A Year in the Life of Juliette Gordon Low Patch Program

Here is a free Girl Scout program that can fill your meeting calendar

When I started teaching back in the 1980’s, one of the big ideas was “curriculum integration”, i.e., using one topic to teach the different subject areas. For example, every November I read the book Molly’s Pilgrim by Barbara Cohen. It told the tale of a young Russian Jewish immigrant girl at the turn of the century and how she was bullied about being different. It took place during Thanksgiving, and at the end, Molly tells her classmates how her mother is a Pilgrim like the original ones.

I used this book to teach social skills and right from wrong. I used the book’s vocabulary for my spelling list that week. We discussed the history of immigration and the children shared the stories of their families and how they came to America. We made clothespin dolls for our Thanksgiving mural, just like the dolls made in the story.

What does all of this have to do with Girl Scouts?

Image in the Public Domain and altered by the author in Canva

There is a wonderful patch program from The Girl Scouts of the Green and White Mountains called Year in the Life of Juliette Patches. The program is free, the patches are not.

Each month, there is a theme based on the life of the founder of the Girl Scouts of the USA. You can incorporate/integrate this into your badge work and community service work. If you meet every week, this is an easy way to fill up a meeting slot. If you meet twice a month, then you can add this to your badge work or use it as a separate stand alone meeting.

If you do not want to do the entire program, you can most certainly incorporate parts of it into your yearly plans.

You can find information about the patch program here.