My boy scout son is working on an Invention Merit Badge. If you knew him, it would not be a surprising choice. Ever since he could crawl there was a trail of deconstructed electronics in his wake. We only have 2 clocks in the house that still work and one functioning flashlight that we must keep hidden away from him so that we will have a flashlight for emergencies. But as a result of all this deconstruction he understands how things work. All things.
Many was the time that my son, as a toddler, would disappear in his room for quiet time with armfuls of all the rope, yarn, and string we had in the house. After a half hour his room would be filled from floor to ceiling with a web of rope-based toy lifts and burglar traps.
Inventing is an obvious interest for him, but the surprise was that his sister has been drawn in to each of the merit badge activities.
My daughter loves gadgets and science and even taught herself to code in several languages, but has lately gravitated to music and knitting.
Yesterday my son finished his days’ merit badge work and then asked his sister if she wanted to help him implement an idea for a better video game. The two headed off with a laptop and came back about an hour later. “We failed,” moaned my daughter. “All I could manage was a game where you battle monsters and I could not figure out how to get the hero leveled up beyond level 2.”
My kids do not understand how much they are able to accomplish because as homeschoolers they do not have a benchmark against public school expectations. It is not usual for two sixth graders to go off for an hour and use javascript to make an interactive functioning video game. But to the two of them it is perfectly normal and in fact they were disappointed in their accomplishment and resolved to keep working on it and make it better.
Merit badge work in our house leads to greater accomplishments beyond just the scout accomplishment. It stretches the imaginations of all the kids and encourages them to try new things.
Maybe that is why they are called Merit Badges: the activity encourages continued merit.
