Treflienne

I'm glad that BSA is not mixing genders, because that would take away the leverage to force the girls to do what they don't naturally like to do. I guess it's the same with boys, but I don't have as much experience there. Also, sometimes girls will be hesitant about trying things, because they don't have the confidence that they are good at them (because indeed they are not good at them yet). If there are no over-confident boys around to jump in and do it first, then the girls realize that they need to step up and try -- which give them a chance to develop competence and the confidenc

First off, the more traditional approach is by birthday -- though the age used to be 12, not 11. And the promoting-by-age is not an LDS-only exception. The brand new Scouts BSA Handbook for Girls says, on the inside front cover Our troop knows of one girl (not a cub scout) planning to join as soon as she turns 11. Oddly enough, her mother was not aware of the age-instead-of-AOL grounds for joining scouts, even though the girl has two brothers who have gone through cub scouts.

when/where did BSA say things like this? and does BSA still say something like this?

It's not quite pioneering, but might fit with a pioneering themed campout: scouts make their dining fly using four scout staves, a poly tarp borrowed from someone's garage, some spare tent stakes, and some rope. Good practise on lashing and knots. (Two scout staves are lashed together with sheer lashing to make the front pole, similar for rear pole.) https://scoutmastercg.com/philmont-dining-fly-tarp/ Also fitting with a pioneering theme: no propane. Only cook over wood.

Not so hard: 3 camping overnights, 3 local day hikes, and four other things: (help with scout recruiting night? do ILST? help with the spring cleanup at the CO? one more? ) And while the girl reaching 1st class has to do all of them, its not required to pick a day when the entire troop can go. Get half or more of your patrol and two willing adults (different ones for different activities) and you are all set. One overnight and two other Saturday mornings per month.

It's not as though they did not know what the requirements were in advance. They could have had a plan mapped out even before 1 Feb. Here on scouter forum, we've had discussions of highly motivated scouts making fast progress, and discussions of questionable (biased-in-favor-of-girls) judging at camporees. But how many of the new girls troops are simply more ordinary? At three months in (1 May) my troop reached the point where 50% of the scouts had attained Scout rank. None is a tenderfoot, yet.

We will want the report: will they join en masse? What we have seen around here in GSUSA is a huge attrition somewhere around 4th/5th/6th grade. The majority of the kids quit scouting, and only a small fraction fold into the local "older girl" troop for grades 6-12, after the troop they have been with since kindergarten disbands. I don't know how much is because the current Cadette/Senior/Ambassador program is unappealing, and how much is that the girls become interested in other activities. So if you get even 4 or 5 of this troop joining Scouts BSA, that is a good yield. Make s

Not the rules I've seen! Is it council specific? We took 2nd graders (platform)-tent camping. And we did not require the mothers of the girls to come along. My daisy co-leader did not want to camp, so our daisies did not camp. But I know of some who did backyard tent overnights for the daisies.

A long generation back, troops (at least the ones I saw) did have institutional knowledge. While Brownie troops were only two grades (2nd-3rd), the older troops were three grades (Juniors 4th-6th, Cadettes 7th-9th, Seniors 10th-12th). When the daughter of a troop leader-mom moved up a level, her mom moved up a level also, typically becoming an assistant troop leader at the next level for a couple of years, before moving into the troop leader role her daughter's third year in the troop. This meant that troops were large, maybe 30+ girls, even at the Brownie stage. And there wa

I also have thought that the Junior-Girl-Scout to Scouts-BSA is a great logical procession. GSUSA's Brownie and Junior program, at least if run in a traditionalist sort of way, has one very appealing advantage over cub scouts: the emphasis on "girl led" in an elementary-school sort of way, where the girls are encouraged to begin making decisions and carrying them out. I could certainly see families wanting to do Brownies and Juniors, and then planning to cross over into Scouts BSA at the end of 5th grade. (It's almost what my daughter did, but she had to wait a little for Sco

This is no longer recognizably the girl scout program in which I grew up. Scouts BSA is a great program, but there are things I will miss. The trefoil with the eagle, the scout handshake, Thinking Day, the Brownie Story, "twist me and turn me and show me the elf", flying-up, "three good turns", "a sister to every girl scout", and the songs, . . . .

