By Daniel Winningham
Earlier this spring members of local Girl Scout troop no. 71718 completed a project at Perryville Elementary School. With guidance from Perryville Primary School assistant principal Lacey Amschler, the group painted a “sensory motor pathway” in the bus parking lot of the school.
“It’s the highest award that the junior girl scout can earn,” said Erin Allen, one of the Girl Scout troop leaders. “It requires doing some journeys, as we call them, their patches that require service projects. We have to do three of those and then we get to start working on our bronze award and it requires 20 hours of work, which involves things like finding needs across the community, contact different people to see what the different needs were. Then they voted on it and they had to research the ideas. And then we actually had to do it.”
The painting took about four hours, according to Allen.
“We came the week before and marked it all out with chalk and planned it all out,” Allen said.
“Teachers let the kids play on it Monday, Tuesday, last week before it rained, and then the rain washed it all the way but Lacey said, Yep, that works. Go for it. So then we came back Sunday night and painted it.
“It teaches them what to do,” Allen said. “The next level is the silver award and then the next level is the gold award, which is the highest award you can receive as a Girl Scout. It’s like a stepping stone. It teaches them how to research stuff, how to find a need, how to put it in action. We did it all as a troop. Next year, they can start working on their silver award and they have three years to do that. And it’s done in like small groups. Then the gold award is an individual achievement.”
The Bronze Award is typically achieved in fourth or fifth grade when the girls are Junior Girl Scouts
The Silver Award won’t be until seventh or eighth grade and later on scouts work toward achieving the gold award. “Most people hear about the gold award, because that’s the highest you can get,” Allen said.
This is similar to a member of the Boy Scouts achieving the Eagles Scout designation.
“We usually have one meeting a month and then we do an activity or activities,” Allen said.
“We have done other stuff in the winter,” Allen said. “We did a lock in during the winter, which was inside. We’ve done hiking badge and we had to go to different state parks to go hiking. We did the Veterans Day Parade.”
