The aMUSE Junior Journey for Girl Scout Juniors

Junior Girl Scouts is a time for new exploration and leadership roles for your girls. The Junior Girl Scout aMUSE Journey is part of the It’s Your Story – Tell It! Series. The It’s Your Story – Tell It! Series includes the Daisy Journey 5 Flowers, 4 Stories, 3 Cheers for Animals and the Brownie Journey A World of Girls. It also extends to the Cadette Journey MEdia, the Seniors Journey Mission:Sisterhood!, and the Ambassador’s Journey BLISS: Live it! Give it!

While you do not need to complete each journey in the set, the journey concepts do build and go more in depth with each progressive level. The It’s Your Story – Tell It! journey series focuses on developing a strong sense of self and promote well-being in all areas of development.

The aMUSE Junior Journey specifically focuses on combining storytelling with the many roles that your girls may one day explore. Your scouts will gain an understanding for their limitless potential. Moreover, they will try on a variety of roles, learn about people and take action in their community using their leadership skills and storytelling. The junior girl scouts will explore stereotypes and bias while opening their eyes to ways to use their own talents to change the world.

aMuse Key Concepts and Vocabulary

As your scouts participate in the aMUSE Junior Girl Scout Journey, they will explore a few key concepts and vocabulary. This journey will help your scouts to learn more about their own identify and sense of sell, while learning how to be emotionally, physically, mentally and socially healthy in their every day lives.

What are the Goals of The aMUSE Junior Journey?

The aMUSE Junior Girl Scout Journey has a few key takeaways for the girls. This journey asks the scouts to explain 6 main goals while they learn more about their sense of self. The first two goals focus on the Reach Out! Award, the next two goals main focus is the Speak Out! Award, and the final two goals are the focus of the Try Out! Award.

1) Junior Girl Scouts understand the different roles that women and girls take including noticing that many women have multiple roles that describe them.

2) Your girls match roles to the leadership skills that support the specific role.

3) Juniors become aware of different stereotypes that exist in our world today which hold people back from trying a specific role.

4) Your troop takes steps to recognize their own stereotypes and make progress towards overcoming them.

5) Junior scouts have the courage and confidence to try out new roles in your world.

6) Your girls will take action to benefit their community by helping others to recognize and overcome stereotypes and pursue new roles.

What Is a Stereotype?

During the aMUSE Junior Journey, the girls will explore a variety of stereotypes. A stereotype is an idea or image that is widely held, but often fixed and oversimplified. Stereotyping is when we limit what people can do based on a person’s gender, age, physical looks, or heritage.

It is important to help the girls to recognize that stereotypes exist in our world. With your scouts, explore the stereotypes that people in their community may hold. These stereotypes may focus on gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, or any other trait used to group people or things.

Then discuss with your scouts how to move beyond these stereotypes. Our scouts were interested in how the stereotypes began and why they are so widely believed in our society today.

What is Bias?

Bias refers to giving an advantage towards or against one type of thing, person, or group compared to another. For our Junior Girl Scouts, they were much more able to recognize bias when they thought about fairness. If an action or policy would be unfair towards a friend or group, the girls more easily saw the bias.

Many people have biases based on the stereotypes that they believe or are surrounded by every day. Helping the girls recognize their own person biases can help them to begin to bust the stereotypes around them. It is important to note that sometimes we are aware of specific biases we have and other times our biases are more hidden, or that we are not aware of the particular bias.

Other Key Vocabulary for the aMUSE Journey

While Stereotype and bias are the main vocabulary for the aMUSE Junior journey, there are a few additional words that can help the scouts while learning on this journey.

Girl Scout Junior Journey Books and Materials

For each Girl Scout journey, leaders have the option to purchase two books: a leader’s guide for the specific journey and a girl’s handbook for the journey. We have found that purchasing one leader’s guide and one girl’s handbook is usually enough for our troop. Then we share the girl’s handbook throughout the meeting. On the other hand, many troops prefer for each scout to have their own journey handbook. Depending on your available funds or parent’s willingness to pay for materials, your troop can decide the best way to use their funds.

