Gloria: Respect Myself and Others - Purple 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 Gloria for the girls to color during the gathering time, you can find one here!

1.  Enjoy Gloria's story and talk about it

Gloria's story is in the Girl's Guide to Girl Scouting.  Gloria the Morning Glory is the sixth petal of ten that you will learn about in this guide.  Gloria's petal is about learning what it means to respect yourself and others.  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 Gloria's story:
I'm Gonna Like Me by Jamie Lee Curtis
The Golden Rule by Ilene Cooper
I Won't Comb My Hair by Annette Langen

2.  Invite an older girl scout to talk to your group about ways to respect yourself and others.

This is a great opportunity for an older scout to fulfill requirements for bridging or other badge work.  It's a good time to reach out to your network of leaders to see if anyone has a girl who'd like to take a few minutes to share with your troop.  You could also ask your girls, and families, if any of them are or were girl scouts, and ask them to talk to the girls.  My troop had my sister come and chat for a bit, but my girlfriend's troop had a grandmother come and not only talk about ways to respect yourself and others, but also share a bit about girl scouting 50 years ago!

3. Practice respecting myself and others

One activity for this is a healthy snack.  Discuss the importance of healthy eating for a healthy body, and then tell your girls you will be making a healthy snack today.  My favorite is a smoothie, and it can be done simply with a bullet or similar blender that is easily transported.  

Ingredients:

• Strawberries
• Bananas
• Clementines
• Honey
• Ice
• Juiced Apple Juice
• Any other fruit you, or your girls may like to try

**I juice an apple for this so I can add some liquid that is all natural - you can definitely use whatever juice or water you like.**

1.  Plug in blender, and peel 1 banana, 2 clementines and cut the greens off of 5 strawberries.

2.  Toss fruit in blender.  Add a squeeze of honey, and about 1/4 cup of apple juice. 

3.  Put a handful of ice cubes in - I use 5 ice cubes.  Its important that the ice goes last (if you invert the container to blend) or first (if using a traditional blender) so that the ice is the first thing to hit the blade.

4.  Blend, and pour.

I also encouraged my girls to add in or take out any fruit that met their desire.  We had a large variety of smoothies, but they were all tasty.

Another very cool activity is one that stresses the importance of hand washing.  I love this simple experiment that shows how easily germs are spread.

Supplies:

• Glo germ or some similar substance 
• Black light or UV light

1.  Open this experiment with a short discussion about the health benefits of hand washing.  Explain that this experiment will show what happens if we don't wash our hands, and discuss proper hand washing technique.

Open Dialog:

1. Do you think you wash your hands well enough?
2. How does illness spread?
3. When should you wash your hands? 

2.  Apply the powder (or gel - it comes in both forms) thoroughly to your girls hands.  Make sure it's worked into both sides of the hands, and into all the creases.  This is when I explain how the powder works - this powder is made of fluorescent material, and we can't see them without a UV light, and that is similar to how germs cannot be seen by the naked eye.  In this experiment, the powder will symbolize germs.

3.  This step will look different for everyone, depending on what they choose to do.  I had 6 girls, and I split them into two groups.  One group (GROUP A) had 3 girls, and only ONE had the powder worked into her hands.  She then shook hands, held hands, high fived - however they wanted to interact - with the other two girls.  The other group (GROUP B) had 3 girls, and each girl had powder applied.  These girls performed normal daily tasks - one drank from a cup, one used a pencil to do homework, and one played with a toy.  

4.  Hold the black light up to all affected surfaces.  With GROUP A, talk about how ONE girl had germs, and didn't wash her hands, and ask the girls to notice how those powder transferred to the other girls.  With GROUP B, look at the cup, writing utensil, and toy, and ask the girls to notice how the powder transferred.

5.  Ask the girls to head to the sink, and wash their hands appropriately.  When they are done, look at their hands under the black light again.  There will be spots they missed - this should be related back to how we can miss germs if we don't use proper hand washing technique.  This is a great time to reinforce that proper technique.

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 Gloria the Morning Glory earning went!