Promise Center Achievement

Our Daisy troop is going to have a little ceremony at the end of our meeting where we will take the time to hand out certificates to all of our Daisies for earning their Promise Center. Half of our girls already have certificates from our Growing Daisies event, but I wanted them to have a special certificate from our troop as well.

We have one second-year Daisy in our troop, so she will be the one handing them their certificates and doing the Girl Scout Handshake with them. 

I found this certificate on Pinterest. The original had a different type of font that I didn't care for so I cut all the text out and replaced it with two KG fonts that I adore.

Brownie Troop

All of my recent posts have been about our new Daisy troop, but here's one of the little gift we have for our Brownies tomorrow. Our troop funds purchased their journey book for them (they will be working on A World of Girls journey and I custom made some dollar store dry erase boards for them.

Board Games & Pajamas Day!

We couldn't think of a better way to introduce the girls to their first petal (Honest and Fair) than with a Board Games & Pajamas Day!

Like we do for our regular meetings we had the girls pull a colored bracelet out of a bag when they walked into the room to determine which table they would sit at. We're hoping that this a way that will allow them to meet new friends throughout the year :)

Then we had the girls recite the Girl Scout promise (because routine with this age group is key!). Then we started discussing with them what they thought Honest and Fair meant. We followed up with asking them how they could practice being Honest and Fair while playing board games with their Girl Scout sisters.

We had four different tables set up with different board games. For this event and age group we chose: Candyland, Hedbanz, Zingo and Chutes & Ladders. Myself and my co-leader helped out at two games that we thought the girls couldn't play without a little assistance and we always have a little Brownie help (a sister to our Daisy) who helped the group that she tagged along with.

Half way through our event we let the girls have a snack (best time to start buying snacks since it's nearly Halloween and they offer everything in small portions!). Then we followed up with a group potty break.

After that, we had another hour of playing. We wrapped up 15 minutes before pick up time. We had each girl tell us an example from their games of someone being honest and fair. Some of our girls were able to give us specific details including names and what they did, while others said that everyone they played with were being honest and fair. 

Then we got them all together to do a friendship circle and sent them home with a fun patch to go on their new uniforms that they all received at today's event.

Now we just have to think quickly of something else to do at our next meeting that also relates to the Honest & Fair petal!

First Troop Event

We had our first troop event today and it was a success. Since we don't have any funds, we need to keep it simple for the first couple months. We decided to have a Daisy Movie Day at our local USO, which is free to rent.

At our first meeting, our girls voted on their movie (Frozen won!) and the treats that they would like to have at their event. We made a concession stand, similar to one I saw on pinterest, and bought some popcorn, a variety of drinks and lots of candy. We also printed out some "daisy bucks" for the girls to spend.

We gave each girl $5 in Daisy Bucks, so they had to practice managing their money. We also made movie tickets for them. The girls were responsible for making sure they didn't lose their movie tickets before they entered the "movie theater". They also got to bring home the movie tickets as souvenirs and they earned their first fun patch :)

Can't wait for our next event!

First Meeting

KAPER CHART

I may have had a little too much fun preparing for our first Daisy meeting.  I saw a bunch of cute kaper charts online and used some ideas from various ones to make our board. The Girl Scout Daisies have each of our twelve girls' names on them and they can be moved around to different flower pots (all of which have different jobs). We added an American flag, The Pledge of Allegiance, the Girl Scout Law and the Girl Scout promise, which are all used for the opening of our troop meeting.

OUR FIRST MEETING
As the girls started to arrive they each pulled a colored bracelet from our crate. We had three tables each with a colored flower (green, yellow and pink). The color of the bracelet determined the table that they would be sitting on for that meeting and who their bathroom buddies would be.

Next, they had two coloring sheets for them to color on while they waited for their Girl Scout sisters to arrive.

Our next activity was an ice breaker. We purchased a ball from the dollar store and wrote simple questions all over it (i.e. favorite candy, what do you want to be when you grow up, something fun you did over the summer). We had the girls pass the ball to each other; when they caught the ball they told us their name and they answered the question that their hands landed on. It was a fun way to learn a little bit about each girl.

I should note that it took the girls about 10 minutes to have a bathroom break before the ice breaker, so I would suggest letting all your parents know that they should have their daughters use the bathroom before the meeting starts.

After our ice breaker, we came in to do our opening ceremonies for our meeting. After that, we started our Daisy Circle for troop business. For this first meeting we voted on the movie for our upcoming "Drive In" movie night as well as the concessions. No surprise, Frozen is their movie of choice!

