Gems of Guiding

Despite my excitement for the Discover-a-Challenge gemstone badges when they were first released many years ago, I have never had a Guide complete a single one of these badges. Although, we could do some of the challenges at Guides, it's really designed as a badge to complete at home. I've always had trouble with my unit accepting any sort of "homework". It makes planning difficult when only half the unit completes a challenge, and then everybody is at different stages.

I stopped giving my new members Guide handbooks as well, since nobody was bothering to look at them. So no-one in my current unit had ever previously seen the gemstone badges.

With no face-to-face meetings, I decided to my unit a weekly email with activities and updates. I broke the Topaz gemstone into four parts and included one part in the newsletter over a month. The first week, I included it was mostly as a filler, but the response I received the next week was so wonderful that I kept doing.

In that time, almost everybody had started their Topaz gemstone, and four have completed it!!
The level of work has been really fantastic as well!

I think this badge has been the perfect thing to keep the girl's off their devices after long days doing home-schooling. It's not too overwhelming to complete and is something that most won't need any assistance with.

Here is part one that I put in our newsletter.

And here is some art from challenge number one.