Daisy Scout Meeting Ten

First week in  March 2013

This particular meeting was a little crazy.  I had a very clear plan to finish up the Purple Petal and start the the Magenta Petal, "Respect Authority."  We also had a guest coming from a local program Plant A Row that works with people from our county to grow fresh produce for charity.  This would set up the next meeting to return to the Garden Journey.

Plant A Row Brochure

I can't remember if I blogged about it, but we gave the girls a choice of two "Amazing Daisy Projects": Plant a flower garden at the local Safety Center or grow a vegetable garden in the backyard and give the produce to a local food bank.  They chose the vegetable garden (which was probably obvious from the previous paragraph.)

Anyway, when I was inquiring as to which food banks took fresh produce I ran upon this lovely woman who not only told us where to bring our stuff but offered to give us seeds and talk to the girls.  My Co-lead and I thought this would be awesome so I asked her to come to the meeting directly before the meeting where we planned to start indoor planting so we would have the seeds ahead of time.  What I didn't realize until the day of was that our guest intended to plant with my girls.  Luckily, I had planned that next meeting too and a few hours ahead I rearranged our schedule so we flip-flopped about two-thirds of the meeting with the next.  

I felt frazzled the entire meeting from the last minute switch, but looking back it was a really great meeting and the girls didn't notice a thing was amiss.  They handled the mix of topics really well.

Goal and Badges:        

Finish working on Purple Petal, "Respect Myself and Others," and reintroduce the Garden Journey.  Do some work on Cookie Activity Pin and set up plan for earning Safety Pin.  Have a guest and earn the Watering Can Award.

A Note on Pins:  While leafing through the Daisy Handbook I ran into the Safety Pin and Cookie Activity Pin.  I won't lie, the thing that attracted to me at first was that they got pinned on the front of the vest and moved up with the girls from rank to rank (so it looked cool and satisfied my obsessive need to get every award.). 

After a little research we discovered that we only had 2 steps left to get the Cookie Activity pin. Cookie Activity Pin Requirements.  We had to practice our "Elevator Speech", i.e... if a potential customer says they already bought Girl Scout cookies or that they're on a diet the girls were to say "then would you like to donate a box to the troops."  We worked on this step  individually at booth sales.  (And it really sold more cookies when we did.)  The last requirement we hadn't fulfilled was to "Discuss how living by the Girl Scout Promise and Law applies to what you should do in the Girl Scout Cookie Program as a  Business Women." This step we did in this meeting.  

And the Safety Pin, well, that was stuff we really wanted the girls to learn.  I'll explain exactly what we did with this at the end and in the next blog.

* * * * * * *

Daisy Scout Meeting March 1

Arrival:                Gathering- 1.  Sign Thank You

                                            2.  Pour water on pellets

                                                         3.  Cut out pictures of ways you respect yourself and put in bag

4:10                      Daisy Circle- Daisy Promise  NEW SONGS

                           Go through law and booth/guest

Present bag 

Water team garden

4:20                      Learn Gardening Song

4:30                     Talk about Seeds

                            Read story and eat snack

                            Plant

5:00                     If time Garden Craft and/or garden scamper

                                   

5:10                     Ceremony and Songs

5:25                     Closing Circle, learn address and phone number

* * * * * * *

Gathering Activities

Sign Thank You Note

Our original lesson plan on "Respect" had a section or the girls making Thank You Cards for all of our past Field Trips.  That was postponed, but I really wanted the girls to have one for the lady who was visiting that day.  In the interest of time, I let my daughter decorate the front of the card while she was waiting for the other girls to arrive.  Then the girls had to sign the card before they could do their other activities.  Some of them drew a little flower or heart as well.

Prepare Soil/Amazing Daisy Project

The overall plan for our Amazing Daisy Project was for the girls to plant the vegetable seeds indoors, in March for the slow growing seeds and April for the quick growing seeds.  Then we transplanted them  into the garden at the beginning of May and the girls took turns harvesting and delivering the vegetables to the Food Bank over the summer (now).

I've started many seeds indoors, flower and vegetable, and the best way is a seed starter pack like this:

The soil disks are low mess and the container is great for quick germination.  I also have a germination warming mat and  a growl light which do produce more and larger plants but you can be completely successful by placing the kit over the refrigerator until the seeds germinate and moving them to a bright, draft free window once seedlings appear.  

Heat Mat I use

Grow light I use.  From Amazon.

For the gathering, after signing the card, each girl got 8 soil disks and a tubberwear container.  We had them place the disks in the container then pour a cup of water on top and put it aside.  In 5-10 minutes (after their last gathering activity) they could come back and see how they expanded to 5x their size into a fluffy seed starter mix.

This isn't my photo but a good image of the dry and wet disks.

Make Respect Yourself Bags

After their two quick assignments the girls went to the craft room where they each took a paper lunch bag (I think I had blue in the house).  Then there were a pile of family friendly magazines, scissors, glue sticks, construction paper, and colored pencils. 

The girls were asked to cut out or draw things they do to show they respect themselves and put them in the bag.  We shared what they came up with at circle.

