Treflienne

@sst3rd you meant "scout troop for girls" not "girls scout troop" (since GSUSA is suing BSA over this issue) Having just gotten a new troop started I agree about the getting out camping first. And actually (this advice was from @Eagledad) the early troop meeting activities can be preparing or developing skills for those first outings. Eventually they will realize they need a patrol name in order to make Scout rank -- that can wait until they realize it. Once you have five enthusiastic girls eager to get started, then start the girls troop -- don't make them wait any longe

In your experience, does this work best to ask each scout individually, or to get them all together (the scouts from the troop who went through NYLT together) so that they can hear each others' answers? Negatively, all together, and the quieter ones might just follow the lead of the more dominant. Positively, all together and they may build on each others' ideas.

Thanks. That was very helpful. The troop has been having a 1x/month PLC meeting. Seems not enough. We may need to add the 15-minute mini-meeting ("huddle"?) prior to each troop meeting. And also the post-troop-meeting brief PLC meeting. Opinions? Am signed up for one in about half a years' time. But there will be a few months until then.

I think that the big contrast between BSA and GSUSA is the program materials, not the volunteers. In fact, as I have been getting involved with BSA, I am seeing people I met in GSUSA (who were volunteering with their daughters' troops) also volunteering with BSA (with their sons packs/troops).

Really depends on the particular GS leaders. I've seen GS leaders happy to send scouts, in pairs, all over the camp from Juniors (grades 4-5) onwards. BSA has much more detailed regulations -- and I have certainly seen people in BSA unsure whether they can allow the (middle school) scouts to head out in pairs away from adult eyes, given the two-deep leadership rule.

P.S. Summer camp is, in my opinion, currently the best part of the GSUSA program. (It has, to a great extent, resisted the modernization trends in GSUSA.) And it is great for the scouts when the supervising "adults" are the ages of their older siblings and older cousins, rather than the age of their parents. On the other hand, BSA summer camp struck me has having a LOT more resources (there was clearly a lot of money behind the camp, somewhere). There were many many fun activities for the scouts, requiring lots of expensize equipment. My daughter likes both kinds of scout cam

Something sounds wrong here. Girl Scout leaders do not go to summer camp with their scouts. My daughter's reaction to summer BSA camp was that it was great -- but there was one thing that GS camp did better: At BSA camps you have to take your mother with you if she is scoutmaster, but at GS camps you have to leave your mother behind if she is the girl scout troop leader. Girl Scouts sign up for camp as individuals, they do not go with their troops. They are grouped into units with other girls, from other town and troops, who they have probably never met before. GS camps are mostl

Apparently a SAGNO is a "Scout and Guide National Organization", a joint organization of Boy Scouts and Girl Guides/Scouts within a country. Which raises the issue of whether to register the girls with with WOSM, WAGGGS, or both https://www.wagggs.org/en/about-us/membership/types-membership/ http://euroscoutinfo.com/2011/06/23/european-sagnos-register-girls-and-young-women-to-wosm/ http://www.skatamal.is/english/

Hi Barry ( @Eagledad ) and company, I realize this is resurrecting a very old thread. But do you have any advice for the adults on how to help the scouts take advantage of and use the new skills they have learned at NYLT when they come back to their troops? I have three scouts going to NYLT later this summer . . . and yes I really don't know what the scouts are going to learn there.

As a kid, a GSUSA Girl Scout in Europe, the scouts in my troop made completely unofficial neckerchiefs to wear for activities for which our uniform was inappropriate. When wearing our neckerchiefs we were immediately recognizable as some variety of guide/scout. (There were multiple scouting/guiding organizations in that country.) Ironically, when wearing our GSUSA uniforms we were not recognized as guides/scouts but were (at least once) mistaken for flight attendants.

On some camping trips the tent arrangments have been almost completely determined by (1) the 2-year rule and (2) the desire to separate sisters so that they have more of a chance to get to know the other scouts.

My troop has a 30-month age spread. The scouts go to different schools and they are not so aware of the exact ages of the other scouts. They all seem to get along well with each other. I have definitely had scouts request to tent together for summer camp who were more than 24 months apart in age (probably without being aware of the exact age difference). It would be *much* simpler for us if the allowable age difference were 2.5 years or 3 years.

