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Bella was super excited to find out that this year GS added a brand new space badge! She has been interested in astronomy for some time and insisted we visit the Kennedy’s Space Center on our last trip to Disney World! I knew we wanted to add this badge to our to do list this year but felt overwhelmed planning as a multi-level troop.

We have a troop that consists of 4 daisies, 6 brownies, and 11 juniors. It’s a healthy size troop and while our meeting room perfectly accommodates us, working as a large group on one activity at a time is never successful. That’s when attention issues surface at their finest and girls get bored. A solution to this problem is breaking the troop up into smaller groups and having them rotate activities. You might want to incorporate patrols into your troop organization for this reason.

Here are the activities our troop did to complete the Space badges to meet all three level’s requirements….

Model the Solar System w/ snack time!

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Here is a super fun way to incorporate a healthy snack while learning about the planets with this fruity solar system plate!

Sun Dance

To learn about how the earth rotations around the sun and how our 4 seasons reflect this, we took 12 flash cards that were each labeled with one of the months. We then took 4 flash cards and labeled them with one of the seasons (Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall). We taped them out in a huge circle on the floor with January at the 12 o’clock hour and July at the 6 o’clock hour. We then taped the seasons next to the corresponding month.

December — Winter
March — Spring
June — Summer
September — Fall

We took a yellow ball and placed it in the middle of the circle to represent the sun.

We had the girls start and January and we played music as we danced around the circle to represent 1 year. We then had the girls stand near their birthday month and we danced around again to explain that every time we dance around the sun it represents an entire year.

Constellation walk and luminary

Our troop used the constellation sheets available through the VTK. We took a night walk outside along with a star app to help locate the constellations. We then created these adorable constellation luminaries that we found on pinterest. You can find them here: Constellation Luminary

Telescope SWAPs

To celebrate and share learning about space, we made these easy telescope swaps with the a notes saying “When it rains, look for Rainbows. When it’s dark, look for stars”.

You take a black golf tee and glue a silver pony bead to the pointy tip.
Then take a rhinestone (with a flat back) and glue it to the flat part of the tee.
Use a 5 inch black pipe cleaner and twist it around the center of the tee for the legs.
Put your telescope swap in a tiny plastic back with the saying and some start glitter.
Attach a safety pin to officially make it a S.W.A.P!

Visit to the Adler Planetarium in Chicago

We were blessed to be able to visit the Adler Planetarium in Chicago. We got set up with a program were the girls learned about the phases of the moon and the different tools used in astronomy including a telescope. This helped check off the final steps we needed to complete the badge. If you are not able to visit a planetarium here are some additional ideas to incorporate in your meeting!

Oreo Moon Phases