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In the old Girl Scout program, all of the badge work were things the girls could do at a meeting or on a field trip. The new program has many of the badges requiring some kind of work outside of meeting time.
Obviously, whomever wrote the book was never the leader of very busy girls.
On a handful of occasions, I asked the girls to watch a short You Tube video or to have parents show a picture of something I sent them. Neither of these assignments took more than three minutes to do. Guess what?
I still had girls who did not do this. It could have been done on a phone while waiting at the orthodontist or in the car on the way to dance or soccer, but it was not deemed important.
Since watching the video was required for badge work, I had the girls watch it on my phone at the start of the meeting so we could move forward with the other activities I had planned.
I completely understand why leaders are less than pleased with the new program, as so many of the badges to earn have some kind of homework assignment attached to earning it. If you are reading this, you know as well as I do that these assignments will not be completed by everyone, leaving an empty space on the activity checklist.
And then you have to tell the girl she did not earn the badge and deal with the tears from the girl and the upset parent who will talk to you.
This is all avoidable!
I am a firm believer in doing what works best for the girls and for you. You can work around this requirement with some creative thinking and rework the activities so they can be done during your meeting time.
On my Earn Brownie Badges website, I wrote detailed lesson plans for every badge, including the ones tied to the Journeys Program. If the activity required homework, I created a way for leaders to do the needed step without assigning any.
One of the things I have tried to stress to my readers all of these years is that you are volunteers and you should not do things that are going to get YOU stressed out. That includes circumventing situations that will create issues for you. Assigning Girl Scout homework is not a good idea because there will be girls who do not complete the assignment. This will create the previously mentioned badge situation. Why do this to yourself?
Do you give your girls assignments to complete at home? Do they do them? What do you do if they do not?