However, leaders also have the ability to access the journeys and badges in the Girl Scout Volunteer Toolkit, which is an amazing resource for leaders to access the material for free. Buying handbooks, badge guides, journey books, and badges can be very costly, so the Volunteer Toolkit is a great free resource. You’ll also want the aMUSE Journey Award Set.

Other Materials You Will Need for the aMUSE Junior Journey

Large sheets of paper

Casting Call Log for each scout – page 28 in the girl’s aMUSE handbook

Index cards or slips of paper

Container for each Girl Scout

Post-It Notes

Blank paper

Stereotype Type Tracker – page 27 in the girl’s aMUSE handbook

Stereotype Busting Comic paper or Comic Planner

Magazines, Art Books, Photos

Mirrors

My Inner Critic – page 72 – 73 in the girl’s aMUSE handbook

What are the Girl Scout Junior aMUSE Journey Requirements?

The aMUSE Junior Girl Scout Journey requires the girls to earn the three different awards. The aMUSE Junior Journey requirements can be met over a few different meetings or in just one day. We will present both methods below for Girl Scout Leaders and their troops to choose the best way to meet the Girl Scout Junior aMUSE journey requirements.

The aMUSE journey awards do progress and build upon one another. We find it best to complete them in order; however, that is not a requirement. For our troop, we found earning Reach Out! award before the Speak Out! award and finally the Try Out! awards worked well for us. As we worked through the journey awards, we often did circle back to previous awards to reinforce our learning.

Reach Out! Award Requirements

To earn the Reach Out! award, the scouts will work to discover a variety of roles that women and girls perform in today’s society. The girls will especially focus on women that they know and respect in their family and community. The scouts may also wish to explore roles of their favorite heroines.

Then they will explore the different leadership skills that are needed to be successful in a specific role. Many of the leadership skills will relate back to the Girl Scout Law.

Both of these activities will allow the girls to see the traits in the Girl Scout Law used in a variety of ways. Not only will the scouts begin to document how they use the Girl Scout Law in their lives, but they will search for ways that their heroines embody the Girl Scout Law.

Reach Out! Award Activities

Opening Activity – 15 minutes: Flurry of Women’s Roles. Brainstorm roles that women and girls have in today’s society on a large sheet of paper. Another idea is to have roles written on post-it notes. The girls can quickly assign roles to themselves or to another person by sticking the post-it note onto a person.

Casting Call Log – 15 minutes: Ask each girl or group of girls to complete the Casting Call Log on page 28 in the Girl’s aMUSE handbook or download a copy from the virtual toolkit. The scouts record specific women or girls that the know, or heroines that they have learned about, the roles these women or girls have in society, and specific behaviors that support each role.

Mingle, Mingle, Mingle Game – 10 minutes: Choose one girl to be a leader. All the girls stand in a circle and walk around the circle as the leader says mingle over and over. When the leader says freeze, all girls stop and face the leader. The leader points to one girl who will say their name and a trait that describes them. For example, I’m Nicole and I’m adventurous. Other traits girls might use could include athletic, studious, creative, artist, brave, friendly, caring, etc. The leader will point to a second girl and tell them how to repeat the first girl’s statement. The leader may ask the second girl to, “Say that like you are tired.” Other ideas include happy, scared, bored, whiny, in a hurry, as the teacher, etc. Then discuss with the girls how it felt to repeat another girl’s statement about themselves and how using a different voice felt.

Role Charades – 10 minutes: Write roles on index cards or little slips of paper. Each girl takes turns choosing a role and acting out the role for the troop. Then the girls try to guess which role their Girl Scout sister is performing. Pairs well with Playing with the Past Junior Badge

Role Prop Box – 15 minutes: Bring in, or ask each girl to bring in, a container that closes. You will need just 1 for each scout. Great options include coffee cans, oatmeal cannisters, tupperware, shoe boxes, etc. These will become a special time capsule to show the different roles that each of your Girl Scout Juniors currently plays in their life. Girls will use these 15 minutes to decorate their prop box and think about items to include. Girl may include a friendship bracelet to show they are a friend, a patch to show they are a Girl Scout, a dance shoe to show they are a dancer, etc. Girls should add items to their prop box to share at the next meeting. To take this one step further, you could have your girls bury their time capsules to open in the future. Pairs well with Junior Geocacher Badge

