DD2 wants to do Duke of Edinburgh bronze and already has a tight schedule. Would you recommend?

[NigellasGuest]

she is in Year 10 and dances every night (has a scholarship for ballet training). Nevertheless she is very organised and totally up to date with all school work, revising for tests etc (ok it's early days, being September, but she is driven and is likely to carry on in this manner).

She says she really wants to do DOE as well. Could anyone tell me if they think this sounds feasible? Older DD says not, but she is lazy a completely different kettle of fish. Any thoughts would be appreciated!

If you want something doing, ask a busy woman! If she's the sort that can do a milion things at once then ... she's the sort that can do a million things at once.
What's the worst that could happen? - that she finds that she doesn't have the time so she has to drop it. As long as you haven't spent a fortune on special equipment (which you don't need to) then what has anybody lost.
I suppose the main thing is your provider. Our school does overkill: they are very well pepared but it takes up so much time that it eats into other things (one of the main reasons why DS didn't do it). Other schools do just as well with less time.
Are weekends / holidays precious for dance training, competitions, etc - will she be able to do the expeditions (practice and the real thing).

I agree she'll be fine. Dancing can be her physical section, sorted with no extra work. Does she volunteer/help out with a younger dance class? That's service sorted. So she only needs to find an hour a week for skill (does she already play a musical instrument? That counts) and a couple of weekends for the expeditions.

Perfectly doable if she is motivated...

If your dd is already busy with extra curricular stuff you may find it can count towards her DofE. My ds found his rugby and keyboad lessons fulfilled the physical activity and skill sections. The volunteering was fairly easy to arrange which just left the expedition which was all done through school. The biggest time commitment was setting aside two weekends for the expedition (one practice weekend, one assessed).

this all sounds very hopeful!

she told me she had to do a sport or something - and volunteer somewhere that is NOT connected to the physical section (i.e. ballet).
Perhaps she has got the wrong end of the stick.

She doesn't play any instruments and I can't think she has a skill other than dance so not sure about that one.

She dances at weekends as well as in the week, but could take a couple of weekends off for DOE if we have dates in advance. We will go to the DOE information evening at school next week and get more details but it's great to hear your input first!

My secondary school does a lot of DoE work and practically every pupil that does it, gains massively from the experience, so I would definitely say your daughter should do it.
Another point for her to bear in mind is that if she wants to go to uni, then being able to say you have done DoE is an extra tick for the application form!

and is the Bronze Award done in Year 10 and then silver in Year 11? is that how it works?

Good luck! My dd1 is on a sports scholarship and does masses of sports every night and at weekends but she is also keen to do DofE bronze - like your dd she is very organised and driven. I love the quote about if you want something doing ask a busy woman!

and is the Bronze Award done in Year 10 and then silver in Year 11? is that how it works?

Depends on your provider. Here is The Award website which gives all the info.

dance will count as physical recreation (rule of thumb is if it makes you sweaty it's physical rec; if it doesn't it's skill).

If she's pushed for time, then do the dance for 6 months (as she's doing that anyway), then it's only 3 months each for the others.

Re the weekends - our school also does an expedition training day (used to be a whole weekend but they've cut it down) plus lunchtime mapreading practices. We do Bronze in Y9/10, silver in Y11 and gold in Y12/13.

There are 4 sections at Bronze level:
Voluteering
Physical (already covered with ballet)
Skills
Expedition
You have to be 14 (or very nearly 14) to start, it takes a minimum of 6 months to complete.
That's the basics. It is quite a commitment, but if your DD is organised it should easily be possible. If she is doing it through her school, they tend to be good at helping the kids & can offer quite alot of support.

One in our household used gymastics training as the physical; gymnastics coaching of the younger club members as the volunteering, and worked on additonal artwork / life drawing in own time as the skill which also has gone into art portfolio...

Looking for inspirational skill suggestions for Silver currently which might also benefit GCSE work for English... sorry to hijack...

The skill can be something like baking/cooking, bake a cake or cook a family meal once a week and take a photo of it.
When my dd did hers she joined a lunchtime DT club at school and made jewellery, some of her friends did photography. I would encourage her to find out what's already happening at school, therefore keeping evening/weekend commitments down

Silver skills with a link to using English (which could possibly be used as GCSE English coursework????)