Supplies for Respect Myself Bag

Daisy Circle:

Music for "Amazing Daisy" 

We also decided to start teaching the girls more songs. (Wow, we did a lot of new things this meeting. No wonder I was frazzled.)  We started by just playing this song while the girls came to circle.  I don't think we ever "taught" the words, but every single one of them knows it by heart now.  Some of them even taught it to their friends at Girl Scout Camp.

This song is from "Girl Scouts Greatest Hits Vol. 11". The album is $9.99 on iTunes and but the song is free from this site.  I thoroughly Recommend the album.  

Welcome to the Daisy Flower Garden

Welcome to the Daisy Flower garden!

Here you'll find all you need to grow the flower of possibilities,

The sun and the rain and the honey bees,

make the world a better place, Amazing Daisies!

Welcome to the Daisy Flower garden!

Here you'll find all you need to grow the flower of possibilities,

The sun and the rain and the honey bees,

make the world a better place, Amazing Daisies!

The Promise Leader led the Promise and then we went around the circle saying presenting their respect bag.  Each girl showed 1-2 things they had inside and how that showed self-respect.

We talked a little bit about the guest who was coming and how we should show respect to our guest (sitting quietly, raising hand to ask questions, listening etc..). Then I pulled out our Girl Scout Law poster and we went through the laws one by one and I asked the girls to think of something that applied each when with either meeting a guest or hosting a cookie booth (cookie booths started the next day).  

This activity went surprisingly well and we checked off another "to do" for our Cookie Activity Pin.

Learn "Planting Time"

After talking a little bit about how we were going back to our Garden Journey today and starting our garden we got the girls to their feet to learn this little hand motion song.  This is another song they love and know by heart.

Planting Time

(Sung to tune of "Row, Row, Row Your Boat")

Dig, dig, dig the earth

(Make Digging motion)

Then you plant your seeds

(Pretend to drop in seeds)

A gentle rain

(Flutter Fingers Down)

And bright sunshine

(Circle Arms over head)

Will help your flowers Grow

(Hold One Arm parallel to the ground and 

move the other arm up behind it with fingers 

extended to represent a flower growing)

Snack and Story Time

After handing out snack, we used this story time as a review, since they hadn't heard the Garden Girls story since the beginning of the year.   My co-leader started reading at the beginning of the book and read until our guest arrived (she got a bit lost and was a tiny bit late).  My co-lead got through about two chapters.  We asked the parents to retread chapter 3 at home before the next time we worked on the journey (April) so we could pick up with chapter 4.

Guest and Planting

Once our guest arrived things went surprisingly smoothly, which I'm sure is more to our guests credit than mine.  We ushered the girls into the craft room where I had set out each girls tubberwear with their sets of soil pods, now fluffy and moist.

Our guest talked about feeding the hungry and how important it was for them to get healthy vegetables to eat.  She told them for every 13lbs we grew it would feed someone for a week!   Then she asked them questions and they talked about basic plant and garden care.  She even brought us pots made out of newspaper, though we didn't use them.  I kept them to use for transplanting later.

The girls attention did wander a bit while she was talking but came back with lazer focus when she pulled out her seeds. She brought a whole pile of organic seeds for us.  She would explain each type as we'd hand them around.  Each girl was to plant 2-3 seeds per pod, only one pod per type per girl and then we would collect them as they finished, keeping them labeled.  We planted tomatoes (5 different types) green peppers, eggplant, lettuce and spinach.  I gladly accept seed packets for cucumbers, zucchini, yellow squash, peas, carrots and several types of beans to plant in April (except the carrots which needed to be sowed directly in the soil.) 

The seeds only need to be pressed ino the pod with one finger and lightly squeezed to cover with soil. They do not need to be watered at all until after germination takes place. (About two weeks for most of these.)

New seedlings (though I'm pretty sure these are the April ones).

Tomato and basil plants a month old just before I transplant them to the newspaper pots

Just post transplant in newspaper pots

Our set up

 (If you were wondering if we had time for the Garden Craft or scamper ... we didn't).

Watering Can Ceremony

By this time, all the girls had had a chance to bring home the team mini-garden and take care of it for at least a week.  We had learned the Girl Scout Promise and Law (at least an overview of it), read three chapters of the girls' book and learned the basics of how to grow and care for plants.  We figured it was about time the girls earned their Watercan Award.

Full grown mini-garden

For the ceremony, we had the girls stand in a semicircle facing their parents. We put of the song from the Lorax movie, "Let it Grow."  Ahead of time I had cut out and put badge magic on the back of the Water Can Badges.  I would announce the girls one by one, they would step to the center of the semicircle and I would stick the badge onto their base garden badge on their vest.  Then I would announce that they could bow or dance a little dance while everyone clapped.  We went around until all the girls were done. 

Closing Circle: 

We did the friendship squeeze and reminded the girls about the Safety Center Tour.  We also reminded them (the email had gone out to parents a week or two before) that there would be a test for their Safety Pin after the field trip so they needed to study if they wanted their pin.

Homework:

The homework for this week was to study for the "Safety Test." Since this blog is already enormous and confusing I'm going to go in details on this in the next blog on our trip to the Safety Center.  In brief, the girls needed to study their address and phone number and know it cold!

The requirements for Safety Award straight from the Daisy Handbook