. . . and come September, we will remember our camping days and friendships true . . . . . . and as the years go by, I'll think of you and sigh . . . . . . we've made a promise to always keep, and we'll pray "softly falls" before we sleep. We'll be girl scouts together and when we're gone . . .

I don't see it on page 26 of Volunteer Essentials. And this "Volunteer Action Guide" seems to be a new thing, separate from the Volunteer Essentials. Besides, that seems to be the Volunteer Essentials guide for Girl Scouts of West Central Florida. (Different councils have different versions of the Volunteer Essentials, and it is updated every year.)

Actually @cocomax quotes from a council document, not a GSUSA document. I have seen very similar put out by other GS councils. But I have not located it on either the GSUSA web site, or on my local GS council's web site.

I think that tent arrangments are an area where the differences between what girls collectively tend to like and what boys tend to like may show up. What I have seen (both when I was a kid, and also when I was a girl scout leader) is that girls would like their whole friend-group to be in one big tent. So, yes, pack six or seven girls into one of those big platform tents that the girl scout camps have -- and everyone is happy. Need to split a group of elementary-aged girls between two separate tents -- and all kinds of drama might break out. Fortunately, the Scouts BSA girls are a litt

I find it inconsistent that there is no two-year-apart-max for cabins while there is for tents . . . no matter how small the cabin and no matter how large the tent. A cabin that sleeps 4 does not seem all that much different from 4 in a large tent. It would be nice if the acceptible age range were a little larger if there were multiple girls in the tent.

I was thinking of the odd-man-out (odd-girl-out?) being in a tent by herself -- not necessarily a one-person-tent. Since the tents that available for us to borrow seem to be 2-person, 3-person, and 4+-person tents.

The scouts can do the math, and figure out how far apart they are in age, and who they can tent with. It's not rocket science. An old non-boy-scout rule for girls is "safety-in-numbers". I'd much rather not have girls tenting by themselves.

That document does not say that a girl must participate in the cookie sale to earn gold award. The requirment is that participation in both the cookie sale and the fall product sale is required in order to do any other money earning acitivities: This is encouraging the scouts to do the sales to "be prepared" "in the event that they need raise additional funds towards their Gold Award Project". It is not requiring them to do so.

I've never heard that having been a Cadette was prereq for Gold. There is an alternative to have earned Silver -- doing an extra Journey instead. I've never heard that participation in Fall Product Sale and Cookie sale is a requirement. Where are you getting these from? Are they specific to your council?

This does *not* keep it simple. Try explaining to Suzy and Sally why they are allowed to share a tent for half a year, and not allowed to share a tent for the other half of the year.

To further clarify what PinkPajamas said: Girl Scouts does not (well, has not for a very very very long time) had ranks in the same sense that Boy Scouts does. Girl Scouts have "age levels" Daisy, Brownie, Junior, Cadette, Senior, Ambassador. What age level a girl is in depends only on her age/grade. They should not be thought of as "ranks". Moving from one to another is based solely on age/grade. So, for a fair comparison, you should compare the sum of Scout+Tenderfoot+ . . . +Life+Eagle requirments with the Gold Award Requirements. In my ignorance (am still le

1. The Scout Learns 2. The Scout is Tested For all of you out there, how do you clearly make a distinction between those two steps? How do you set scout (and adult) expections that the scout will not be signed off on a skill the first time he does it?

Well, the first of Baden -Powell's scout laws is "A SCOUT'S HONOUR IS TO BE TRUSTED" and part of the explanation for that was "If a scout were to break his honour by telling a lie, or by not carrying out an order exactly when trusted on his honour to do so, he would cease to be a scout, and must hand over his scout badge and never be allowed to wear it again." See the wikipedia article cited about for the full 1908 scout law.

Baden Powell's 1908 scout law (from Scouting for Boys) is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scout_law