden heart shapes from Michaels, along with some small nails. We had a few hammers, I brought mine and I asked the girls to bring one if they had it. We ended up with enough.
After instruction on how to use a hammer, each girl pounded nails around the outside of her heart. We then hit up our craft stash for year or embroidery thread to use as the string. Girls could pick how they wanted to do the string part.
Keep it Level
For this requirement, I gave the girls a list of things around the room to check to see if they were level. Then I had them draw some level lines. Yes, it was lame, but it got the point across.
Use A Screwdriver and Saw Some Wood
We did one project that combined these requirements. I picked up some paint stirrers at Home Depot (free, thank you) and some screws that were about as long as two paint stirrers are thick.
We talked about block letters and I gave each girl four paint stirrers to use to create a letter of her choice. They had to decide how long they wanted each piece to be and to mark them where they were supposed to be cut.
Using a saw and miter box, we cut the paint stirrers into the right sized lengths and then using the screwdriver and screws, connected then. Then the girls got to paint them as they chose (paint from supply cabinet). I'm not sure if there is better quality wood available for this project but we did have some problems with the screws splitting the wood on the paint stirrers. We just used another one, but if you have more high quality wood available you might want to price it.
Build Something Yourself
We made toolboxes using the kits from Home Depot Once the girls got them together, they painted them. We had more kits than we needed which turned out to be a good thing as we had a couple of mistakes that were most easily fixed by starting over with new piece. My girls like to make things so this was right up their alley. It was not too expensive and taught them new skills. They also seemed happy with their projects. I call that a win.
For what it is worth, my troop is Juniors and Cadettes and they all did these projects. Cadettes got a badge and Juniors had fun. After this we did the Junior Jeweler badge and the situation was reversed.
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