Girl Scouts display their skills

MOSES LAKE - Jaidyn Melby explains how to put together the wands the Girl Scouts are making at the Grant County Fair.

"You get your stick and then you pick your color," she said, picking up a purple cardboard star. "Then you punch out a hole in this little thing and then you put your stick through it and tape it down. Then you pick what color of ribbon - red, white or blue - then you put it through (the hole) and push it down."

The girl is one of more than 100 who contributed to a series of displays from the Girl Scouts in the Youth Building at the fair. Projects ranging from painted birdhouses to a robotics obstacle course take up half of the building.

Kat Stebbins, the girl scout leader, points out several uniforms hanging on the wall. Since the fair is celebrating its centennial, they decided on a historic display of uniforms.

"This one here, starts at about 1928, and goes all the way to our modern day hoodie," she said. "We have a historical room at our council."

She points out several donated by people in Grant and Adams counties, including two jackets donated by scouts from Odessa. One of the jackets has the Moses Lake day camp patch on it.

"Then, sadly, this one is mine," she said, pointing out a uniform from the late 1980s. "This does show the silver award, (which is) the second highest award you can get in Girl Scouts."

The display also contained older books on one side and the newer books on the other side, Stebbins said.

"Since we started a whole new set of leadership journeys," she said. "We're trying to get the girls more focused on being leaders in the community rather than just doing badges and skills."

Much of the organization's displays were of arts and crafts projects the girls accomplished between September and June. Walls were lined with displays of paintings, clothing and jewelry. Display cases contained birdhouses and carved wooden figurines.

The 8- to 10-year-old scouts constructed the birdhouses, starting with the wood and constructing them. The finished products were painted, several with designs. Stebbins said the organization puts a lot of emphasis on creating the items.

"For example, the 3-D tic-tac-toe board down here, the girls had to learn how-to shop basics, then they had to learn how to use a band saw. They cut all the pieces. They routered the edges and then they seamed them," she said. "The same night they did that, they also did the fused glass magnets."

The girls learned how to properly cut glass and mount it together, she said. The projects were then placed in a kiln and fired.

In another display, a Lego-built obstacle course sits. The display is for the scouts' robotics team, where the girls need to program a robot, constructed from Legos, to perform several tasks. While the machine is outside of the "base," the girls can't touch it, Stebbins explained.

"Every year in September, they announce a new theme. This last year, it was bio-medical," she said. "So it's quite a challenge for them to decide, 'Do we stay on this side of the table or do we go over here and do these things first.'

Along with programming the robot, the girls also do a research project. They chose to research what would happen if the fingertips of a gecko were placed on a prosthetic arm.

"The solutions don't have to be real. They just have to have a background behind them and research behind them to recommend them," she said. "They only have from Sept. 1, when it's announced and they get ... to design their robot, to design all of their pieces, to practice it, and they compete the first week in December."

The girls spend 10 to 15 hours a week during the season constructing and programming the robot and researching for the project.

"They have all sorts of different Legos where they can build him in different ways, different formations, depending on what the table comes out with," she said. "They basically have a huge box of parts and an intelligent brain and that's it."

Last year, the team won the regional competition and made it to the state competition, where they won first place for robot design.

The scouts split their time between all of the projects, and the older girls also mentor the younger ones on their projects.

"Our girls are busy; very, very busy," she said.