Girls you'll need to grab a parent or guardian to help you join Girl Scouts!
We develop leaders through dedication to and development of character, conduct, and community service. Through Girl Scouting, girls discover fun, friendship, and the power of girls together. This is an organization by girls, for girls, and of girls, devoted to building self-esteem, strong values, and a social conscience. The inner strength and self-confidence she gains through Girl Scouts will last a lifetime. There are many new program opportunities for girls of all age levels… whether she is at Daisy level or Senior, she will be given the opportunity to experience the best in volunteer leadership and Girl Scout program during the year.
Daisy/Daisies
Grades K-1
Brownie/Brownies
Grades 2-3
Junior/Juniors
Grades 4-5
Cadette/Cadettes
Grades 6-8
Senior/Seniors
Grades 9-10
Ambassador/Ambassadors
Grades 11-12
Girls can also join Girl Scouts outside of a troop as Juliettes.
Girl Scout Troops meet in places of worship, schools, and community centers during times that are best for the volunteers, parents, and girls.
How to Join
To take the first step in registering your daughter please call either the Newark Resource Center at 302-456-7150 or 800-341-4007, or the Peninsula Resource Center at 410-742-5107 or 800-374-9811.
With many competing activities vying for your daughter’s time, we are glad that your family has chosen to be a part of Girl Scouts. Think of Girl Scouts as the jewel in the crown of your daughter’s activities! For more info., please download the "Welcome to Girl Scouting" PDF!
Jouneys/Girl's Guide to Girl Scouting
Girl Scouting is transitioning its resources in order to build a nationally consistent Girl Scout program that consists of two primary resources focused on helping girls build leadership skills.
Journeys are the core of all leadership experiences and program opportunities for girls. They provide an exploration of the three keys to leadership, tie directly to the 15 national outcomes and provide detailed guidance for adults in the form of adult facilitator guides. Three complete sets of Journeys are currently available.
The Girl’s Guide to Girl Scouting will be age-level appropriate handbooks for girls that include badge-earning activities and more, all ion one place. The guides will debut in late fall 2011 and are designed to complement the Journeys with activities that build specific skills for which girls earn badges. Content is being driven by input and feedback from girls and volunteer, as well as a respectful nod to the great tradition that are part of our nearly 100
year legacy.
The Girl Scout Leadership Experience
The Girl Scout Leadership Experience engages girls in discovering self, connecting with others, and taking action to make the world a better place. All Girl Scout experiences are intentionally designed to tie to one or more of the 15 national leadership outcomes, or benefits, categorized under three keys to leadership.
Discover: Girls understand themselves and their values and use their knowledge and skills to explore the world. Connect: Girls care about, inspire, and team with others locally and globally. Take Action: Girls act to make the world a better place.
The Girl Scout Leadership Experience provides three processes for adults partnering with girls to incorporate: Girl Led, Cooperative, Learning by Doing.
See an on-line introduction to the Girl Scout Leadership Experience including the journeys. Be sure to watch the beginning video!
Leadership Journeys
Today’s girls don’t want to just follow a set of instructions. They want to reflect, make choices, take action and determine their own paths. Journeys are the exciting, flexible foundation for year long activities that girls help plan in collaboration with adult Volunteers.
A key part of the GirlScout Leadership Experience is the Leadership Journey, a coordinated series of activities grouped around a theme. Each journey, listed (insert location of the Journey titles from below here), is tied to some of Girl Scouts' 15 national outcomes for girls, as defined in the Girl Scout Leadership Model. These outcomes are integral to the three leadership keys, Discover, Connect, and Take Action.
Watch the Transforming Leadership video.
Customize!
Use your adult journey guide as a base for creating a fun and exciting experience for girls. You'll find ideas about using activities, starting discussions, and earning awards so that the "whole" feels like one big adventure. The journey will be so much more fun and relevant as you assist girls in making it their own!
Flexible!
Sample sessions in the journeys suggest several ways to engage girls. Many girls and volunteers will quickly find there is more they will want to do! The journey books are filled with tips for you to add more to the experience. Let everyone's imaginations take hold and extend the journey with ideas from girls. Do you have a short time frame? Follow the tips about doing what's most important!
Link!
Are Ambassadors interested in partnering? What would happen if Seniors worked together? What do Cadettes in your area have to offer to Juniors? What if Brownies link up on steps of their journey? How could Daisies benefit from meeting other Daisies? Connecting helps make a powerful Girl Scout journey!
Explore Stories!
Stories capture the imagination and motivate, and inspire us to put values into action. The journeys engage girls in stories—real and fictional—of girls and women taking action in the world. You and the girls decide how much time to spend on them before going on to create their own adventures.
Leadership and You!
As a Girl Scout volunteer, your experiences—and your view of leadership—will influence and inspire girls. Use the reflection exercises in your journey guide to think about the three leadership keys (Discover, Connect, and Take Action) and how you can best apply them as you team up with Girl Scouts on their journey.
