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Linking Activities to the Journey
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In this tutorial, we'll look at how, with a little creativity and flexiblilty, proficiency badges and other activities can be linked to your Journey experience.
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The Girl Scout Leadership Experience is comprised of two parts: the Journey activities and the badge work. Journeys provide girls the opportunity to develop leadership skills while offering an overall view of a chosen topic.
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Badges focus on specific hands-on skills. Girls will not receive the full benefits of the Girl Scout program by doing just one or the other. However girls can use the skills they gain through badge work as they progress through the Journey.
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Here you see all of the Journeys. There are 3 series or themes available for each grade level. Therefore your girls have choices as to which Journey they would like to complete. The Journeys do not need to be completed in any order. Also don't feel you need to complete all of the Journeys for your grade level. Take your time and let the girls set the pace of their Journey.
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The Girls Guide to Girl Scouting offers a series of legacy badges and also additional skill building badges that correspond to a particular Journey series. So again girls have lots of choices to make their experience in Girl Scouting fit their interests.
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Now what if your girls choose to complete a badge outside of their Journey selection? That's fine! Just find a way to link it back to what the girls are doing in their Journey. Let me share some examples of how this might work.
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Say your Junior troop has choosen to complete the It's Your Planet, Love It! - Get Moving Journey. Your girls are looking through the Girls Guide to Girl Scouting and want to earn the Digital Photographer Badge. This badge happens to be a part of the skill building badge set for a different Journey series, the It's Your World, Change It! - Agent of Change Journey. Can the girls earn this badge even though it not part of their Journey badge set? Yes! Sure they can! You just need to find a way to link the badge activities to what you are currently working on in the Journey.
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So let's talk this through. A part of all journeys involves girls publicizing or communicating with others what they have learned over the course of their Journey. Couldn't the girls earn the Digital Photographer Badge and then use those new skills to develop visuals to share when they advocate for their Journey Take Action project?
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Maybe they'll decide to put together a display board of photos they took while on a field trip to the local electric company where they learned ways to conserve energy in the home. Or maybe the girls will use their newly acquired skills to produce a video to share with the school board of what they discovered while doing an energy audit of their school.
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Maybe the girls want to earn the Musician Badge. This badge is again from the It's Your World, Change It! series. But with a little creative girl-led customizing, the girls could use their knowledge of how music affects people's lives to learn about how electricity affects different types of music and also how it affects how people listen to music. Your group might decide to vist a music shop or concert hall to learn more about this subject.
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These examples focused on the Junior Grade Level but they hold true for all grade levels. With a little creativity and modifying any badge can be linked to any Journey. Also all Journeys can include fun field trips that can be adapted to the overall Journey theme. So be creative, allow the girls to explore their interests and make it fun, and know that you are providing girls with the full benefits of the Girl Scout Leadership Experience.