How is your camp handling girl provo campers? Are they being welcomed every week the camp is open?

The linked-troop aspect is what makes this particular wood badge so interesting. It will be interesting to see what model or models BSA is promoting for how linked troops should function. What I saw at summer camp this summer, seeing the linked troops there, was that different troops were doing things very differently. In one troop the boy scouts (middle schoolers or young high schoolers) I talked with thought that their troop had simply added a girls patrol -- these boy scouts had absolutely no idea that the girls had to be registered as a separate troop. For another linked troop pair, t

Our council camp is being very welcoming to the girls. Already had individual shower stalls with real doors that locked and a private dressing area inside the stall. Only difference has been how provo campers are being handled. So far the (very few) provo girls are being placed with girls troops who are at camp that week and who have offered to host them. When our troop was at camp, the single provo girl stayed in the campsite with us and did everything with our troop. This worked fine.

I am imagining this scenaro. Kid, at home, before camp, in family room and eyeing the throw rug on the floor. Asks "Mom, can I take a rug to camp for my tent?" Mom, eyeing same throw rug (her favorite) and imagining what it would look like after a week of camp says, "No. Not allowed". Kid jumps to conclusion and . . . .

Crocs are great for the showers, maybe okay for the waterfront. Not secure enough on the feet for general all-day wear around camp. (Not the rule of any particular BSA camp, but my opinion only.)

There is also the problem of kids at school having an allergic reaction to something they did not know they were allergic to. In recent years, because of situations such as the one descibed by @scoutldr in which a kid has an allergic reaction at school but no epipen, effort has been made to allow schools to have "stock epinephrine" available for use for kids who have an allergic reaction but do not have a prescribed epinephrine auto-injector (epipen or similar). These sites, https://www.foodallergy.org/education-awareness/advocacy-resources/advocacy-priorities/school-access-to-epinephrine

FARE's Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Emergency Care Plan is very helpful in telling the uninformed what to do in case of an allergic reaction. (How to recognize a reaction and whether to use the epinephrine.) Worth a read, even if you don't currently have a kid in your troop with known allergies. Of course it assumes that you have an epinephrine autoinjector at hand and can call an ambulance, and that you only need to deal with the first 20 minutes of the reaction without help. https://www.foodallergy.org/life-with-food-allergies/food-allergy-anaphylaxis-emergency-care-plan htt

In our area local advertising, even before our plans were as definite as yours, found more girls (and their parents) to add to the group forming a troop. Don't feel like you have to have everything lined up before you start broadly recruiting. You don't need to promise what you don't yet have, but you can certainly announce your hopes and intentions.

I have never met anyone in GSUSA who enthused about the "Journeys". Of course I have only met the average volunteers, not the people who write these materials.

Our girls troop just went for a joint camping trip with our linked boys troop. (First joint trip, the girls troop has had several camping trips on its own.) This was a traditional annual event for the boys troop. All the cooking was done with propane. But the boys built a bonfire that had flames that must have been at least five feet high -- and burned much more wood than would have been needed to cook for the entire long weekend. In our part of the country at least, camping in camps with established fire rings and ample downed wood, we cannot blame LNT for the lack of campfire coo

The major differences in how BSA and GSUSA operate and do things is one of the reasons that some currently and/or formerly associated with GSUSA have now enrolled with BSA. If they were entirely happy with all the ways that GSUSA operates they would see no reason to join BSA. That being said, there are a couple of things from my GSUSA background that I would like to bring into the BSA troop I am affiliated with: 1) enthusiastic singing around the campfire 2) scouts developing real competence in campfire cooking Neither are, I think, opposed to BSA ways, simply out of fa

Our troop is just starting to think about this. The girls have looked at some prototypes, and need to decide style and colors. It is really easy to take a square yard of fabric and put seam binding around it. (e.g. Wrights extra-wide double-fold bias tape ) Actually easier than simply hemming it. Makes a sharp looking necker. And you get any color combo you they want. Or cut the square yard into two triangles before binding the edges to make triangular neckers -- less functional but easier to roll tightly. Leather lacing 3mm wide can be made into a turks head woggle. Some of our gi

What is a gateway? Maybe we should know before we go to camp?