Monday, February 1, 2021

Every National Park Junior Ranger Badge You Can Earn from Home (Updated July 2023)

This is an update of my original Junior Ranger badges post, first written WAY back in 2018!

July 2023: I just updated my list of Junior Ranger badges kids can earn at home. I crossed out Junior Ranger badges that are no longer available to earn from home, but I added a few new ones, too!

February 2021: I just updated my map of Junior Ranger badges kids can earn at national park sites AND my list of Junior Ranger badges kids can earn from home. Earning Junior Ranger badges is still one of Will's favorite activities!

It's been four years since the kids first discovered the Junior Ranger program at Badlands National Park, and thus began their obsession. I'm never one to let an educational experience go, so since that first thrilling day, I have deliberately organized ALL of our US vacations to include as many Junior Ranger programs as possible, and I've included all of the Junior Ranger programs that it's possible to earn by mail into our homeschool plans.

"How did you figure out where all of the Junior Ranger programs are?" you ask.

Friends, I made a giant freaking map:



Yes, that is EVERY SINGLE NATIONAL PARK SITE WITH A JUNIOR RANGER PROGRAM. I put them all in by hand. I went to every single national park's website, searched for its Junior Ranger program, and if it had one I put it on my map.

When I plan road trips, I check my map for all the national park sites with Junior Ranger programs that we could detour to, and then we detour to them. During our upcoming road trip, for instance, we're visiting Saint Croix Island and Acadia National Park, primarily for their Junior Ranger programs.

But the kids' enthusiasm for earning Junior Ranger badges is unceasing, and yet we cannot spend our entire year traveling to various national parks. If only!

So I went back through every one of those websites, and I noted every park that permits children to earn their Junior Ranger badge by mail. Most of these parks provide the badge book as a downloadable pdf for kids to complete using internet or book research (often the park's own website, but we've also found useful park videos on YouTube). They mail their completed badge books to the park, and in return, the park rangers mail them back their badges and certificates.

It's always, eternally thrilling.

The kids have been doing this for years now, and still have tons of Junior Ranger badges left to earn by mail. They've learned geography, history, and several sciences in the process, experienced the breadth and depth of the national experience in ways they haven't had the opportunity to do in person, and have an intense appreciation for the variety of cultural, historical, and geographic artifacts and monuments that must be explored, preserved, and protected.

Not every national park, or even most national parks, allow their Junior Ranger badges to be earned by mail, mind you. You'll know if one does, because it will say so on its website or on the book, and it will have the book available as a downloadable pdf and include a mailing address for the completed book to be sent to. Many parks will state, kind of pissily in my opinion, that they do NOT allow badges to be earned by mail, and that's their right, but I think everyone loses when they do that--why stifle a kid's desire to learn? Why refuse an opportunity to grow someone's knowledge and love of your national park?

Before you get your kid all revved up on earning these badges by mail, you should know that since you've got to mail the completed badge books to each park, you'll be paying a few bucks for postage and manila envelopes each time. If you're conserving resources, check out the online badges that I've noted in my list--those let kids either do or submit their work online, so you don't have to pay for either supplies or postage.

Fortunately, MANY national parks are happy to have more kids interested in them and working to learn more about them! Here are all the national park Junior Ranger badges that you can earn by mail:

NOTE: I do NOT include Junior Ranger badges in which the badge book is offered as a pdf from the national park site, but kids cannot mail them in or submit them online to earn the badge without a visit to the site. Lots of national park sites offer their badge books as pdfs so that kids can get a head start on the book (which is a great idea!), and some sites even allow kids to mail in their badge books later if they didn't have time to complete them at the park, but this is is solely for badges that kids can earn entirely from home.

 I'm also not including any of the newer "virtual Junior Ranger programs," which let kids complete some web activities and then print an image of the Junior Ranger badge. Those can be fun, but this list is solely for physical badges that kid can earn from home.

This is one of my absolute favorite activities that we do in our homeschool, but it's partly so wonderful because it's so adaptable. Sure, it can be your entire geography curriculum, or just an enrichment to another spine. You can include it in your history studies, or in the natural or earth sciences. Even if you don't homeschool, these Junior Ranger books are so fun that kids can simply DO them for fun. My kids do, and they think it's a nifty trick that I also let them count them for school!

