Well lets chat for a minute about the new Space badges from Girl Scouts. We are so excited to start this new badge at all levels of our Girl Scout troop. Using VTK (the new Girl Scout leader website), one of the projects was to make a solar system using salt dough. The directions said that you needed 3lbs of salt dough, what it didn’t say (and what I couldn’t find online regardless of many google searches) was how much flower and salt I needed to make three pounds of salt dough. Using a 2:1 recipe I found online, I made three balls of dough each equaling about one pound. After putting them all together, I assumed there was about three pounds of dough ( I don’t have a scale, so I couldn’t weigh it). My original idea was to make the planets and then bake them, paint them and use them as part of our solar system later on in the badge. This didn’t work because when baked, they ended up looking like a pancake.

At my meeting, the girls enjoyed making the planets, the directions supplied by VTK were hard to accomplish, and I’m not sure that we did it right. The girls enjoyed playing with the salt dough, and presenting their planets to the rest of the troop.

After we were done making our planets, we went outside and using the app, GoSkyWatch planetarium for iPad (GoSkyWatch Planetarium for iPad - Astronomy Guide by GoSoftWorks https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/goskywatch-planetarium-for-ipad-astronomy-guide/id364209241?mt=8) we looked at constellations, planets and stars in the sky. The girls enjoyed this part the most, and anytime they are able to use a gadget, they are happy.