Sunday, October 28, 2012

Our Fifth Meeting: October



Premeeting: Journal Question

Opening


Circle: Share Secret Agent Fairness Task. Read JulietteGordon Low story

Snack

Activity: Make I Am Collages in journal

Game: Handshake Game—teach GS Handshake

Closing:

Monday, October 22, 2012

Our Fourth Meeting: October

We had such a great meeting this week! The girls were really excited to earn their very first petal, and everything went according to plan -- I love it when that happens! Here's what we did:

Premeeting: The girls wrote in their journals about their favorite ice cream flavors.

Opening 

Song: Our choices were either the Daisy Girl Scout Song or "I'm a Little Daisy." We sang the second, and while it wasn't their favorite song ever, I like that they learned a song specific to Scouting.

Circle: We shared our journal entries, and then we read the Lupe story in the Daisy Scout Handbook and answered the questions at the end. I also told the girls the three steps we needed to do to earn our Lupe (Honest & Fair) petal.

Snack: We had a lot of choices for snack, yum! To earn our Honest and Fair petal, we had a whole bag of Goldfish that the girls had to decide how to divide up fairly. They didn't like my suggestion that myself and my coleader got to eat them all! :) In the end, they decided that each girl should get 6 Goldfish. Yay!

Activity: This is the only thing that didn't go entirely to plan. I would suggest doing this with older girls. I'm not sure if our leaves weren't pressed long enough or what, but they did not want to stick to the mason jars! The leaf lanterns did turn out pretty cute (we added flameless tealights inside), but I'm not sure how long the leaves stayed stuck on. Ah well, the girls really liked doing it and thought they were "beautiful!"




Game: We played the Right/Left game. Basically, you sit in chairs in a circle and every time you hear the word "left" or "right," you move one seat in that direction. They loved this game -- I'm glad I printed off extra stories so we could play several rounds!

Closing: I put Secret Missions for Operation Lupe in the girls' mailboxes, and so I explained what they were all about in our closing circle. Basically, the girls were challenged to practice being honest and fair in two different ways before our next meeting. I hope they are excited about being secret agents!


What has your best meeting ever been? Leave a message in the comments below!

Monday, October 8, 2012

Our Third Meeting: October

Leaders, I just want to take a minute to say thank you. I think it's easy for people -- including ourselves -- to forget how much work goes in to being a Girl Scout leader. There's the meeting planning, paperwork, money handling, setting up for Fall Sale and Cookie Sale, planning field trips ... the list goes on and on. So when you have a bad meeting, don't worry. You're making a difference in these girls' lives, and they won't remember one meeting where things weren't perfectly planned and you were freaking out. They're learning life skills, and having lots of fun doing it. Give yourselves a pat on the back. Go ahead, I'll wait.

...

Done? Awesome. Now, on to our third meeting, which, as you may have guessed, didn't go completely according to plan.

Pre-Meeting: We had the girls do the worksheets to earn their Money Counts badge, while we went around and helped them out. Fall Sale is a perfect time to think about earning one of your Financial Literacy Leaves! They're totally age-appropriate, too, so don't worry about it going over the girls' heads. We also decorated the front of our journals.

Opening: We played a name game, where you stand in a circle and say your name and something you like to do, then do an action related to that thing. Everyone repeats the action and says your name three times fast. Go around the circle. I like this game because it's quick and easy, and it gets everyone introduced and back to business. We also said our Promise, Law, and Pledge. The girls were given these freaking adorable Promise and Law Daisy bookmarks that I had laminated. This way they each get their own!

Song: Our options were either "The Button Song" or "Boom Chicka Boom". Our Song Chooser picked the latter, and they really liked it. Especially when we did "loud style," haha!

Circle: For our circle, we shared the worksheets we did in Pre-Meeting. We also talked about budgeting, and how much each girl would need to earn if we wanted to spend $100 on our Birthday in a Box field trip. One of our girls was amazing at the math!

Snack!

Activity: Originally, we were going to do more budgeting stuff, but it wasn't very interesting to the girls, and I completely forgot my store handouts, so we made All About Me worksheets to put in our Time Capsule. They're pretty excited about that Time Capsule!

Game: We were going to do What's That Smell (where you put something in a paper bag and they have to guess what it is by its smell), but once again I forgot to bring things. My poor coleader, who did remember everything for this meeting! Instead, we played Fruit Basket: We sat in our chairs in a circle. Each girl was assigned a fruit (apple, orange or banana). When their fruit was called, they had to find a new chair. If I called "Fruit Basket" everyone had to find a new chair. I like this game because there are no winners and losers and nobody is left out. Just fun for everyone!

Closing: Our new girls received their Daisy Pins and welcome certificates, as well as their Daisy Circle. Everyone got their Money Counts leaf -- woohoo! We did Fists of Five -- not as good as other meetings, but not terrible. When we did the Friendship Squeeze, the girls had to say something they liked about the meeting.

Leaders, what do you do when things just don't work out like you had planned?

Monday, October 1, 2012

September Field Trip: Cancelled!

We were supposed to have our first field trip yesterday to go apple-picking. Unfortunately, it was raining cats and dogs all morning, so we ended up cancelling at the last minute. Darn!

Have you taken a field trip with your Girl Scouts? How did it go?