The Girl Scouts of Greater Chicago and Northwest Indiana said it best when we named our special Girl Scout Spark Day event. “Girls Like Bugs, Too!” The Bug Girls and several Rose staff, including owner Bob Dold, hosted 30 insect-enthusiast Brownies and Junior Girl Scouts of the Greater Chicago Northwest Indiana Council at their headquarters. The STEM program took place in Northfield, Illinois on Saturday, May 7th.

What is Girl Scout Spark Day?

Girl Scout Spark Day programs are special STEM-based programs that allow young girls to explore professional careers in a very hands-on, interactive way.  As public health leaders in the pest management industry, Rose’s experts are passionate about educating all walks of life about insect and rodent biology and the balance of humans and nature. So this sort of program was right up our alley when we partnered up with the Girl Scouts. Spark Day at Rose helped Brownies and Juniors earn their Bug badges and STEM career badges.

Rose’s Spark Day

There are so many different types of professional career positions in a family-owned pest management business. You wouldn’t think that at first, but it takes a whole lot of diversely skilled professionals to operate a company like ours. We wanted the girls to see that.

Marketing Career

We started the morning upstairs. Janelle and Anna, our Bug Girls, talked about the Rose logo, branding, earning trust from the communities we serve, and explained what our company does. The scouts made name tags and customized them to show off their personal brands. Rose’s President, Congressman Bob Dold, who is an active Eagle Scout talked about our family business history and quizzed the scouts on their bug knowledge.

Customer Service Career

As we headed downstairs, where our Care Center operates, scouts met a couple of our representatives who answer customer calls and emails. Dejah explained how all of our requests are handled and how we help people. The girls had some great questions about the types of calls we receive. From ants to rats and everything you could imagine in between, we had all kinds of gasps, laughs and “ewwww” reactions. Some of the girls had personal stories to share about bee stings, mosquitos and ants, too.

Entomologist and Beekeeper Careers

In our big training room, the Girl Scouts had several stations to explore and do some more hands-on activities. Beekeeper, Entomologist and Service Technician dress-up stations taught the girls about the science behind what we do. We discussed a healthy balance between nature and humans, as well as the importance of inspections and proper biological identification. Scouts observed specimens under a digital microscope, got to see the inside of a real wasp nest and used tools that a beekeeper would use to care for honeybees.

Licensed Service Professional Careers

One of our customer’s favorite Service Professionals, Paolo, joined our Girl Scout Spark Day! He showed the girls some of the most important tools he uses when he takes care of our customers’ homes. He explained that the flashlight is our experts’ number one tool. Paolo demonstrated how he removes cobwebs from super tall hard-to-reach places. And he also showed the scouts some of his protective gear. Safety first!

Crafting with the Bug Girls!

Back inside, craft tables were set up for the Girl Scouts to make honeybees, ladybugs, butterflies and caterpillars. Our Bug Girls were former Girl Scouts themselves. Janelle always attributes a lot of her craft skills to what she learned in Girl Scouts. So, naturally, we had to do some crafting!

Live Bugs!

One of the scouts’ favorite parts about Rose’s Spark day was definitely the live Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches. The Girl Scouts were definitely fearless when it came to petting them and even holding them! They got to observe how they breathe through tiny holes in their bodies called spiracles. They witnessed one of the roaches molting (shedding its skin) and had a blast answering bug, rodent and bat biology trivia questions.

Pollinating Friendships and Saving the Bees

Spending the morning with these Girl Scouts was incredible. They were so much fun, had great questions along the way, and learned so much! Each girl went home with a insect habitat and a bunch of toys and goodies inside, pollinator cookies and roses. We’re excited to host more STEM programs like these and look forward to pollinating all our new friendships.

And speaking of pollinating, we had set up a pollinator seed bar was set up to teach them about some of the native pollinator flowers that grow in our area. They assembled little take-home bags so they could plant some flowers in their own backyards and do their part to save the bees!