If your kids love earning Junior Ranger badges, then they'd likely be interested in learning about the national park system as a whole--there's so much to explore there, from history and culture to geology and the sciences. Here are some of our favorite resources for learning about and exploring the national park system:


P.S. Want more obsessively-compiled lists of resources and activities for kiddos and the people who want to keep them happy and engaged? Check out my Craft Knife Facebook page!
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Tuesday, January 26, 2021

Crafting with Teenagers: DIY Pinback Buttons

 Okay, this isn't so much a teenager-specific craft, because Syd has been happily creating her own 1" pinback buttons since she was a brilliant and adorable three years old:


Check out my amazing little peanut in action!


Yes, she's always been a creative and mechanical genius.

Even though we never go anywhere to show them off anymore, Syd still likes making pinback buttons (here's the exact button machine I've apparently owned for over a decade now!), and I'm pretty sure that this is a universally appealing teenager craft. Here's one of the handmade Black Lives Matter pinbacks that she made near the start of the pandemic, when we were quarantining our way through a homeschool social justice unit:


I REALLY miss homeschooling that kid. 

A little while ago, Matt and Syd were cleaning out the garage, when Syd came across a box with the moveable type for my business card stamp inside (the one we own is the same brand and very similar to this one, only mine is self-inking, which after a decade of use I actually think I do not prefer!):


She asked if she could use my stamp set to make her own pinbacks, and even though putting the moveable type of my business card back on the stamp afterwards was a PAIN IN THE ASS, I told her yes because I love her.

Want to know what kind of custom stamped pinback a teenager would make?

This kind:


It's very on-brand!

And now I'm on the lookout for more fun stamped phrases that would fit on a 1" pinback button, EVEN if it means having to redo that whole entire business card stamp again, ugh. I also think they would be a great canvas for creating adorable and intricate little artworks... if only I can convince my local artist to make a bespoke creation or two!

I even found a way to display them that doesn't require going out into society:

If you, too, want to sneak some learnin' into DIY pinback button making, here are some ways we've incorporated homemade pinbacks into our homeschool:

  • slogans. Syd did this for our social justice study, of course, but it would also be super fun to let kids make their own campaign buttons for civics or history studies.
  • party favors and giveaways. One year, the kids designed their own Girl Scout cookie pinbacks and gave them out as "prizes" when customers bought a certain number of cookies. It was a terrific kid-led marketing exercise!
  • moveable alphabet. When Syd was a pre-reader, I used an alphabet punch set and made several sets of moveable alphabets, using the button base but not the pins. The kids used them interchangeably with the rest of our moveable alphabet collection for all kinds of early reading exercises.

  • chores. For a couple of years, when the kids were especially high-energy and rascally, I kept a bag of a billion chore buttons in a little bag on a hallway table. Each of the million times a day that the kids did something ratty--punched her sister, left her half-eaten lunch in the middle of the floor, lost her shoes for the fiftieth time that hour, etc.--instead of dealing with the emotion or reasoning or whatever behind the infraction like a good parent, I'd just wearily tell her to go pull a chore. They were all small and random tasks that would take anywhere between 5-10 minutes to complete, stuff like picking up all the sticks in the backyard, or spray cleaning the bathroom sink, or vacuuming the couch with the handheld minivac. When the kids weren't in trouble they could also pull a chore to earn quarters, and if a kid's infraction had been something ratty towards her sister and I was mad about it, I'd sometimes make her pull a chore and complete it, and then hand her a quarter and make her GIVE IT TO HER SISTER, MWA-HA-HA! I don't necessarily think chores as punishment is a sound discipline strategy, but each time I did welcome the chance to lower the everyday chaos in our household a tiny bit.
Interested in even more unsound but highly effective discipline strategies? Well, you'll barely even find those on my Craft Knife Facebook page anymore, but you WILL find a bunch more random craft and homeschool projects and a lot of chaos energy that will probably make you feel a ton better about your own household!