1. Producing & distributing a newsletter for school or a group they belong to
2. Taking a writing course & trying to get an article published in a local paper, magazine etc
3. Collecting something (old comics / stamps / LPs etc), researching them and write up a report.
4. Make an information pamphlet on a something that of personal interest

I don't know enough about what is involved for GCSE English - but I'm sure a project or piece of coursework could be added to or adapted to also qualify for learning a skill at Silver level.

My DD is only yr9 so I'm still trying to work out what's entailed, but if you look on the website here you can download the Programme Ideas list.

Dance in all its forms counts for physical, and the skills list is most entertaining... Extreme Ironing? Snail farming?

And WTF is 'Snack pimping'?

she loves cooking/baking - that is a definite possibility!
and she could volunteer to help at the dance school on a Saturday - by getting there early to maybe help with earlier classes.

my skill was to take GCSE art as a extra one, think I attended one night after school for two hours. Used it for both silver and bronze. Can't remember my gold one, think I cheated and used something I did with air cadets.

sorry posted too soon

there will be ways and means to find that hard to fill section. Normally there is only section that is hard to do. two normally come from a pre-existing past times.

She might have mis-interpreted the not using something twice. Yes she can't use the act of her doing ballet in the skills and sports but if she does coaching with younger children then she can use that a service as that is separate to her ballet sessions (if that makes sense). Well that's the way it would have been when I did it.

The expedition is the easy part and doesn't take up much time. A few planning and training sessions and three, maybe four, weekend activities.

Bronze and silver to a certain extent are a bit meh CV/achievement wise, but the time spent doing them is time saved on the doing the gold.

so climbingpenguin do you mean that time spent doing Bronze/Silver can be used towards the Gold? not quite sure what your last sentence means! (I can imagine that DD will in fact go on and do silver, and perhaps gold).

if you go straight to gold, you spend longer on each activity. But doing all three levels shows more commitment than just doing gold (which kind of implies oh bugger I need something for my UCAS form )

how long you have to each activity. If you have bronze when starting the silver you don't have to do as long. copied from their website

Silver
The next step up from Bronze... you need to be at least 15 to start doing your Silver DofE programme. If you've achieved your Bronze Award, your Licensed Organisation may allow you to start your Silver a month or two before your 15th birthday.
A Silver DofE programme has 4 sections, Volunteering, Physical, Skills and Expedition. You need to do at least 6 months Volunteering and a minimum of 6 months on either Physical or Skills and 3 months on the other. It?s up to you which one you do for longer.
The Expedition section involves planning, training for and doing a 3 day (2 night) expedition.
If you start your Silver without doing Bronze first you?ll have to do an extra 6 months volunteering or doing whichever of the Physical or Skills sections you have spent more time on. Though you can change your mind later, you should decide which section you want to do for longer at the beginning. Knowing how long you?re going to do it for will help you to choose your activity and set your goals for each section.
It will take you at least 6 months for Silver if you've already achieved your Bronze, or 12 months if you've jumped straight into Silver.

To do Gold you have to be at least 16 years old and there is an extra category, which is the Residential.

You can build on all the sections you have started in your Bronze or Silver, or you can start from scratch. If you have already done Silver, then you have to be at least 17 years old to achieve a Gold Award, as you have to evidence at least 12 months of activity & you can't start until you are 16, if that makes sense.

You aren't cheating if you apply something that you are also doing somewhere else, like the Cadets. The idea is to acknowledge all the good things young people do through a DofE Award. You don't have to do them twice over, just to get the Award - you just have to meet the requirements with what you are doing.

for that particular component it was a cheat for me, it was based on achieving a qualification, one which took me a stupidly minimal amount of time to actually do. However, karma wise there was a lot of other good stuff i did

Well, if your assessor, leader & local authority all signed you off - which is what they must have done if you got Gold - you clearly fulfilled the karma aspect!

PBB - what I should have said is that I keep nagging child about not doing enough reading and I'm trying to come up with a clever way of combining it with DofE.

Love the idea about the pamplet, making a meal and taking a photo... and also the idea of keeping it all in school time!

Bronze was well worth the hassle ... the tales of their expedition torment were hilarious!