Clover: Use Resources Wisely - Green 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.

1.  Read Clover's story and discuss it

Clover's story is in the Girl's Guide to Girl Scouting.  Clover the Clover is the eighth petal of ten that you will learn about in this guide.  Clover's petal is about learning what it means to use resources wisely.  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 Clover's story:

The Earth Book, by Todd Parr

I Can Save the Earth!:One Little Monster Learns to Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, by Alison Inches

The Tree Lady: The True Story of How One Tree Loving Woman Changed A City Forever, by H. Joseph Hopkins

2.  Make a collage

The Girl's guide suggests a magazine collage is made for this requirement - that's definitely an option!  With my girls, I wanted something a little more involved.

Supplies:

Worn, Old Crayons

Wax Paper

Iron

Hand Held Cheese Grater for each group

Pretty Paper

Paper Plates

What I did was ask the girls to collect old, broken crayons for a week.  They all went home, and looked for crayons. By the next meeting, we had a pretty good stockpile of crayons.  We sorted them into similar color groups, and split into 3 groups. I only have 6 girls, so this was a good amount of groups.  

1.  Each group used the cheese grater to grate the crayons. I like the hand held ones you drop the item into, to keep little fingers safe.  

2.  Once all crayons are grated, pile up the shavings on a few paper plates, and have each girl pick one pretty paper.

3.  Have the girls get whatever shavings/colors they want, and place them on their paper.  They can make a design, or they can draw in the shavings.

4.  This part should be done by a leader if you have small girls: Place a piece of wax paper over the wax design, and lay the hot iron on it.  Don't rub the iron, because it may smear the wax.  Just place it on the paper for a few seconds, lift, and do again until all the wax is melted.  

5.  When you are finished, just lift the wax paper and you'll be left with a beautiful picture.

**Another variation on this project is to use two pieces of wax paper, and then cut out shapes to hang as sun catchers!

3.  Practice being resourceful

My favorite thing to do with this part of this petal is a a girl scout scavenger hunt!  Some troops do this petal earlier in the year so they have the girl scout scavenger hunt sooner.

A girl scout scavenger hunt is a great way to gather resources when you are a new troop.  You (as a troop, or even as a leader) make a list of things that your troop needs. The list I use is: 

• Markers
• Crayons
• Construction Paper
• Scissors
• Glue
• Glue Sticks
• Hole Punch
• Computer Paper
• Embellishments
• Colored Pencils
• Felt
• Fabric Scraps
• Paint
• Paint Brushes
• Notebook

Then I give each girl a list, and ask them to look around their homes and rooms to see if there is anything they find that we could use - or resuse - to be resourceful, rather than spending money we don't yet have on these supplies. 

The girls dig this, and I do it once a year (even past the age we do petals) and it keeps our troop pretty well supplied!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 Clover the Clover earning went!