Fairly Wordy Wednesday... Spiral Scout Handbooks...

My latest obsession, for lack of a better word, is the Spiral Scouts handbook. We joined Spiral Scouts last year, a very small circle with another homeschooling family. Then they dropped out of it--too much going on--but I still have these fantastic handbooks just laying around. They are chock full of paths to earning badges and awards, well thought out and thorough paths. Here's an example (click on the images to see them more clearly)


Pretty thorough, huh? So of course, I want to incorporate these learning paths, but how? Then, it came to me. Simply act as though we are still in Spiral Scouts, and have the kids each choose an award/badge project every month or two (some may take at least 2 months to complete), mentally replacing the word "Circle" with "Family". The kids like this idea too, especially when I told them they could each keep a little completion notebook, for which I will make hand-drawn paper "badges" to glue in. Bug chose an Art Award to start with, and Cricket the Cooking Badge. I think next month, when we finally get to put in our raised beds, we'll do the Gardening Badge as seen above. A good cross I think between child led, since they get to choose their projects, and well laid out. I am thinking too that for topics NOT covered in these handbooks, I can use their layout as sort of a template to help give my kids a little direction!

I'm also thinking we may just use The Dangerous Book for Boys and Daring Book for Girls as read alouds, more or less, and resources for games and crafts, rather than unit studies, per se. I think we'd be more likely to get to using them that way!