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CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
Welcome to Junior Girl Scouts! Girl Scouting can be a rewarding, educational and fun
experience for you and your Girl Scout. Girl Scouting emphasizes
individual potential, development of values, relating to others, and good
citizenship.
One
of the ways to cultivate these goals in the girls is to encourage them to
earn badges.
PURPOSE
This
book was written as a guide to parents and guardians who wish to assist
their Junior Girl Scouts to earn Junior Badges and Signs. This will be
helpful for individually registered girls who have limited access to troop
level activities. This will be useful for any girl who wishes to pursue
more recognitions on her own which the rest of
her troop may not have the desire or facilities to earn. Many troop
leaders have found this book to be a helpful tool for girls who may have
missed a meeting where some badge activity took place.
This
book will assist you and your Girl Scout in planning, selecting and earning badges. This book is divided into
four chapters. The first chapter is an introduction with general and
background information. The second chapter offers advice in how to plan
and select the badges that your Girl Scout would like to earn. The third
chapter describes Junior Girl Scout Signs and other recognitions and how
to plan and earn them. Finally, the fourth chapter contains a table
listing all of the Junior Badges and important information about each
badge. It also contains the Worksheets which will document progress on a
badge.
HOW TO USE THIS BOOK
Once
your Girl Scout selects a badge to work on, find the badge in the table in
chapter 4. This will tell you how many activities are required for the
badge and if it is applicable for a Sign. To document progress on the
badge, use the appropriate Worksheet. There are separate worksheets for
badges requiring 4,5,6,7 or 8 activities. The worksheets have been
designed to be as generic as possible. To reduce duplication costs, only a
single copy of each type of Worksheet has been included. You will have to
get copies made for each type of worksheet.
HONOR SYSTEM
Badges performed at home are done on the honor system.
Junior Girl Scouts are of an age when honor is a concept which is still
being learned. You can help your Girl Scout learn about honor and honesty
by regularly monitoring her progress and by insisting that she actually
perform all of the activities which will be marked on the worksheet.
CHAPTER 2
PLANNING A JUNIOR BADGE
The
first thing that you and your Girl Scout should do is to obtain copies of
the Girl Scout Badges and Signs book and the Junior Girl Scout Handbook
published by Girl Scouts of the
USA. These books
are relatively inexpensive and contain the information needed to earn
badges. Please read the introduction in Girl Scout Badges and Signs
entitled "My Book of Badges and Signs." It contains an excellent
description of what badges are all about, and some really good advice about earning them.
Together, look through the Badges and Signs Handbook and
decide on some badges that interest her or that present something that is
new to her. Please note that there are four types of badges. Most badges
are divided into the five Worlds of Girl Scouting. The five Worlds are the
World of the Arts, World of Today and Tomorrow, World of People, World of
the Out of Doors and the World of Well-Being.
Dabbler badges are for sampling a little bit of everything
within a World and are not specific to a particular subject.
Badges with GREEN backgrounds are easier, and require less
work. These are excellent for younger Junior Girl Scouts or for those who
are new to Girl Scouting. The badges with a TAN background are more
difficult and should be attempted by girls with some previous experience
with badges. These can sometimes be quite challenging, so they are
excellent for older or experienced girls.
There are also a group of badges
which are found in the back of the Junior Girl Scout
Handbook. These badges
have a WHITE background and vary in difficulty. They do not belong to any
particular world but are related to activities in the Junior Girl Scout
Handbook.
Once
she has selected a number of badges which interest her, your Girl Scout
should next decide on which badge she should start with. It would be best
to discuss your selection with the Troop Leader, before starting. The
leader may be planning to do the same badge as a troop activity.
Some
girls select their badges by first selecting a Sign. A Sign is a special
recognition which requires more work than a single badge. Each Sign
requires some badge work. This method simplifies the badge selection
process. Selecting a Sign first also gives her a definite goal to attain
rather than just accumulating random badges. The Junior Girl Scout Signs
are described in the next chapter.
After
selecting a badge, read through all of the activities listed for it in the
Handbook and decide which activities are going to be performed to earn it.
Some of the activities require interviewing adults. Other activities
require that the Girl Scout invite an adult to a troop meeting. These
activities MUST be coordinated with the Troop Leader, so that it doesn't
interfere with a previously planned troop activity.
BADGE JOURNAL
Your
Girl Scout should keep a journal to document all of the activities
performed to earn each badge. She should write down anything that was done
during the process of earning the badge. She needs to list names, dates,
addresses and phone numbers of people and businesses contacted, places
visited, and the reason for the visit or call. She also needs to write
down plans, experiments, whether they succeeded or failed, and to include
any photographs or drawings.
A
journal will help her keep track of badge work in a convenient and
organized way. By keeping track of contacts in one place, she will know
who to go for help in the future and who to avoid. This is good
information to share with her sister scouts. A journal is also a good
educational tool. Keeping track of sources, taking notes and organizing
work are skills which your Girl Scout will need as she progresses through
school and college.
A sturdy three ring binder works quite well as a Badge
Journal. It allows the flexibility of moving and reorganizing information
easily. If desired, photo pockets, section dividers, page protectors and floppy disk pockets can easily be added.
The binder would also be a good place to store extra copies of the
worksheets.
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