Gerri: Respect Authority - Pink Petal

Welcome to the Daisy Girl's Guide to Girl Scouting!  The main focus of this book for our first and second year girls is the Daisy Petal Patch.  Unlike the badge work for older girls, there are not a whole heck of a lot of guidelines for the petal patches.

If you want to print off a picture of the Gerri for the girls to color during the gathering time, you can find one here!

1.  Enjoy Gerri's story

Gerri's story is in the Girl's Guide to Girl Scouting.  Gerri the Geranium is the seventh petal of ten that you will learn about in this guide.  Gerri's petal is about learning what it means to respect authority.  If you don't have the Girl's Guide to Girl Scouting, you can hear it read here by Troop #5007.

Other appropriate books to enjoy and discuss in lieu of Gerri's story:

• The Berenstain Bears Show Some Respect
• Office Buckle and Gloria, Peggy Rathman
• What is Respect, Etan Boritzer

2.  Talk to someone in authority

**For a copy of this scripting
you can copy and paste, click here.

This is a perfect time to have a guest speaker come in and chat with your girls.  With my girls, we do a monthly guest speaker, for an event we call 'career day.'  Career day is when I ask a strong female professional from our local community to come and speak with the girls. I ask them to share what they do, and path they took to get where they are today.  It is so so SO important that our young women in today's society look at the world and think, wow - so many opportunities, rather that, I really want to do this, but it's a boy's job.  In respect to that, I think it's extremely important that girls are exposed early on and frequently to all types of careers.

For *this* badge, I asked emailed the local police department, and asked if their female canine officer would be willing to talk with my girls.

They forwarded my email to this officer, and she graciously agreed to speak with my girls.  I've found with professionals, its easiest to have 2-4 dates and times that work, and letting them choose what works best for them.

If you have the opportunity to request a female canine officer in your community, I highly recommend it! This was one of our favorite speakers.  She came, and spoke with the girls about being an officer, and how she got there, then her transition into canine officer.  At that point, she went and retrieved her partner from her vehicle (that was running for temp control, AND she wears a sensor at all times that alerts if the temperature in the vehicle is too warm - don't worry, pup was safe!) and she showed some of their training, had her canine partner scent and find something hidden, and ended with the girls being able to pet Dexter.

3.  Show respect

For this part, we did a craft I call, 'It Bugs Me'.  Its a simple craft that allows the girls to think of something that bugs them - and then gives the troop an opportunity to discuss how to show respect in those situations.  I did specify for this craft, we were going to think of something that bugs them in terms of respecting authority.  I gave them the example of 'It bugs me when...someone talks when the teacher is talking.'

Supplies:

• Lady Bug printout - one for each girl
• Pens
• Popsicle sticks
• Scissors
• Glue

**Another option would be to make the lady bug out of construction paper.

I gave each girl a printout, and a pair of scissors and had them cut them out - this is a great way for kinders and first graders to practice their cutting skills a little bit more.  Then we wrote 'It bugs me when...' on the left wing, and what bugs them on the belly. ie. someones talks when the teacher is talking.

When they were done with this, we glued the bugs to the popsicle sticks.  We set them aside for a bit and had snack, then came back to them. We had each girl hold her bug up, and read what bugs her.  Then we discussed, as a troop, how to avoid it happening, ie. remember to raise your hand when the teacher is talking.

We had a great time with this - not many things cuter than 5 and 6 year olds learning about girl scouts! Tell me how your Gerri the Geranium earning went!