Links on this page to the following pages (Bold and 16pt are the topic page titles)
It's Your World—Change It!
Introducing the First Series of Journeys
What you will find at each level of this series?
What will you find in these new books? The Girl Scout Leadership Experience comes to life for girls and the adults in the journeys. All the leadership keys of Discover, Connect, and Take Action along with the Girl Scout processes of Girl Led, Cooperative Learning, and Learning by Doing are woven through each journey.
Journey Awards
In a Girl Scout journey, awards link experiences, discussions and ideas that girls explore together. As girls progress through the levels from Daisy to Ambassador, their awards signify attaining new and higher levels of knowledge and skills, and ultimately a deeper understanding of what it means to be a leader who makes a difference in the world.
All the steps girls take toward earning awards are built right into the journey. Adult guides for each level provide tips for coaching girls along the way. With the Brownie Quest map, girls and adults track award progress together; from Juniors on up, girls themselves track their own progress. Another important tradition that helps girls remember what awards stand for, is the ceremony. Journeys offer girls ideas about meaningful ways to celebrate earning awards so that girls always know why these accomplishments matter.
Awards are a vital part of the Girl Scout experience, and adults can assist girls in finding the best way to achieve their goals. If a girl misses a meeting related to earning an award, adults can find a way for her to do something similar to what she missed to earn her award. All girls may not have the exact same experience, but they can each take away new insights, connections and a sense of accomplishment.
Journey Support In several of the Girl Scout journeys there are some special items: designated pages for copying; songs for the girls to sing; the LiA award for Cadettes who help the Brownies in their Quest; and others. Please select each grade level section below to see what is offered:
What will you find in these new books? The Girl Scout Leadership Experience comes to life for girls and the adults in these journeys. The leadership keys of Discover, Connect, and Take Action, along with the Girl Scout processes of Girl Led, Cooperative Learning, and Learning by Doing, are woven through each journey.
Girls are being exposed to ideas and discussions on the environment every day and every where. Girl Scouts journeys are packed with the latest research and girl-relevant environmental thinking and offer adults a way to interact with girls on topics of great importance in their lives. In this journey series, girls at each grade level have an opportunity to learn about grade-appropriate environmental issues such as clean water and air, noise pollution, global warming, soil contamination, and agricultural processes.
Journey Awards
Green RoofGreen roof, California Academy of Sciences,San FranciscoIn a Girl Scout journey, awards link the experiences, discussions, and ideas that girls explore together. As girls progress through the levels from Daisy to Ambassador, their awards signify attaining new and higher levels of knowledge and skills, and ultimately a deeper understanding of what it means to be a leader who makes a difference in the world.
All the steps girls take toward earning awards are built right into the journey. Adult guides for each level provide tips for coaching girls along the way. Ceremonies are an important tradition in Girl Scouting. They help girls celebrate and remember what their Girl Scout awards stand for. Journeys offer girls ideas about meaningful ways to celebrate earning their awards so that they always know why their accomplishments matter.
Awards are a vital part of the Girl Scout experience, and adults can assist girls in finding the best way to achieve their goals. If a girl misses a meeting related to earning an award, adults can find a way for her to do something similar to what she missed to earn her award. All girls may not have the exact same experience, but they can each take away new insights, connections and a sense of accomplishment.
Helpful Tools and Surprises Too!
In several of the Girl Scout journeys, there are some special items: designated pages for copying, surveys for the girls to use, and help involving families and more. There is also information on the Leadership in Action (LiA) award for Cadettes who help the Brownies in their journey, and more. Please refer to the It's Your Planet—Love It! section below under the appropriate level to see what is offered.
"It's Your Story—Tell It!" leadership journey series uses a storytelling theme in a fun and grade-level relevant way for girls to better understand themselves and their potential. Building a strong sense of self is an underlying goal of the series, which was made possible in part by a generous grant from the Dove Self-Esteem Fund.
Self-Esteem and Creative Expression
A Girl Scout leadership journey series, It's Your Story – Tell It! offers a fun, comprehensive and multidisciplinary approach to building girls' leadership. Self-esteem is a natural by-product of this particular journey because, through storytelling and creative expression, girls gain a better understanding of themselves and their potential, and develop confidence to become leaders in their own lives and in the world.
Healthy Living
The It's Your Story - Tell It! leadership journey series helps girls develop practical life skills around healthy living. Through activities that get the girls moving and thinking in creative and physically challenging ways, through role-play activities that allow them to become comfortable and competent taking part in real-life, age-appropriate social situations, and well as through recipes and general health and well-being content and discussion, the journeys offer girls content and activities to develop physically, socially, and emotionally healthy lifestyles now and for their futures. Accordingly, research from the GSRI shows that girls do not distinguish between physical, social, and emotional health but rather see them all as interrelated (The New Normal, What Girls Say About Healthy Living, GSRI 2006). Healthy Living activities are woven through all Girl Scout activities and It's Your Story – Tell It! is no exception! See some fun examples (PDF).