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Tuesday, January 19, 2021

The Girl Scout Vest That Lasts for Seven Years: How It Started and How It's Going!

 Girl Scouts have the opportunity to wear the same Girl Scout uniform, vest or sash, from the Cadette through Ambassador levels. That's sixth grade through twelfth grade, all in the same uniform!

Here's how that started, way back in 2015:

And here's how it's going!


Seven years gives an active Girl Scout like Will a LOT of time to earn a LOT of badges and fun patches, and running out of room is a very real possibility. Some Girl Scouts add extensions to their uniforms, like capes, sashes stacked onto vests, lengthened bottom pieces, etc., but I don't like the idea of altering the body of the uniform. Instead, I'm just overlapping the snot out of the fun patches, which for some reason feels fine to me.

And yes, I also need to admit right here that I COULD have simply put Will into a new vest when she Bridged to Senior. In fact, I SHOULD have put her into a new vest, because during the three years that she was a Cadette she grew, I swear, at least a foot, and by the time she was ready to Bridge that vest that had seemed so roomy once upon a time now barely reached her midsection.

But because I am so weird, my kid, like, barely even had to breathe the tiniest word of disappointment about having to change vests and lose all the evidence of her Cadette accomplishments before I was all, "NO YOU WON'T! I WILL BUY YOU A BIGGER VEST, AND I WILL RIP ALL OF YOUR OLD BADGES AND PATCHES OFF OF THE SMALL ONE, AND I WILL SEW THEM ALL ONTO THE BIG ONE, AND I WILL MAKE THEM PERFECT!"

Don't even talk to me about how silly that was. I know! But dang it, I enjoyed helping her earn all that Cadette stuff at least as much as she enjoyed earning it all, and I want to see it all and enjoy it again every time I look at her uniform. Heck, if she had been allowed to keep her Junior badges on her vest, I'd have happily switched those over, too!

So now we are five-and-a-half years into this tan vest's seven-year mission, and I think there will be *just* enough room for everything. This winter, however, when I bought a new heavy-duty sewing machine, I did stitch back over ever single thing I've sewn onto both kids' vests over the years, essentially quilting everything in parallel lines of invisible top stitching:


Some of those older patches really needed the extra reinforcement!

Here's what the front of Will's vest looked like just two years ago:


And here's what it looks like today!

Somehow, I'm an even worse photographer than I was two years ago. I just cannot seem to get the hang of correct lighting for my photos!


I'm thinking that I'll put Will's Ambassador badges, as well as any WAGGGS badges that she earns, on top of the Cadette badges, but I'll probably keep the IPs she earns over on the Senior side until I run out of room, at least.

Syd's not been as active in Girl Scouts as Will for a while now, so I don't think she's in danger of running out of room on her vest:



Check out this bull crap that I just noticed, though:


At some point, the whole front of her WAGGGS pin snapped off! Guess I'm paying for that again...

Girl Scouts is one of my favorite things to do with my kids and their friends, so I guess it makes sense that I spend this much time and effort on something as low-stakes as their uniforms: to me, they represent all the time we've spent together doing community service and art projects, camping and going on field trips, learning about weird stuff and having adventures. They've got a fun patch for the time I thought I was going to die on a high-altitude obstacle course, a badge for the time I thought that I was going to drown in the lake, another badge for that night that I thought we were all going to die in the woods after I led nearly a dozen kids on a late-night hike somewhere unfamiliar and our flashlights suddenly shone on a row of headstones.

We did NOT go back the next morning to see if they were still there in the daylight.

I'm already feeling bummed that I've only got another year and half of memories to put on Will's vest, but yesterday, driving her home from a long afternoon of helping hand out kits for the Take-Home Cookie Rally that we planned and then going door-to-door to leave door hangers advertising contact-free Girl Scout cookie delivery to her best customers, Will mentioned that she, too, was a little sad about the inevitable end of her time as a Girl Scout.

And immediately I was all, "Oh! As soon as you're an adult, you can have a Girl Scout troop of your own!"

