Wishboat

Also check with older troops in your area for (free) help. My Seniors routinely help younger troops earn badges, learn skills and go on outings. Older girls can either help with programs you've planned (for service hours) or create and lead their own programs based on your need or the badges you'd like to earn (for leadership hours). During the past year, they've planned and presented knot workshops, dance programs, an introduction to geocaching (great fun for your age group), fire-building skills/safety, field games, "dirt shirts" and raku pottery. Good luck and have fun!

Is your council allowing this new (IMPROVED! SURE TO BE A HIT!not)challenge to be used as part of a silver or gold award? Ours said no way. Of course, they're also not allowing any mix-and-match earning of the "old" and the "new" requirements for gold or silver it's one way or the other. Now that we have the older IPAs the older online IPAs the newer online IPAs focus books and traditional methods of earning traditional IPAs traditional methods of earning older online IPAs new methods for earning newer online IPAs the modified methods for earning any of the older IPAs

If you choose to do an evening ceremony, using fire is always a hit or maybe my troop is just a bunch of pyros who always insist on candles or fires for any ceremony their girl-designed Silver Award/Bridging to Seniors ceremony involved a fire that started "magically". Then they each added a different substance as they crossed an adjacent bridge. The substances (ranging from household products like sugar to safe chemicals and elements) all caused a different effect as the girl spoke her part of the program. Sparks, colors, weird smoke. Very cool. Very impressive. If it would work fo

There are a few Junior badges with requirements available online from national try http://www.girlscouts.org/program/gs_central/insignia/online/ These are either badges developed for online access (technology badge) plus a few that didn't make it into the last edition of the Junior badge book. It's by no means the entire line-up, but at least it's a start. I'd also suggest looking into Council's Own badges developed at different councils around the country. If the council has decided to share its patch with others, they usually have the requirements posted on their web sites along wi

We have one dad in our troop who's always ready to come along on trips. He's taken the required outdoor training for our council and has gone camping, water-skiing and whitewater rafting with us. When camping, working or traveling with the girls, there are certain rules about having a female leader along with you (one of those things for your safety as well as theirs), and there are simple arrangements to follow when camping that concern where you should bunk and how the latrine and bathing facilities are shared (we have a big sign that says "MAN!" that he hangs up when he's in residence.

I went to Google and did a search for +awards +kiss +"rubber band" and got quite a few hits with some different items and lots of different wording. Here's one site, but you might want to try the same search and look around a bit (there was one on scoutinglinks, too): http://www.usscouts.org/profbvr/fun_awards/

Has anyone had experience with chartering a sailboat and captain where your troop acts as crew? I can find plenty of sites online (some feature a theme, such as Pirate Cruises, with accompanying skills/games), but I always like to hear from people who've been there, done that and can tell of great companies or ones to avoid at all costs. This is for a Senior GS troop. Thanks for any help. Wishboat

Why would the composition of focus groups matter? Because the information gathered from a relatively small sampling of 3,000 is the basis for a radical change in a program serving nearly 3 million. Because though you say to "let each girl's voice be heard", that's not what National had in mind. My post was intended to show that National had more interest in attracting new girls to Scouting than it had in seeking the opinion of current or former members. While this is a valid aim, such an approach also disenfranchises those young women who have stayed with a program they feel has value

Who was in the focus groups? 75% of the girls they surveyed had NEVER been in scouting of the 3000 girls they talk about, only 25% were currently GS. (No focus whatsoever on girls who had dropped out to see why or what might have made them stay in...) You can view a summary of the "New Directions" research they keep quoting online at girlscouts.org, but if you want the entire study, you have to call or email and ask for it they have directions online. My assistant leader is a professional researcher (one of those folks with all the letters after her name), and she says that both their

You might want to try this way instead of melting the wax in a pot (who wants to clean that pot, anyway...?) it lets the kids do the work, and they get to use fire, so they're happy: I'm GS, not BSA, so I've used this method with third-graders and up (younger girls make "candy kiss"/"Brownie Kiss" fire-starters by wrapping small blocks of paraffin or candle pieces in wax paper twists so they look like toffees). Use the cardboard egg cartons get the kids to cut them into sections and stuff them with the cedar shavings (or pine pet bedding it works well too). After reading these po

We just use cedar pet bedding -- not treated with anything, inexpensive and it makes a great starters. When we needed a large quantity to do a pit firing of replica Indian pottery, we went to a small woodshop that had a sign by the road "clean shavings for sale" -- and they donated a pickup full.

I agree with nikitee's HR reference yet another hat for us to wear. A leader I work with was upset by council staff members (two people devoted exclusively to S2B!) who are planning events for the older girls which their advisors are not welcome to attend (well, they told us we could drive the girls to the event location and hang around in other parts of the building until the girls were ready to go home...so add "chaffeur" to our job description as well I don't know how they plan to get around the girl/adult ratio it seems our council staff conveniently forget some of the rules they f

A ghost tour (nightime walking tour) is great fun for this age usually combines local history with the spooky stuff. One of our parents took a picture of the girls during the tour as they were listening to their guide very intently, then scanned the photo in and added the hazy image of a lady right in the middle of the group. Then we just slipped it into the pack of photos that we took to a troop meeting to let the girls look through the expressions on their faces were priceless when they realized that they'd had "company" on their tour. (It helped that the story the guide was telling whe

...but did you ever think that those few kids might be the very ones who need the organization the most? ...or the ones who could bring a lot to the group? ...that they're of an age to make their own informed decisions about joining, rather than being led/forced by mommy and daddy or simply following their friends? Or is "breaking in" a brand new scout at Boy Scout level just too much trouble c'mon, don't disillusion me here.

Yeah, there are about 850 scouting-related groups...? I just started looking through the list, checking for promising list names, then seeing how many members a list had if it looked active, I'd check out the home page. I actually found the group I'm most active in because it came up on a keyword search I did for a problem I had. This Cadette-Senior group is very active: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cad-senleaders/messages and there are several promising Junior leader sites here's one: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/JuniorLeadersOnline/ There are other groups in the list that