Basic Meeting Plans are designed to have minimal supplies and still hit the GSUSA Requirements. Most meetings can be done in a 90 minute time frame.
Items needed:
- Print, design, and assemble one cardboard vehicle for an Example Vehicle.
- Enough for the same number of vehicles made doing the Brownie Automotive Design badge:
- Cardboard for car body and wheels
- Strong scissors to cut cardboard.
- Tape (scotch and duck)… (or hot glue guns if available).
- Pen/Pencil/Marker to write on cardboard
- Bottle cap to trace their wheels with.
- Two Wooden Skewers (with the pointy end trimmed off)
- Two Plastic Straws
- Troop coloring supplies (markers, crayons, or colored pencils) for cardboard.
- Extra paper for a racetrack or road map on the floor if there is extra time.
Manufacturing
Info Needed: Manufacturing is when we make items (products or goods) from materials and use people or machines to do it. In modern day, usually machines are used with human workers or computers operating the machines. The key to manufacturing is taking the steps needed to make an item and breaking them down into sections. Each machine or person is responsible to getting one part of making done and it moves on to the next machine or person. Eventually the item is complete but every person or machine only did a small part. This is called an assembly line.
Note to Leaders – You can learn more about manufacturing with a short video or a mini lesson.
(Requirement 1 Earned)
5S Process
Info Needed: The 5S system was started in Japan with the Japanese words: seiri, seiton, seiso, seiketsu and shitsuke. English found equivalent S words: sort, set in order, shine, standardize, and sustain
- Sort – Keep your workplace neat by only keeping what you need and removing anything you don’t.
- Set in Order – Organize your workplace so items are easy to get to and use. Always return them to their spot.
- Shine – Not only keep your workplace clean, but maintain all your tools and machines.
- Standardize – Keep it up. Doing the first three steps once is not enough, you need to continue doing them regularly.
- Sustain – Train new people to do the same and keep the 5S system long term.
Note to Leaders – You can learn more about manufacturing with a mini lesson.
(Requirement 2 Earned)
Do it Together!
Info Needed: Manufacturing takes a team effort, with or without machines.
Action Needed: Scouts take a vehicle design and break down the steps to make it in an assembly line. The troop assigns each scout a role in the assembly line and then puts it into practice. Make enough vehicles for the entire troop together. Then discuss what went well and what they would do better the next time.
Fun Activity: Use the cardboard vehicle design they made in the Junior Automotive Design badge. Using their past experience in how it was made, the troop can figure out which steps to have at which station in their assembly line. Let them figure it out on their own to see how it works out. It’s okay if it isn’t the most efficient. They can make a standard decoration for the vehicles (like putting the Troop Number on the side!) or leave them blank.
Once they have a plan and stations in place, have them make the same number of vehicles as they did on the first day. Time them. When they have finished, let them know what time it took and compare it to what time you gave the whole troop in the Junior Automotive Design badge to make the same number of vehicles.
Discuss what they did better than when they made them individually and what they would improve if they had to do an assembly line in the future.
(Requirements 3, 4 & 5 Earned)
Meeting End
If you have extra time, use extra paper to design a race track or road map on the floor for scouts to run their paper vehicles around on. If they were fantastic in their assembly line and finished way early, challenge them to make a whole town to drive through, including 3D buildings using paper or objects from the meeting room.
General Notes
Note to Leaders – No Basic Plan compiled by The Badge Archive will earn multiple badges in one level. Part of being budget friendly is not costing more than the price of one official GSUSA badge per meeting.
Some badges will take two meetings to finish. This helps scouts enjoy activities and keeps the troop budget in mind by only needing one GSUSA badge for every two meetings. Troops may choose to get a fun patch for one of the meetings if scouts want a badge/patch for every meeting. Scouts can earn the fun patch if they only attend one meeting and get a fun patch and the official badge if they go to both.
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For More Fun Ideas and Plans
for Daisy, Brownie, and Junior Scouts
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