Hi everyone, thanks for letting me join the group!  I have a question:  we have our first Junior meeting in a couple of days and I'd really like to split the troops into groups and give them a few badges to select from.  The problem is: How do I plan this?  Most of the steps of most of the badges involve interviews, outside activities, etc.  How do I find a way for the girls to complete one or two of the steps at the meeting?  Thanks in advance!

Hi - welcome to the forums.  While I don't know a lot about the requirements for badges in Girl Scouts, it seems to me that you might spend the first meeting talking to the girls about all the different badges available and get an idea of which badges they would like to start working on right away (and you might nudge them in the direction of First Aid as one of those badges since everyone can use those skills).  Then look at the requirements of those badges to see which activities in them require visits, interviews and outside activities and which can be done at a meeting.  Depending on how many groups you split the Troop in to, you might put together a rotating plan - say you have 4 groups and there are 4 badges the girls all would like to work on - each group could take on a badge and rotate through until all the girls have earned them - for any outside activity (I think First Aid requires a visit with a first responder) you could do that for the entire Troop. 

 

I could see the rotation schedule a couple of different ways - one is to have each group start and finish a badge before rotating to the next badge - advantage, they earn that first badge faster.  The other might be to have them rotate through stations each week, learning a little about each of the badges until all the badges are earned - takes a little longer but might hold their interest throuhg the badges longer too.