Monday, June 9, 2014

Special Effects Makeup for the Girl Scout Entertainment Technology Junior Badge

Girl Scout badges are something that we work on almost every day, often as part of the kids' schoolwork. If you were diligent about the extra activities that you assign or the badges that you select, you could absolutely use Girl Scout badges as your entire homeschool curriculum, but we tend to work on the kids' Girl Scout badges as unit studies along with our other studies--it's a great way to insert novel areas of study into my otherwise pretty methodical lesson plans.

One of the badges that Will's been working on for a while now is the Entertainment Technology Junior badge. She's filmed a stop-motion animation, built a thaumatrope and a catapult, programmed in Scratch, and done a lot of reading and documentary watching. A few weeks ago, she said that she wanted to complete the "Create your own special effects" step, so I pointed her to the children's face painting book that I had checked out of the library for this, helped her find the face paints and brushes, and set up our giant mirror outside on the deck for her:
The mirror is filthy because, although it's huge, we're always moving it, often outside, for various activities.

Will REALLY wanted to paint Syd's face like a puppy, but Syd just was not going to let her. Syd did, however, consent to act like a puppy for us:


Instead, Will decided to paint herself like a zombie: 

I've been wanting to restock this clown makeup with additional colors for YEARS. Now that we're finally out of white, that's my excuse!

 Will worked hard on herself, with a ton of focus, and was THRILLED with the results!

Immediately after this, we biked over to our polling place so that I could vote in some local primaries (and spend some time with the kids studying and explaining the ballot--it's part of Will's Inside Government Junior badge!). Will was hugely tickled to discover that every single poll worker was interested in hearing the entire story behind her makeup--of course, instead of actually telling them the story, Will just began to act like a zombie who was staggering over to eat their faces off, but that's her way of acting thrilled. One poll worker was so impressed that he clearly sensed a kindred spirit in her, and pulled out his phone to show her a bunch of photos of a greenhouse that he built behind his house. That dude has a pineapple tree in his greenhouse! And a fig tree! With figs!!!

Will still has a few activities that I'd like her to complete before I sew her Entertainment Technology patch on, but to be fair, this badge is HUGE, encompassing what amounts to an entirely different subject for each step. This is absolutely one of those badges that, if you were schooling solely through Girl Scout badges, could take you through an entire semester of math, science, history, creative writing, technology, and art. 

3 comments:

Tina said...

Now I want to look into Girl Scouts again. Emma has been pitching a fit (cried every day last week) over "all" the school work I was asking her to do. In reality, it would have taken her MAYBE 2 hours to get it all done if she had just done it.

Anyway, I think this might be more interesting to her.

Or not. I don't really have the energy or desire to figure it all out right now.

Love the zombie make-up and the pretend doggie!

julie said...

Oh, the fit-pitching over schoolwork! I keep telling them, "Just sit down and work until it's done, and then I won't say a peep for the rest of the day about it!" You'd think that getting their mother off their backs would be excellent motivation, but they must just like to hear me nag.

You should totally check out Girl Scouts! There's also so much more to it than you realize before you register--I get an email every week from our local council, and they're always adding extra field trips, opportunities to walk in parades, workshops, etc., that aren't in the activity calendar. On Friday, we're going to the horse races!

Tina said...

Horse races!?! How fun :0) Maybe the next time I need to take a break from my school work I will look into Girl Scouts instead of stalking people on facebook and through their blogs :0)