Month #3 -- Earning our Yellow Petals

We started this meeting by practicing the Girl Scout Promise. For less than $1.00 I bought a sheet of poster board and wrote out the Promise and the Law. I read the Promise to the girls once and then asked them to read it aloud with me. To earn our Yellow Petals, for being friendly and helpful, the girls were supposed to help out around the house without being asked. Most of the girls were able to give specific jobs they had helped with at home. Their moms were usually able to tell me if they had done well or not.
We then moved on to a story to help them thinking about our next petal, light green for being considerate and caring. Since this was our December meeting I chose to read them a story about Christmas. I chose a wonderful book about a bear who stays up after everyone else has gone to bed and makes presents for all of his friends, even though he can barely keep his eyes open. I started the conversation with them about what we care about this time of year and how to be considerate to families who are less fortunate. Each girl was given $0.50 to place in a Salvation Army bucket. I will ask the girls at the next meeting whether they kept the money for themselves or if they shared it with a family who could really use it.
Our craft for this month was to make Christmas ornaments. I would like to start a tradition with the girls in my troop. Every year they will make a new ornament that symbolizes what we are working on that year. This year I fell in love with some penguins made out of socks. I did have to do most of the prep work -- stuffing and sewing the socks, cutting out the felt pieces and as a special gift to the girls I made bead daisies for their ornaments to wear as necklaces.
Here is a picture of Sammi with her ornament. She colored his gray parts with a black fabric marker, but he's still pretty cute.

And you can download the instructions to make this ornament here, it is a PDF file.

Month #2 Earning our light blue petals

This month we had a whole lot of stuff to cover in not so much time!
We had all 8 of the original girls in the troop plus a new girl joined Girl Scouts and became part of our troop, and Becke's daughter (3 years old) got to come and take part in the fun!
Thank goodness for parents who were able to iron patches onto the girls' vests while the girls worked with Becke and I. We started off by talking a little bit about how the girls were honest and fair during the last month. We used the example of trick-or-treating at houses where a bowl of candy is set outside with a sign that says, "take one please". Sammi told how she had only taken one piece but her friend took two. We then played a fun game where the girls each started out with 10 pennies. I asked them 10 questions and they were told to answer honestly and put one of their pennies into the center if their answer was "yes". The girls knew at the end of the game one of them would receive the pennies but not if it would be the girl with most pennies at the end or if it would be the girl with the least. The ten questions were:
1. Have you ever ridden on an airplane?
2. Have you ever left this state?
3. Have you ever left America?
4. Have you ever swam in the ocean?
5. Have you ever ridden a horse?
6. Have you ever been inside a cave?
7. Do you sleep with a special stuffed animal?
8. Do you like to eat vegetables?
9. Have you ever been to see a movie at the theater?
10. Can you tie your own shoes?
At the end of the game I randomly chose an adult to decide if the girl with the least or the most pennies left would win the "pot". The girl with just 1 penny left won and everyone seemed okay with that. We also had a chance later in the meeting to display being fair. When the girl in charge of snacks this month was handing out her snacks, one girl said "No thank you." Then later the little girl changed her mind and asked for a snack. Other little girls started asking for more snacks and I told them that to be fair, each little girl could only have one snack since there wasn't enough for everyone to have two.
click here to see a picture of my daisies
(I blurred the faces of the girls whose parents have not yet signed the release forms to have their daughter's pictures posted online.)
We also made turkey crowns to celebrate Thanksgiving. My girls had wonderful things to be thankful for, some even said they were thankful for their troop leaders. I didn't get to tell them, but I am very thankful for my daisies and their parents who have been so helpful. To start the girls thinking about being friendly and helpful for next month, I read them a story about doing chores to help mom and dad and then I gave them little slips of paper to leave behind if they do a chore without being told. Mom and Dad are going to keep track of them and let me know if they did at least 6 chores without being asked during this month.