Media Literacy
At every grade-level, the It's Your Story - Tell It! leadership journeys get girls developing critical thinking and media literacy skills. Activities and discussions that get girls to think critically about the media, including its portrayal of girls and women, are woven into each grade-level journey with a variety of goals: At the youngest grade levels, the aim is to get girls to understand marketing tactics for young consumers. As the girls get older, the focus shifts to the limited roles and opportunities that media gives women and girls, and the narrow definition of beauty that media displays. At the highest grade levels, the girls consider the portrayals of relationships between girls and women. See more about leadership and media literacy for girls (PDF).
In September 2011, GSUSA will debut an exciting new resource for girls: The Girl’s Guide to Girl Scouting. Girls at each grade level will have their own Girl’s Guide, so there will be six publications (see below for a sample). The Girl’s Guide to Girl Scouting will include: a variety of badge offerings, handbook sections covering traditions and history, Cookie badges, an awards log, and much more.
Once the Girl’s Guide is released, girls will have plenty of badges and awards available to earn!
There is a Girl’s Guide for each of the six Girl Scout levels.
The Girl’s Guide will come in the form of a binder so girls can add to it as they go along.
What’s great for girls? The new badges offer girls variety, choice and relevance. Now, girls, parents and volunteers will have an easier time understanding the requirements for badges.
In addition to the awards they are earning through the Journeys, the Girl’s Guide gives girls the opportunity to earn Legacy badges, Financial Literacy badges, as well as Cookie Business badges at each level.
The Girl’s Guide is the girl’s fluid program backbone. The facilitator’s guides are found with the journeys.
What Will You Find in The Girl’s Guide to Girl Scouting? (PDF)
Handbook Section My Girl Scouts Section
The My Girl Scouts section is designed just for girls, and allows girls to personalize their Girl Scout experience by scrapbooking and documenting their activities Awards Section Legacy Badges
Artist
The Girl Scout Way
Citizen
Cook
First Aid
Athlete
Naturalist
Financial Literacy Badges
Girls can earn a different Financial Literacy Badge each year.
(Daisies earn Financial Literacy “leaves.”)
Cookie Business Badges
Girls can earn a different Cookie Business Badge each year.
(Daisies earn Cookie Business “leaves.”)
Make Your Own
An opportunity for girls to pursue to beloved topics that are important to them. This badge category definitely offers greater customization. Badges will have the same age level shape as the current badges, and will be professionally made by one of our manufacturers.
PLUS My Promise, My Faith Pin
Journey Summit Pin
For Designated Levels
Program Aide (P.A.), Counselor-in-Training (CIT), Leader-in-Training is now Volunteer-in-Training (VIT)
Bronze, Silver, Gold Awards
What else can you add in?
Optional Skill-Building badge sets can be added to supplement the journeys. We anticipate more Skill-Building Badge sets will be added periodically.
Now girls clearly build their skills as they work their way up the ladder; progression has been built into the badges. As girls progress to the next age level, they are able to build on what they’ve previously learned.
There are a total of seven badges in the Legacy badge category. Brownies – Ambassadors are able to earn badges in this category.
In addition to Legacy badges, all levels of Girl Scouts, Daisies – Ambassadors, will be able to earn Financial Literacy and Cookie Business badges or petals. Brownies – Seniors will also be able to earn additional Skill-Building badges.
Badges can be earned across all of the different pathways.
Each badge starts with a purpose, so that girls will see right from the start what they’re going to learn.
Each badge has five steps, and girls must do all five steps to earn a badge. Every step has three choices for completing each step. Only one choice needs to be completed.
The Journey Tie-In is a tip that allows girls to see how the program portfolio, journeys and badges all fit together.
The Giving Serving section includes idea starters that show girls how to put their new skills to use while giving service.
Now, there are more robust activities for earning each petal.
Each Flower Friend is tied to a particular petal.
There is a short story for every single petal starring a Flower Friend.
Daisies can earn two Financial Literacy leaves, and two Cookie Business leaves.
What Else Do You Need to Know about the Girl’s Guide?
What awards are new?
My Promise, My Faith
Helps girls make links from the Girl Scout law to their own personal faith. This award can be earned every year, and does not replace the current faith award.
Journey Summit
For girls who have completed all three Journeys at their level
What’s been updated?
Safety Award (Can be earned by all levels)
Counselor-in-Training (CIT), Volunteer-in-Training (VIT) (formerly LIT) and Program Aid (P.A.)
Troop Crests
What about Ambassadors?
They have everything except extra Skill-Building Badge Sets. Based on research, we know that Ambassadors do not put as much emphasis on earning badges. Legacy badges give Ambassadors the tradition and variety they love and expect from Girl Scouts.
Where can I get my copy?
The Bay Shop is accepting pre-orders! Order your copy today and be a leader into the new Girl Scout season! Click here to visit The Bay Shop or download a copy of the order form here.