I'll buy her a Girl Scout leader vest, you guys! And I'll help her sew all her patches on it, all nicely lined up and organized!
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Thursday, January 14, 2021

December Favorites: Glee, The Heroes of the Olympus, and Whatever the Actual Teenager Loved, Too!

 Check out what we did over winter break!


Never mind that our giant DIY wall-mounted bookshelf is for sure going to crash through that floor pretty soon (pro tip: when you put something super heavy in your house, you should definitely stand its legs on top of a joist, and not on top of, like... apparently nothing but 1980s-era laminate flooring...), because look how crowded it is! I needed Matt to build me MORE space for MORE books!

And he did!


Yes, we vacuumed up all those cobwebs later. We did it after we emptied all the shelves and stacked all the books up in piles! Fiction is organized into alpha by author, nonfiction is organized by Dewey Decimal, and biographies/autobiographies/memoirs are alphabetized by subject's last name. Comics are more roughly organized into alpha by series or title; same with magazines.

It's GLORIOUS now, all tidy and organized and with plenty of room for new acquisitions.

When I wasn't putting my hands onto every single book that I own, I was apparently channeling my inner teenager, because other than this interesting (and depressing) book about anthrozoology--

--I spent the entirety of December fangirling my way through Rick Riordan's Heroes of Olympus series, ending up just about as wildly obsessed with it as Syd is:

As I was nearing the end of The Blood of Olympus, I asked her what I was supposed to do next.

"Read The Trials of Apollo series," she texted me (from two rooms away, as you do).

"And then what?" I texted back, meanwhile looking for suitable Percy Jackson gifs to send her.

"Start back again on The Lightning Thief!" And then we got distracted with Percy Jackson cat memes, so that ended that.


I LOVE Rick Riordan. If you haven't read him, his world-building is on level with J.K. Rowling, only unlike her, his depictions of various social issues are enlightened, normalizing, and compassionate. There's a lot of depth in his postmodernism, making his works meaty and thought-provoking, but they never read as too dark, they're not disturbing, and you don't have to sacrifice lots of adventure to watch interesting relationships develop between the characters. 

And Syd tells me that Apollo is a literal cinnamon roll, so I'm pretty excited to start his series next!

Our public library is still closed to in-person visits, and Will is still dreadfully missing those long days she spent wandering the stacks and reading everything that struck her fancy. Here are her favorites of what she was able to scrounge up to read in December:


That Trevor Noah memoir is SO GOOD, by the way, and I've heard that it's even better as an audiobook, because he narrates it himself. Will actually wrote her final paper in her African Studies class on this book... and she earned an A+, yay!

And here's the rest of what Will read!


I finally got back in the habit of taking a long morning walk, although I now have four different routes that I take depending on where the loose dogs are on any given day, sigh. Some of the Trump signs have also come down, too, which helps me feel a little less like I'm about to be axe-murdered and disposed of in a gully. I had to stop listening to anything at all scary or suspenseful on my walks, though, because I'm already jacked up enough about dog attacks and Trump terrorists. So instead I've been binging this podcast as I walk:


It's funny and casual and the banter is pretty fun. They're still on Season 1, which I've seen all of and remember disturbingly well--I'm sure there are important facts that should actually be living in the places where all of my accurate recaps of Season 1 of Glee live!

That podcast led, indirectly, to me searching out Glee clips on YouTube, which led me to learning that there is a Vietnamese remake of Glee! I only watched the first episode, but in some places it's a shot-by-shot remake of American Glee! I found it highly amusing to watch:


Winter break was so lovely (all those Heroes of Olympus books!), that it's been kind of a bummer to get back to the real world this month, and Girl Scout cookie season is also about to start, so I'm about to have to figure out cookie season during a pandemic. That's going to be... something. 

Perhaps I should save The Trials of Apollo for a post-cookie season reward?

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Monday, January 11, 2021

Earning the Girl Guides of South Africa Tourism Badge


Yes, you can wear a Girl Guide badge as a Girl Scout. But no, you cannot wear that badge on the front of your Girl Scout uniform. Even though both you and the Girl Guides of South Africa are members of the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts (WAGGGS, lol), you are not a member of the Girl Guides of South Africa.

