Girl Scout Silver Award Project

 One year during the winter break of school, my son's teacher reached out to me, knowing that I was crafty. They were going to have a fifth-grade play and were looking for some set decoration that could be used from year to year. I knew right then that I had the perfect silver award project for my Girl Scout troop. The teachers were looking for an extra-large flag from 1776 with the circle stars and some side decorations like the Liberty Bell and a copy of the Constitution. 

After presenting the idea to my Girl Scouts, they came up with a lot of ideas on how they could go about doing this. To start, they filled out the paperwork with the council to make sure that their project would work for their silver award. When I told the teachers the project was approved and that the girls were planning on using their money for all the supplies, everyone was excited to start.

For the extra-large flag, the girls decided that they would paint it on some material because buying a huge flag wasn't in their budget. In order to get material that large, they turned to Home Depot and a painter's dropcloth. 

The girls then laid out the dropcloth and, using a pencil, marked where the stripes and the blue field would go. To make the stars, they cut out a star on the Cricut so that they could trace the stars onto the dropcloth. They used a quart of red, blue, and white paint for the project. Yes, they needed white because the dropcloth was an off white color. Over a few days, because they had to wait for the areas to dry, they painted the flag.

For the other side decorations, they cut the shapes out of wood to be 4 feet tall and then painted them to look real. We had a couple of really talented girls in our troop who have since gone on to be art majors in college. I forgot to take pictures of them completed, but everyone loved them. This was a great project because it was something that the girls could take charge of and was sustainable, as the school is still using these props almost 8 years later.

As a leader for both Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts, I found that the best way to get the young excited to do a project is when they get to use skills that require doing an action. When they got to produce something, they were more invoved in the activity and wanted to complete it with little direction for an adult.