Being in Girl Scouts was one of the highlights of my childhood. Selling cookies, making friends, and learning leadership skills I still carry with me today. Earning badges was also pretty cool, getting to fill up your vest to show off your accomplishments.
But if you're like me, there always seemed to be a category missing: badges for science. As a kid who loved experimenting school, I found the badges to be so focused on crafts as opposed to book smarts.
Some of the badges included acknowledgement for cooking, crafting, singing, sewing, cleaning, and weaving.
Now, Girl Scouts of American has announced the release of 23 new badges relating to STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) as well as the outdoors.
Continue reading to find out what the new badges are!
The 23 new badges are already on the Girl Scout Website and are available across all levels of participation.
These are some of the new badges:
- Board Game Design Challenge
- Design a Robot
- How Robots Move
- Model Car Design Challenge
- Roller Coaster Design Challenge
- What Robots Do
- Bugs
- Computer Expert
- Fling Flyer Design Challenge
- Home Scientist
- Inventor
- Leap Bot Challenge
- Animal Habitats
- Digital Movie Maker
- Special Agent
- Woodworker
- Social Innovator
- Truth Seeker
- Website Designer
- Photographer
Girl Scouts of America posted about their new badges, saying "The new Girl Scout programming builds girls' skills and encourages their interest in STEM and environmental conservation from an early age"”areas girls are not typically encouraged to explore outside Girl Scouting"”increasing their confidence in an all-girl, girl-led environment where they feel comfortable to try new things, take appropriate risks, and learn from failure. Girl Scouts will be able to design robots and race cars, go on environmentally conscious camping trips, create algorithms, collect data in the great outdoors, try their hand at engineering, and so much more."
Do you think these new badges are a good idea? Let us know!