Fortunately, Girl Scout uniforms have just the place for a "non-official" patch: the back! And that's how Will's brand-new Tourism badge from the Girl Guides of South Africa is now happily ensconced between her voting fun patch and the patch she earned for donating some of her fall product prizes to the sloths at the Indianapolis Zoo, instead, and on top of that Wildflowers of Ohio patch that we had so much fun earning back before the world went nuts.

I miss road trips!

I own a few Girl Guides of South Africa badges, but this is the first one that Will has worked through. I really love the different perspectives that another country's Girl Guide badges offer: the South Africa paddling badge is SO hard-core that I don't know how on earth I'm going to help Will earn it, and their baking badge, which the kids worked on this summer, required them to memorize enough terms to discernibly improve their cookbook literacy. 

The Tourism badge is one of the most interesting. It makes sense, because I'm sure that a LOT of tourists to South Africa take guided tours in some capacity during their visit, and when we were in Greece, our tour guide there, Militsa, told us just some of the strenuous education and certification required to be a Greek tour guide. It's an impressive career option if you live in a place with a thriving tourism industry, and it's just so interesting to me that it's a career that doesn't really exist in the same capacity, or nearly the same frequency, in the US. 

I rewrote the Tourism badge requirements a bit, but I couldn't decide if I wanted to treat the badge as a study of the way that international travelers view the United States, or as a useful primer on planning international travel of one's own... so I sort of did both. Here's my take on the badge:

GIRL GUIDES OF SOUTH AFRICA TOURISM BADGE

  1. Browse through 2-3 US guide books marketed to visitors from outside the US (hint: search Overdrive for USA guide books!).

  2. Make a list of qualities/characteristics/areas of expertise that a visitor from outside the US should look for in a tour guide.

  3. Read and be prepared to discuss the following article: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/06/welcome-to-america-please-be-on-time-what-guide-books-tell-foreign-visitors-to-the-us/257993/

  4. Research at least three tour companies and the group or guided tours that they offer. For each company, choose one tour that YOU would like to go on.
  5. Create a chart that compares/contrasts the following information about each tour/tour company:

    1. Cost of tour vs. value of tour (YOU determine what makes the tour a good value!)

    2. Type of tour/quality of tour (eco tour, luxury tour, adventure tour, etc. Give each tour a category that you create!)

    3. Tour amenities, evaluated on a scale that YOU determine based on what is important to YOU

    4. sites/activities/adventures on each tour

    5. Additional costs--is travel insurance included? Airfare? All meals or just some? Extra visas required?

  6. You are a tour guide and have a visitor from overseas. Plan a 2-day trip around your state showing off its natural beauty, history, and culture.

    • This trip should include several highlights and places to visit, including iconic sites, engaging activities, and interesting places to eat.

    1. Sites to see and what they cost (eg. entrance fees)

    2. Transportation and cost (are you driving and will need gas? Taking a bus or train? Uber?)

    3. Restaurants and copies of their menus, if possible

    4. Photos of places being visited, with appropriate attribution

    5. Accommodations, their amenities, and costs

    6. Itinerary/timetable for the trip, including accurate transportation times

  1. Research a 10-day African tour for our Girl Scout troop.

    • Include travel dates, costs, accommodation, modes of transport, destinations, etc.
    • Write a complete and detailed itinerary, including the same information from Step 2.

  1. Research the different types of passports and their costs.

    • What information is required to apply for a passport?
    • What countries might one travel to that have additional requirements?
    • Find your own passport and examine it. When do you need to renew it?
For the comparison of tour companies, I was interested to see that Will chose to compare Greece tours. Very sensible, as the only time that we've taken a guided group tour was our trip to Greece! Here's some of her work:

