Two weeks ago, my daughter became a brand new Girl Scout Daisy! Based on the meeting schedules of current troops, and her little brother who would be a handful if I tried to start my own troop, we decided that the best choice would be for her to get started as an Individually Registered Member, or a Juliette. What I’ve discovered since then is that Girl Scouts and Homeschooling really go hand-in-hand! I suspect this may be the same with Boy Scouts, but I was too young to really experience Boy Scouts when my brother was part of it.

Having been part of Girl Scouts for 6-7 years, I remember many of the badges and experiences I had, and many really are similar to those of a homeschooled child. From crafts and field trips, to hands-on learning, that’s the ideal homeschool experience I want to provide my children. And just as homeschoolers must meet the requirements of the state, Girl Scouts must meet the requirements to earn each badge. As my daughter is in kindergarten, there aren’t many required subjects in New York yet, but let’s see how they compare to that of a Girl Scout Daisy.

Patriotism and Citizenship 

Basically, we’re required to teach a love of country and the responsibilities we have as members of the country and society. In terms of badges, there are at least three Girl Scout Daisy badges that seem to fit this topic: Good Neighbor, Democracy for Daisies, and the Respect Authority petal.

K earned the Democracy for Daisies badge this week and everything we did also counts towards homeschooling. We took the time to learn about our local, county, state, and national governments. Although it’s easy to focus on the presidency/executive branch these days, she also learned about the judicial system and the legislature. And there’s no way out of it—I made sure that we watched “I’m Just a Bill.” I remember watching it when I was young and again as I got older to better understand the system. K also came to vote early with me. This goes hand in hand with citizenship because, once you reach age 18, it’s our right and responsibility as citizens to vote for the members of those branches of government.

The Good Neighbor badge requires girls to learn about their school, city or town, and state. And the Respect Authority petal seems pretty self-explanatory, but it specifically talks about home, school, and city or town. Even if Patriotism and Citizenship sound like they should be country-based, I would argue that it’s important to show home-state and home-town pride as well. Plus, you can easily expand the badges to learn about the country and respect those in authority at that level as well.

Health Education regarding Alcohol, Drug and Tobacco Misuse

Although they’re not technically health-related, I think that health education regarding alcohol, drug and tobacco misuse can be mentioned or discussed while working on the Responsible for What I Say and Do Petal and the Respect Myself and Others Petal. When you’re responsible for what you do, you are willing to acknowledge that you have a choice. And misuse of alcohol, drugs and tobacco begin as a choice to use these substances. When you respect yourself, you want to take care of your health and wellbeing. Use of these substances, especially as a child, would be an act of disrespect to yourself.

Highway Safety and Traffic Regulations, including Bicycle Safety

I don’t believe there are any official badges to cover highway safety, traffic regulations, or bicycle safety, but there are plenty of fun patches. Whether these are council-sponsored or found online, these fun patches (essentially they’re just differently-shaped badges) can be used in a DIY-type way. So I can find a pre-made Bike Safety patch online or find a place to design one myself, teach my child about bike safety for her homeschool requirement, relate it back to Girl Scouts, and then award it to her. Or even find one that shows a bike on a road with a traffic light and cover all of the required homeschool topics.

Fire and Arson Prevention and Safety

The Girl Scout Daisy Safety Pin covers a number of different topics depending on your council. One that looks common is learning and practicing “stop, drop, and roll.” As part of this lesson, it would be easy to expand and speak about fire and arson prevention and safety. We could even schedule a field trip to the fire station for more first-hand knowledge and fun directly from our local fire fighters.

Girls Scouts and Homeschooling Have Similar Expectations

Surprisingly, there are a world of other topics/badges your child can choose to work toward as a Girl Scout. There are badges for STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics), Outdoors, Life Skills, and Entrepreneurship, not to mention the journeys and awards. Similar to the idea of child-led learning and creating unit studies in homeschooling, Girl Scouts is girl-led and you can create a learning unit around the badge requirements. There are specific meeting (lesson) plans that have been created for each badge which are available to you as a Juliette Mentor, but you’re not required to use them. If you want to create your own plan or you want to use the pre-established plan, it is 100% your choice… or your daughter’s since it’s girl-led.

If you want to read more about our Girl Scout journey, I plan to share most of it separately on its own blog, Hey There, Juliette. I’m excited to continue to see how Girl Scouts and Homeschooling will fit together!