Sunday, May 26, 2013

Daisy Scout Meeting Three


Daisy Scout Meeting Three
Third week in October 2012


Goal & Badges:        
We finished earning the Promise Center and began working toward the “Honest and Fair” petal.


OCD Itinerary:  (This is what we actually used for the meeting.  BTW I don’t keep to the actual times, but it helps my tendency to overbook and go over)
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Arrival:      Gathering- Girls do Page 11 (picture of family) of Daisy Garden Book and if finished do page 26 (draw what’s hidden in the garden)

4:05            Daisy Circle-
                   Girl Scout Promise
                   ‘Round the Daisy Circle with “members of the family”

4:10            Water the Team Garden and hand out Garden patches

4:15            Go get treasure box

4:20            Back in circle distribute bracelets and read Daisy Garden book pages 46-55, have girls point to flowers on bracelet as go around

                   Show law and explain next activity.

4:30            Count off by 2s “fairly” and divide into two groups
                   4 girls go to living room to do Promise
                   4 girls go to craft room to do Lupe activity.

4:45            Switch

5:00            Divide snack “fairly”

5:05            Read Lupe story and eat

5:15            Play “Lying Game”

5:20            Act out Lupe story with masks

5:30            Final Daisy Song in Circle
                   Remind girls to be honest and fair
                   Remind about field trip next week.

* * * * * * * * * * * *
Gathering

Journey Books-

The plan here was to have the girls work on pages 11 and 26 of their journey books, but many (of course the ones that showed up first) had worked ahead.  Those girls finished everything they could do in the book for the first three chapters and then I gave them construction paper to color with until everyone showed up.



Page 11
Daisy Circle
          Leaders read the promise, we went around the circle and the girls talked about their families (page 11 of book).  Then we watered the garden with the spray bottle and we handed out the Garden Patches (mostly because we forgot at the end of the last meeting).  We pinned them on with safety pins.  I don’t recommend this.  It takes too long.


Note on patch distribution: After this we distributed most of our patches by giving them out at the end with the take home packet, which include homework, any permission slips or info for their parents, and a small zip lock bag with the patches they had earned.  When we got to adding the little pieces (watering can, bee and daisy) I reapplied Badge Magic, (which is a heavy duty double sided sticker) then was able to peel off the back and put it on the girls’ Garden background pretty quickly during our ceremonies.

My co-leader swears by Badge Magic, and never irons on a patch.  Other moms find the stuff way too expensive.  I think it’s worth it for small and oddly shaped patches, as well as patches that aren’t iron-on.



Treasure
            At this point we had the girls put on their shoes and run to the back yard to retrieve their treasure.  Earlier that day I had filled it with these bracelets:




How to make Bracelets:
(These cannot be made by Daisies.  They are either gifts made by adults or something older girls can make, perhaps as gifts for Daisies).

            Supplies:

      1.      Leather bracelets with snap.  I got these in a bag of 8 at Michael’s.  Fabric would        
            probably be even easier and cheaper if you can sew, but not as durable.
      2.      Felt flowers in every daisy petal color (we hid these in the treasure box two weeks
            before)
      3.      Gold seed beads
      4.      Gold embroidery floss
      5.      Heavy duty needles

I sewed the flowers on the leather in my down time (ha!) between the two meetings.  Basically it’s up through the center, through the bead and back through the hole you made.  If I had a leather puncher it would have probably been much easier.  I could see girls as young as eight doing it under those circumstances.  But with the heavy leather, at least 10 years old.

At this point, the girls came back to the Daisy Circle and distributed the bracelets and helped them put them on as my co-leader rewarded some more in the Garden Journey (I wouldn’t say my idea to have the girls point to the colors as we talked about the flowers worked very well).

Then we showed the girls the Girl Scout Law again and explained that we were going to start working on “Honest and Fair.”  Then we divided the girls in two groups to work in small groups.  We used counting off by “2s” as an example of being fair.

Note of Splitting Up Group:  This worked great and we split the group in half probably every meeting, with my co-leader and I being in charge of different activities.  It basically worked like “mini-stations.”  We did this with anything that would probably be complicated.


Promise Center

We didn’t want to give the Promise Center away without the girls actually knowing the Girl Scout Promise.  So, we had half the girls go with my co-leader and her Cadette older daughter into another room to go over the promise and practice saying it.  They didn’t have to recite it perfectly, but they had to know if with prompting. 

To get them to do this fairly boring task we bribed them with candy corn.  No, we have no shame.  And nothing is boring if it includes candy.  I wonder if Juliette Gordon Low would approve?  Oh well.

The Daisy Garden Craft Project

This project is my baby.  It probably wasn’t necessary, but I really loved it.  The girls enjoyed it as well and are very proud of the finished product.



 My "Sample" Garden Completed


Basically, each girl was given a blank “garden” at the beginning of the year and with every petal we did, the girls added the corresponding flower friend made out of paper and other craft materials, until in May we finally had 10 flowers.  I also tried to do different craft techniques in the different flowers to practice skills and inspire their art work.  We plan to hang them up in an art gallery for our final celebration in two weeks.