PRICE vs. VALUE
  1. Odysseys Unlimited Ancient Greece
    • $385.15 per night. Meals included. 12 nights in fancy accommodations. Small group size. Many interesting sites. Good value.
    • Athens monuments and museums, Delphi, ancient Corinth, Mycenae, Nafplion, Hydra, Heraklion, palace of Knossos, olive farm, Santorini town and sites.
  2. Cosmos Greece and Aegean Islands Cruise
    • $166.67 per night. Meals included. 14 nights in fancy accommodations. Unknown group size. Many standard sites. Good value. 
    • Athens, Mycenae, Citadel of Mystra, Olympia, Delphi, Meteora, Aegean cruise, Ephesus, Patmos monastery, Rhodes, Heraklion.
  3. Expat Explore Best of Greece
    1. $163.75 per night. Meals included. 12 nights in acceptable accommodation. Large group size. Many standard sites. Neutral value.
    2. Athens, traditional art workshop, Kalambaka, Delphi, Trizonia, Olympia, Mycenae, Nafplion, Mykonos, Santorini.
This turned out to be a useful project, because price vs. value is entirely dependent on your own priorities. Do you prefer to make your own way through a country, figuring things out on your own, or do you prefer having your itinerary and the details of travel arranged for you? What budget do you need to set, and what would you rather give up to meet that budget? What do you absolutely have to see, and what do you not give a flip about seeing?

Even though I always feel like I include the kids in my travel planning, I definitely make all of those price vs. value decisions for us, and I probably never even told them that we were deliberately staying in lousy hotels and eating packed groceries to save our budget for sightseeing, and we were wearing all our clothes and carrying just backpacks onto planes because the hundred bucks that we don't spend on checked luggage is the hundred bucks that we CAN spend on experiences. So it was interesting to see what Will prioritized--she seems to care more about hotels and meals than I do, but I was glad to note that what you get to see and do, and not just how comfy you are while you see and do them, is also important to her.

After that practice researching and evaluating other group tours, it was time to ask Will to create her own. Here's half of Will's 10-day African tour for a Girl Scout troop. We're going to explore Namibia!

Day 1:

10:00  Fly into Windhoek

           Rent a car

           Drive 30 minutes

11:00  Check into UrbanCamp.net

11:30  Visit National Museum of Namibia

           Eat at rooftop restaurant

           Drive 20 minutes

7:00  Have dinner at Xwama

         Drive back


Day 2:

9:00  Go to Lemon Tree for breakfast

         Drive 30 minutes

10:30 Go to Namibia Craft Center

           Drive 20 minutes

1:00  Horseback tour with Equitrails Namibia

         Drive 15 minutes

7:30  Dinner at Joes Beerhouse


Day 3: 

9:00  Check out

         Breakfast at Royal Kitchen and Take Away

         Drive 3 hours

1:00  Visit the Cheetah Conservation Fund

         Drive 40 minutes

7:30  Eat dinner at Crocodile Ranch

9:30  Check in to Out of Africa


Day 4:

9:30  Go to Bean Tree Cafe for breakfast

         Drive 2 hours

11:30  Erindi Private Game Reserve

2:30  Lunch at Camp Elephant

4:30  Erindi guided safari

7:00  Dinner at Camp Elephant


Day 5: 

9:00 Packed breakfast

11:30Drive back to Windhoek

Packed lunch

7:00 Take flight to next destination


I love that we're going to spend half the time glamping, and that we get to go horseback riding. It's a very whirlwind visit to Namibia, but I think it would work well combined with visits to at least one or two other countries in Africa--I mean, you're going to spend all that time just getting to Africa; might as well stay for a while!


This ended up being an interesting and unique badge to earn, with some practical, real-world activities that Will hadn't ever tried out before. You could argue that this Tourism badge, or at least the way that I rewrote it, is similar to the Senior Traveler badge, but I'd argue that while the purpose of the Senior Traveler badge is to plan an actual trip for the Senior Girl Scout to actually go on, this badge was a way for Will to dream big and research trips anywhere in the world, and in particular places that we definitely aren't going to anytime soon.

Although, to be fair, at this point in the pandemic we aren't even in the position to take that two-day tour of Indiana that Will planned for Step 4... One day, when we're all four vaccinated and safe to travel, may I never again take for granted our ability to actually go on the trips that we plan!

Here are some of the resources that we used for this badge:

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