Panel Discussion – 30 minutes: Invite in women from the girls lives to share about the different roles they take on throughout the day. See Talk About Roles on pages 28 – 31 of the girl’s aMUSE handbook for a variety of questions that the girls can ask. During the interview, match the roles to the specific leadership skills and characteristics of the Girl Scout Law. If you plan to host the panel discussion at a future meeting, allow your girls an opportunity to create invitations to invite the women to the meeting. Pairs well with the Social Butterfly Junior Badge

Total Time: 1 hour and 35 minutes

To Save Time on the Reach Out! Award

If your troop would like to complete the aMUSE Junior Journey in just one day, you will need to modify the Reach Out! Award. We would suggest asking the girls to each complete the Casting Call Log prior to your meeting. This will allow each girl the option to invite one woman to the meeting to participate in the panel discussion.

Another option is to ask the girls to interview one woman prior to the meeting or after the main meeting on their own. Either of these two modifications could lessen the time necessary to earn the Reach Out! Award to just about 30 minutes.

Speak Out! Award Requirements

When earning the Speak Out! award, the girls will learn more about stereotypes and bias. You will need a bit of time to learn more about what stereotypes are, why people have them, and why they are incorrect. The girls will need to explore different stereotypes and create a comic or other story to bust a specific stereotype. The scouts should present these stories to their families, friends, or community.

Speak Out! Award Activities

Quick Draw – 10 minutes: Say a role and the girls have 15 seconds to draw the first picture that comes to mind. Roles can include police officer, teacher, athlete, photographer, etc. Once the girls draw 4 pictures, take a moment to discuss. Do the girls have anything similar in their drawings? Did they draw certain roles as men or women? Are the people are certain age or size? Then take a moment to change these drawings. The girls can change them in regards to gender, size, ethnicity, age, etc.

Role-Play Switcheroo – 15 minutes: Choose one teacher and evenly divide the other girls into girl students and boy students. The scouts should decide which subject is being taught and participate in a lesson as if they are the girl or boy student role assigned. Take a few moments after the short lesson to process the responses of the boy and girl students. Did one gender act differently than the other? How? How did the girls who played boys feel? Use this activity to open up a discuss on stereotypes and bias.

Magazine Ad Stereotypes – 15 minutes: Bring in a variety of magazine and newspaper ads. Let the girls critique the advertisements for any stereotypes. This may include portraying specific people in the ad, using special colors or positioning, or even the words in the ad. Brainstorm a list of common stereotypes that the scouts are aware of either through the ads or their everyday life, including books, movies and TV shows. You can use the stereotype tracker on page 27 to assist with keeping track of all the stereotypes your scouts discover. Pairs well with Junior Product Designer Badge

Stereotype Busting Comics – 20 minutes: The scouts can work in partners, groups, or individually to create a stereotype busting comic. They will need to choose one stereotype to bust or stamp out. The comic should include a beginning, middle, and end with characters who help to bust the specific stereotype. The girls can choose how they will share their story with their troop, their families, or within their community. Pairs well with Junior Animal Habitats Badge

Total Time: 1 hour

To Save Time on the Speak Out! Award

To save time when earning the aMUSE Junior Journey in just one day, you might focus on the magazine ad stereotypes or the role-play switcheroo to introduce stereotypes to your girls. The most important part is the storytelling through the stereotype busting comics or other medium of storytelling. You could earn the Speak Out! Award in about 30 minutes.

Try Out! Award Requirements

The Try Out! award focuses on the girls trying new roles in their community. The scouts will also learn more about healthy living, beauty, and their own sense of self. The girls will then put into action their take action project to help others recognize and overcome stereotypes or pursue new roles.

Try Out! Award Activities

How I Define Beauty – 20 minutes: Provide about 5 minutes for your scouts to flip through magazines, art books, printed out artwork, pictures, etc. The girls can place sticky notes on pictures that they find especially beautiful. Ask the scouts to look at the different pictures they found beautiful and look for similarities and differences. Then have each scout choose 2 pictures to explain to the troop why they think it is beautiful. Keep a list of all the reasons the girls provide. Help your scouts to see that not everyone will agree on what is or is not beautiful. It is okay that everyone has a different idea of beauty.

