September 2020
by Kerry Cordy
A Note From the Founder – Badge of the Week Is Back!
With school starting up again, we are starting our Badge of the Week posts once again. If you have not followed these posts in the past, we choose a badge to highlight each week and provide a daily resource or activity for earning that badge. To see the Badge of Week posts you must FOLLOW (not just like) our main Frontier Girls Facebook page. While we also post on Instagram, Instagram does not allow me to attach a link so if you prefer Instagram, you can still see what the idea for the day is, but you will need to go to our Facebook page for the actual link.
Badge of the Week posts do not guarantee you will actually earn the badge solely off of our posts, as many times they are ideas for optional requirements, not just mandatory ones. However, they will give you a good start on the badge. At the very least you can look forward to a daily activity or new knowledge to be gained. If you are troop leader looking for ways to connect your troop with minimal effort, encourage your girls to do the activities posted and share their results. If you are part of the Frontier Girls Forum group on Facebook, please share your favorite activities and show us what you created.
We will be kicking off Badge of the Week with Geocaching. If you have never participated in this amazing activity, it is like a giant scavenger hunt. Until you look up a local geocache map you have no idea just how many caches are hidden right in your own town. Regardless of the restrictions in your community about meeting together, your girls can all do the Geocaching badge together while still maintaining social distance and following all laws. Geocaching can be done independently, and yet messages can be left for your troop in each cache to see who has been there before you and you can track who has found which caches.
Follow our Facebook page for daily ideas for earning this badge.
A New School Year, A New Way to Do Things
It is that time of year again and school has begun. This year, as you all know, presents new challenges in a world that is still in the midst of a pandemic. Many troops are struggling to meet depending on the local mandates and the weather. While outdoor meeting places like parks may work for fall and spring, many normal meeting places may still be off limits for the winter months.
Now is the time to start thinking of ways to keep your troop connected regardless of what the upcoming flu seasons brings. While Zoom meetings may work for some groups, it doesn’t work for all so here are a few ideas for keeping your troop connected when you have to be apart.
- Create a private, safe online forum. This might be via a Facebook group, Slack, Discourse or other software. Post badge requirement projects and instructions and encourage the girls to comment and show pictures of their finished projects. If you have older girls, put them in charge of each researching a badge requirement and posting the information for the other girls.
- Hold contests. Hold your own cupcake wars or other type of hands-on contests. Each girl can complete the challenge on her own time and post the finished results. Let family and friends vote on a winner.
- Secret Pals. Assign secret pals and have girls mail and/or drop off letters and little gifts to their pal.
- Chalk each other. With parent’s permission, sneak over and chalk each other’s driveways with positive messages and happy pictures.
- Hold a photo scavenger hunt. Assign a list of pictures for each girl to take and give points for the difficulty of each one. Bonus points can be given for creativity. For example, take a picture of your entire family with their feet off the ground. Some might all lay on their back with their feet up. Others may all jump at the same time. If they are really creative, they may choose to all climb a tree.
- Plant a Frontier Girl garden on your girls’ lawn to show them you are thinking of them. Print out and laminate a bunch of the Frontier Girls logo at about 5″ in diameter. Attach them to 15″ pieces of steel wire (or just buy a set of marking flags from the hardware store and remove the flags). Then plant them in one of your girl’s front lawn with a sign saying how much she is appreciated. That girl can then remove the “flowers” and replant them in another girl’s yard until all girls have had a turn.
- Be pen pals. Yes, old fashioned pen pals as in mail each other letters, postcards, pictures, etc. Getting real mail is always something to look forward to.
- Create a video together. Create a dance video or other fun video by having each girl record one part and then blending them all together.
- Do community service projects. Whether it is making cards for our service members or senior citizens, putting together a food drive, or making no-sew blankets to donate, there are still plenty of ways to help your community.
Regardless of what this year brings, there are plenty of ways to learn things, stay connected, and make a difference.
Meet Noelle!
Noelle is our new resident artist and graphic designer who is helping us redesign and modernize our badges and create fun and informative videos. Noelle is also responsible for assembling all the badges and making sure all product orders are filled quickly and accurately. (If there is ever an error, it is usually because she was gone and Kerry filled the order…) Easy going with an awesome taste in eclectic music, Noelle takes on any challenge we throw at her.
If you would like to follow Noelle’s art, she can be found on Instagram at @artbynoelle. Here are just a couple samples of her amazing talents.
New Badges Posted
Restaurant, Restaurant (Specific), Mary Poppins
Frontier Girl Sees Her Dream Come True
The cartoon above was drawn by our very own Noelle Harris and depicts Hannah in front of her car (Miss Daisy).
This month’s new restaurant badges have a special place in my heart as they were submitted the very weekend one of our founding Frontier Girls saw her dream come true and opened her first restaurant. Hannah Peasha was a member of the very first Frontier Girls troop that opened in November 2006. With a degree in the culinary arts, Hannah had a dream of owning her very own restaurant. Despite COVID, she and her friend Kate opened The Bantam Kitchen and Cooler in August, 2020. With outdoor seating and take out only to get started, their southern-inspired food was an instant hit and I am proud to say the restaurant is doing well.
Frontier Girls can do anything they set their minds to. Encourage them to work hard for their dreams, they do come true!
Last Year Re-Cap
Most popular badges for the 2019-2020 school year.
With thousands of badges to choose from, have you ever wondered what the most popular badges are? Every fall we post the most popular badges from the year before. Here is what members wanted to learn about in 2019-2020.
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- Animals – specific
- Holiday – specific
- Biographies
- Fire Safety
- Tie Dye
- About Me
- Culture by Country
- Kindness Rocks
- Slime
- Apples
- Pumpkins
- Travel Destination
- Our Flag
- State – specific
- Etiquette
- Camping
- Kindness
- Museum – specific
- Sports – specific
- Disney Princesses
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