I started my Girl Scout troop with a friend. We had 18 girls sign up as first grade Daisies. After spending a lot of time on the internet reading blogs and following people on Pinterest, I decided to start my own Girl Scout blog as a resource for others. It helped me so much to read about how other people had adapted the curriculum to their own troops' needs, and I hope this helps you.
At our first Daisy meeting, we were basically flying blind! Our troop meets in our school's gym, which has some pluses and some minuses. On the plus side, we do not have to carpool to a meeting site and we did not have to find a location that would work for 18 girls. The gym also allows us to play games and be really active, which we found was crucial for our girls. In the 6-7 age range, the girls really needed to do physical activity as part of our meeting. On the minus side, there are no tables and chairs in the gym, which makes some of the drawing and writing activities more challenging. There are also lots of temptations for the girls, like gymnastics equipment, that they had a hard time ignoring. The other major drawback was that we could not store anything in the gym, so we had to cart our supplies back and forth for every meeting. So this is what we ended up with:
1) First aid back pack - contained all of the required health forms in sealed envelopes, all of our first aid supplies (see the next post), and a laminated emergency contact sheet.
2) A clear plastic 40 quart storage box with a lid - this was large enough for most supplies, but small enough not to be ridiculous! (See next post for the supplies we kept in here.)
3) A folding dolly and bungee cord - I kept these in my car to help me tote everything back and forth.
We did a lot of prep work before the meeting. The good news is that this prep work carried us through most of the year! We made a big troop poster on a tri-fold presentation board. It had our caper chart, a section showing the petals and badges we had earned so far, a section for the petal and/or badge we were currently working on, printouts of the Girl Scout Promise and Girl Scout Law, and a printout of all of the Daisy petals. As we went along, I colored in and cut out the Daisy characters for the petals we had earned and glued them to the bottom of the poster as our Daisy "garden." We brought this poster to every meeting. It was nice that it folded closed, since that kept all of the pieces of the caper chart, etc., intact when we were carting it back and forth from the parking lot.
We also used Sign Up Genius to ask the parents to help out - we needed one parent helper at each meeting to have the correct ratio of 1 adult per 6 girls for Daisies. I tried doing it through Shutterfly, but because we use Sign Up Genius for school we quickly switched over to it.
Finally, there was prep work for this meeting. I purchased enough white and blue marine vinyl to cut a square 18" by 18" of each for each girl and both of the leaders, and cut them into the squares. I also made and a blank Daisy petal sheet and xeroxed enough copies for each girl to have one.
Since we were doing just one year of Daisies, we decided to focus on the petals and not do the journeys. At the first meeting we focused on learning the Girl Scout Law to earn the center blue part of the flower. We sat in a circle, had one girl hold the flag and do the Pledge of Allegiance (which they all already knew from school), and then read the Law and Promise aloud and discussed them. We practiced making the Girl Scout sign with our hands. Then we had snack. Afterwards, we did our craft activity: making sit-upons. For those who don't know about them, sit-upons are a Girl Scout tradition: a small pad, pillow, or mat that you "sit upon" (hence the name). They are great for camp outs or outdoor field trips, especially if they are waterproof and the ground is wet or muddy. They are also perfect for our troop since we are in the gym and need a little padding for our behinds. Each girl got a big 18" by 18" square of marine vinyl; I got the vinyl with my coupon at JoAnn but they also carry it at other craft stores. I had two enormous bags of rainbow colored Sharpie markers and the girls went to town decorating their squares. This one is mine:
We then played games with a huge 20 person parachute that I bought when our first troop was at the Daisy level a few years ago. It has definitely paid for itself! The girls love it!
We then introduced the closing circle. We talked again about what we had done during the meeting, and then practiced the friendship squeeze. Also a Girl Scout tradition, each girl crosses her hands in front of her body and holds hands with the girls on either side. One girl starts by squeezing the hand of the girl next to her, who then passes it along to the next girl, and it goes around the circle. We definitely had to work with our girls on squeezing GENTLY! Then we learned the "Make new friends" song.
Lyrics:
Make new friends
But keep the old
One is silver
And the other gold
I remembered this one from my own scouting days, but Youtube is great for learning Girl Scout songs! Link here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5ZmDA7nN-I
That was the end of the meeting. We had xeroxes of the Daisy petal chart for the girls to color while they waited to be picked up in carpool. My co-leader, the volunteer parent, and I were EXHAUSTED.
Between this meeting and the next, we stitched each white marine vinyl top to a blue 18" x 18" marine vinyl bottom with a couple of layers of quilt batting in between. This finished the sit-upons and we had them for each meeting.
I am going to end each post with a little bullet-point version of our "lesson" plan for the meeting, for easier cutting and pasting. ;)
Meeting Plan #1
- Introduce selves as leaders, ask girls to sit in a circle
- Pledge of allegiance
- Read and discuss Girl Scout Law and Girl Scout Promise, practice Girl Scout sign
- Snack
- Make sit upons
- Physical activity: tag
- Closing circle: friendship squeeze, "Make New Friends" song
- Carpool time; coloring Daisy page as carpool activity