Picture This – 15 minutes: Give each scout a mirror to look in. Ask the girls to look at themselves and think about what they see. How are they beautiful? Ask the girls to think about a role they want to have and how this makes them feel. Then ask them to create a portrait that showcases their role and feelings. They should think about what clothes they would wear, where they will be, how they will show their feelings. Girls can draw themselves as they truly are, as they will be, or even as an animal or object. Pairs well with Junior Playing the Past Badge

Listen to My Inner Critic – 10 minutes: Using pages 72 – 73 in the girl’s aMUSE handbook, ask the scouts to name 3 things that make them feel good, 3 things that they want to try, and 3 things that they are good at. Provide time for your girls to share with each other.

Total Time: 45 minutes

To Save Time on the Try Out! Award

To save time on the Try Out! award, focus on the Picture This activity where the girls are actively trying on a new role as they create their self portrait.

Take Action Project Ideas

Choosing a Take Action Project for the aMUSE Journey is much easier than many other journeys. The aMUSE journey builds the Take Action Project right into the journey itself. But remember, a Take Action Project is more than community service. Instead this is a project that continues to give back to the community year after year. Pairs well with Junior Animal Habitats Badge, Playing the Past Junior Badge, Junior Social Butterfly Badge

For these take action projects below, we focused on busting stereotypes for different groups of people. Each Take Action Project includes a special method of storytelling.

1) Stereotype Busting Posters to share with school announcements or display in school

2) Stop Bullying Campaign at School

3) Meet New Friends or Try New Roles Theme Days for Lunch or Recess at School

4) Stereotype Busting puppet show for younger siblings, younger girl scouts, or a library program

5) Stereotype Busting musical performance or dance to share with younger children

6) Stereotype Busting quilt showcasing people trying on nontraditional roles

7) Stereotype Busting book with nontraditional characters performing a variety of roles

8) Create a club at school for girls that busts a specific stereotype

9) Create a variety of felt board people in regards to ethnicity, age, gender, size, ability. Then create community helper costumes and other costumes for roles that people have in society. Provide these to a local daycare or early childhood center.

10) Partner with a class of special needs students to help others bust their stereotypes about people with disabilities

Celebration for the AMuse Junior Journey

Every Girl Scout journey offers opportunities to individualize and customize the journey to best meet the needs of your scouts. However, ceremonies and celebrations are such an important part of Girl Scouts and journeys. Your troop should decide how they want to celebrate their progress and completion of the journey. Some troops love to celebrate after earning each award, while others would rather have one big celebration after the completion of the entire journey. The choice is really up to your troop and your time restraints.

Same goes for the journey award badges. You can hand these out to the girls as they complete each step or have one ceremony where you hand out all three badges at the same time. Our girls love the instant recognition; however, we find that more badges are lost this way or never end up on their vests. So we have usually opted for certificates to show the progress after each step and presentation of badges at the end of the journey.

The most important part is to allow your girls the opportunity to plan the celebrations throughout the journey or the celebration at the end of the journey. By allowing the girls to plan the celebrations, they will take more ownership and enjoy them even more.

Girl Scout Junior Badges that Pair with the AMuse Junior Girl Scout Journey

The Junior aMUSE Journey pairs nicely with a few Girl Scout Junior badges. Some of these badges are easier to pair than others, but each one can tie to the aMUSE journey. We find it most helpful to pair badges when we have a month or two to complete a journey. When we are trying to complete a journey in a day, this is often much more difficult. However, our plan does help to meet at least a few requirements of the badges which Girl Scouts suggest pair best with this journey.

Geocacher

The girls begin by preparing for their adventure. Learn a little about geocaching by talking with an expert or visiting an official geocacher site. While on the geocaching site, be sure to find a Travel Bug and follow it’s trip on a map.

Next the scouts learn to use a GPS receiver by either locating or hiding objects using GPS coordinates. They also make a trade item. This pairs nicely with the Role Prop Boxes if you ask each scout to hide their box and provide the other girls GPS coordinates. The girls can place one special trade item inside their prop box such as a friendship bracelet or SWAP. The girls can either search for the boxes together or individually.