The next activity was did was a Girl Scout law bracelet. We purchased a bag of pony beads from the dollar store (which had each of the petals colors except for the dark purple which we bought at Walmart). We had the girls put on the beads one by one and told them what each color of the petal stood for as we put them on their bracelets. We lucked out and had two parents who stuck around to help the girls tie on and clip the ends of their bracelets.

I thought we wouldn't have enough activities for our first meeting and to my surprise we were running behind schedule.

We had to have our girls quickly hand out drinks and cupcakes, we sang Happy Birthday to our Girl Scout sisters who had summer birthdays and faster than we know it we were having the girls line up to go outside. We handed their binders to their parents since we were running behind schedule and we gave out Birthday in Bag to our summer birthday girls (this included a box of funfetti cake mix, funfetti happy birthday icing and a happy birthday patch from Snappy Logos).

Next meeting we will practice better time management and we will have our snack outside if the weather permits it. Our Brownie troop meets right after, so I felt bad that I cut into their time. Otherwise, the girls had fun and they were well behaved and they participated so I think our first meeting wasn't too bad :)

Now to start working on our concession stand for our first troop event!

Parent Meeting

We put together a handbook for our parents. I found the initial version online, and tweaked it a little to be more applicable to our Council, Service Unit and Troop. You can access it here.

We met half of our parents at our Service Unit's Growing Daisy program, so they actually received their handbook prior to our parent meeting and we had them fill out the Daisy Information Sheet so we had an easy way to remember their contact information.

Here's our outline for our parent meeting:

Parent Meeting

• Introductions 
• Leader Introductions
• Service Unit Information
• Troop Meeting Date/Time/Location
• Uniforms
• No dues, so parents are responsible for purchasing uniforms
• Give Daisy petal set to the leaders for us to hand out to the girls as each petal is earned
• Financial Assistance available for those who may need it
• Forms (Amanda)
• Daisy Information Sheet
• on the back under special info: please let us know if there are any holidays that your family does not celebrate
• All About Me Sheet
• fill out with your daughters at home and have them bring it to the first meeting
• Health History
• it is important to list all allergies and to keep us updated if there are any changes to your child’s health
• Parent Involvement Form
• successful troops have great parent participation
• Photo Release Form
• Allows us to post any pictures on our Facebook group, our Service Unit Facebook group and the Council Facebook page/website
• Snack Sign Up Sheet
• Petal Work
• The first few months of meetings and extra curricular activities will be set around the Daisy Petals
• There are 10 petals that the girls will earn
• STEM Mondays
• Science, Technology, Engineering and Math
• The girls will choose in advance what type of STEM activities they would like to work on
• Important because women are underrepresented in these fields
• Attend 3 STEM Mondays to earn a fun patch
• Calendar
• Service Unit Events
• Events that we are invited to participate in with all the other troops
• Troop Events
• Events designated for our troop only
• We will have the girls decide on what type of outside activities, events and field trips they would like to participate in
• Some may be open to scouts and their families
• Product Sales Information
• Candy, Nut and Magazines Sales
• Girls can start selling today if parent permission slip is turned in
• We ask that parents do not advertise on online sites (Craigslist or Fort Riley Sales page) but they can post about it on their personal facebook
• Girls will turn in order forms by [Insert Date]
• Products will be distributed to the girls between [Insert Date]
• All products can purchased online, but they will have to pay a shipping fee
• Have all girls fill out the address forms which will provide $2.50 per booklet
• Cookie Sales
• Order taking will start January 1st
• Only two weeks of booth sales this year!
•  Questions?

It's Nearly Time

I've been busy these past few weeks volunteering at all of our recruiting events. We have so many new Girl Scouts this year! I initially planned on having a troop of 10, but we added a few more Daisies who requested to be in our troop.

This weekend is our Daisy parent meeting and our first troop meeting is just around the corner! On top of all of that, we've started Fall Sales. We've also already planned a "drive in" movie night and a board game and pajamas event to get the Daisies through the first month, they'll start their own activity planning at the first meeting.

Our Brownie troop is getting ready to do some Fall camping and I'm excited to see what other activities the girls would like to do this year.

I'm a little sad that I'll only have five months with our scouts, but I am looking forward to hopefully starting a new troop or joining an existing one back home in Hawai'i as soon as we're settled in right before cookie season. I can only imagine how successful the girls will be during cookie season back home since we have so many family and friends!

Hope you're all having fun planning for your scouting year!