Supplies to start the garden:

 1.       A piece of light green poster board for each girl
 2.       A good stapler that opens
 3.       Paper stock in various colors (I recommend investing in a large pack of various colored paper stock.  If you try to use construction paper there won’t be enough shades and it will turn out muddied.  You should be able to get a 100 piece 8x10 value pack for $10.  Most craft stores will have a %50 coupon as well.)
4.      Value pack of multiple shades of green pipe cleaners
5.      Value pack of googly eyes (I like the ¼” ones best).
6.      Sharpies in red, pink, black, green and blue (yes, they stain, but they look so much better and the girls adore them.)
7.      One bottle of Elmer’s type glue per girl (cheap stuff you get at back o school time in fine)

Lupe Prep (you can do mini-baggies with the supplies for each girl or you can divide it out at meeting time.  I did it different ways with different flowers.  Since this was a “fair” unit I put pieces in the center and had the girls divide it among themselves.)

For each Girl (be sure to have extra):

                        1.      5 face petals in various shades of light blue card stock
Template I took off the internet for Lupe's Face
                           2.       One long, one short green pipe cleaner
                           3.      Light blue and medium blue tissue paper cut into small squares (try to use leftovers
                            from birthday presents.  If you don’t have any another mom might.)
                           4.      4 green leaves out of green cardstock
                           5.      Elmer’s type glue

                   To share/for you: 

                   1.      Pictures of real Lupine Flowers
                   2.      a stapler
                   3.      lack, red, and pink sharpies or markers (if you’re a wuss) to share

Photos off of Google Images I used
 






Lupe Steps:
            1.    Pass around pictures of Lupine and remind girls she stands for being “honest and fair.” 
            Show them the Lupe you made.  (It’s best if you only do one at a time so they don’t get
            distracted).

            2.      Have girls glue stems first, then go around and staple down the stems.  They will never
            stay with glue alone, but having them glue it first puts it where they want it.

            3.      Then have the girls layer the Lupe petals of the face and glue them on top. 

            4.      Have them crumple up the tissue paper and glue it along the stem for the smaller
            flowers, then add the leaves. 

            5.      Finally they can use the Sharpies to draw in mouths and glasses


Close up on my Lupe

***Remember, the girls flowers don’t have to look anything like yours.  After showing them yours, encourage them to do theirs any way they like.  This is art after all.  Resist the OCD urge to correct them and everyone will have more fun. ***



One of the Girls Finished Gardens


Snack & Story time

            For snack this time we made a point of having the girls sit around the food and give suggestions on how to divide it up fairly (we ask the moms not to send in individually packaged snacks and to have it be at least some what healthy.) 

            Once snack was distributed we read the Lupe story.  We always have a short discussion using the questions at the back of the story. 



Lying Game


            For this game the girls got in a circle and I brought out a stuffed animal.  Then we passed the animal around the circle, each person adding a lie.  I think it was a stuffed dog.  So I’d saw this is a pig and the next girl would say this is a yellow pig, and the next girl would say this is a huge yellow pig, etc.  The idea is that it gets really hard to remember the lies.

            Then you do it again only telling the truth and it’s supposed to be much easier.  Unfortunately, the girls were tired at this point and very wiggly so it didn’t work out just right.  If I did it again with girls this young, I’d do it in smaller groups.


Act out Lupe Story:

            As suggested in the book, we had the girls act out the Lupe story.  It went fine but they didn’t like it as much as I thought they would.  The only hit was the girls who got to play the birds.  We slowly got to the point where we stopped using the activity suggestions at the end of the stories.


Closing Circle: same



Take Home:

Homework- Lupe Worksheet

I created worksheets using the coloring pages on the Girl Scout website. http://forgirls.girlscouts.org/print-play-color-me-daisy/ Basically I typed up the I____ have been _____and ____ this week when I 1._________2. _______3. ______.  Then I cut out the flower and glued it onto and made photo copies.

We gave these out after we introduced each petal.  This reminded the girls (and the parents) to reinforce the ideas at home.  I really wanted to get the most from the character building part of this. 




That being said, the girls got their petal even if they didn’t bring their homework.  I reminded them in an email before each meeting, but we never gave them a hard time forgetting it.  (Except my co-leader.  If she forgot it, I always gave her a very hard time :D )

If I had it to do over

            I would skip the Garden reading all together and do the Lupe reading and the snack earlier.  I would also do the lying game in smaller groups.


The girls received today:

 Promise Center



The background Garden to their Garden Journey patch set.

 

4 comments:

  1. You are a LIFE SAVER! Thank you for taking the time to document your meetings, as well as tell us what you would have changed!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I love the garden poster!! Thank you!

    ReplyDelete
  3. You are phenomenal! I love how organized you are.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I love the garden poster! What type and size of stapler did you use? I have a good stapler but the staples will not hold when i open the stapler and use it that way. Thanks!!

    ReplyDelete