Animal Habitats

Your scouts will learn more about animal habitats by exploring animals in a variety of ways. To best pair this badge with the aMUSE journey, begin by exploring stereotypes related to camping or animals. The girls can create their Take Action Project or Stereotype Busting Comic to teach about wild animals in their community as they bust a stereotype. Partner the comic or take action project with creating the animal’s home or insulating the animal’s nest as a way to complete two parts for this badge.

The scouts will need to explore an animal’s habitat which would work nicely on a hike or visit to a local park. While there, be sure to clean up the animal’s habitat to earn two parts of this badge.

Finally, the scouts will need to learn more about endangered animals in The Arctic Circle, The Gulf of Mexico or the Amazon Rainforest. Your scouts can do this together as a group or individually. A trip to the library works well here and can also pair with your Take Action project if your scouts are creating something to share with younger children.

Playing the Past

The Playing the Past Junior badge pairs well with the aMUSE Junior Journey. The girls will need to choose a role to play from the past. This could be a queen, servant, heroine, villain, seamstress, etc. The girls can use these roles in Role Charades. While playing Role Charades, be sure to act out different chores or duties that your character may have had to earn a second part of this badge.

The scouts will need to create a costume for their character. This pairs well with Picture This where the girls can draw their own self portrait as if they were their character from the past. To add a second part to this badge, use a type of art that was popular during the time period of their character. For examples, the girls could sculpt, paint, draw, or build their self portrait.

Lastly, your girls will need to share their new knowledge with others. To pair this with the aMUSE Journey, you could include this with the girls Take Action Project by busting stereotypes about girls from the past.

Product Designer

First, the girls will need to pick a product and label 5 things that the make the product great and 5 things that they wish to change about the product. Then observe how others use the product and try to capture 5 different ways that the product can be used. Write down the exact steps to describe the different ways the product can be used. To pair with the Girl Scout Junior aMUSE Journey, the girls may choose a product from the different magazine ads used to learn more about stereotypes. They may also notice that the product can be improved by busting stereotypes about the product itself.

Once the girls have a good understanding of the product, they should brainstorm 5 different ways to make the product better. The girls should choose one idea and draw or create the product to make it even better. This might take a little trial and error as often we need a few tries to develop something better.

Social Butterfly

Social Butterfly Junior Badge dives into the etiquette and manners of the day. This badge pairs well with the Playing the Past Junior Badge as manners have been around for many years. To begin your girls will need to hold a conversation. The panel discussion is a great time to work on holding a conversation.

Going along with the panel discussion, your scouts could provide snacks for their guests. This is a wonderful opportunity to teach your scouts how to set a table and discuss table manners. Then write thank you cards to your panelists to complete a second step of the Social Butterfly Junior badge.

Finally, your girls should prepare for their special badge presentation or take action project ceremony. Invite others to their ceremony and practice being at ease by making introductions, conversing with the guests, having good table manners, and saying thank you.

How to Complete the Girl Scout Junior AMuse Journey in a Day

Below we include our Junior Girl Scout Agenda for the aMUSE Journey in a Day. We found that a Saturday or Sunday morning through lunch or lunch and the afternoon worked best for a journey in a day. If your girls can handle a full day of Girl Scouts, you may plan to start early in the morning and continue through the afternoon to include the entire Take Action Project or additional badge work. We asked the scouts to each invite one woman who inspires them to our panel discussion.

We’d Love to Connect with You!

We hope you enjoyed our aMUSE plans as much as our girls and the best part, the troop was excited to tackle another Junior Girl Scout Journey! They had so much fun that we planned a few more journey in a day agendas for our troop. If your scouts are just as excited as ours, be sure to head over to our Girl Scout Junior Guide on the Agent of Change Junior Journey and the Junior Outdoor Journey.

Leave a comment below and let us know if you’ve tried the aMUSE Junior journey. What worked well for you? What would you have tried differently? Did your girls love the journey as much as ours? And if you are looking for more Girl Scout leader tips, be sure to subscribe to our newsletter below.

Hi, I’m Nicole.

Here at Creatingbutterflies we provide families with practical solutions to real life problems for everything parenting, scouting, dual language, and enjoying time outdoors. We are a family of 6 with 4 wonderful becoming bilingual children who loves scouting, camping, and hiking with their family. Mom is an educator and dad is a firefighter/paramedic.

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