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!

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!

Baking Fun Patch

One of the MANY great things that girl scouts do, is to complete 'fun' patches.  Fun patches are just that - fun.  They technically have no requirements, and you can purchase them through the council, or through a variety of websites - www.snappylogos.com is a go to for us.

When my girls do a fun patch, our troop implements some rules.  This isn't for everyone, but we really like this process.  We choose a patch, and then we choose 3 requirements to go with it.  One requirement must be a hands on activity, one must be education based, and the third can be whatever they wish.

The patch we will discuss in this post is the Baking Fun Patch.  The girls felt a need to create - really, who doesn't want to create something, some way.  This was a fun patch to do, and offered a lot of variety within it, so the girls could experiment and make their own designs.

The three requirements the girls chose for this one were:

- Baking Safety Guidelines

- Sampling a variety of baking ingredients

- Bake cupcakes in a jar

We started this patch work, most appropriately, with baking safety guidelines.  I first asked the girls what kind of safety guidelines they knew, and then handed out a small cheat sheet to each girl.

The gist of it is, wash everything, be safe, and bake with an adult.  These girls are 5 and 6, so these are pretty all encompassing guidelines.  I did find some other great sources for more detailed guidelines for older children.  You can find them here:

• Safety Tips for Baking with Kids
• Safety Rules for Kids in the Kitchen
• Half Term Apple Crumble and Safety in the Kitchen

The next thing we did was sample a variety of baking ingredients.  This doesn't have a purpose beyond letting the girls familiarize themselves with a variety of ingredients.  This is likely the first foray into the kitchen for many of your girls, and tasting or sampling is a great way to learn about these things.  We used this template, and sat the girls around a table.  They each got a cute little set of measuring spoons from the dollar store, and used them to take a little bit of each item on the list. 

 Things listed were ingredients such as vanilla extract, brown sugar, and chocolate chips.  We had each girl taste a small bit (emphasis on small - some of these are pretty bitter and not tasty!)  Then they used some of the senses to describe the ingredient - taste, touch and smell.

This was a great experience - the girls really delved into the ingredients and discussed them in depth.  It was a lot of fun to watch, and the girls really became familiar with many of the most common baking ingredients.

The last task on our list was to bake cupcakes in a jar.  This was a GREAT experience with the girls - they really enjoyed baking AND the cupcakes were baked in a jar, which made them SO simple to take home. 

Supplies: 

• 1 Box of White Cake Mix (and ingredients needed for it)
• Food Coloring
• Empty Baby Food Jars
• Sprinkles
• Whip, in a Can
• Cookie Sheets
• 1 Large Bowl
• 6 Small Bowls

You can use cake mix from scratch, but I have Daisies, so it's in everyone's best interest in my troop to have the simplicity of a box mix!

Our colored cake mix!

1.  Mix the box cake mix, according the the instructions on the box.  Once you've finished with this, scoop the batter into 6 separate bowls.  

2.  Each bowl is going to have a different color - we chose the colors of the rainbow this time, but I also liked the idea of shades of blue (since we are daisy's).  This was a LOT of fun for my first graders - they really enjoyed dropping the colors into the and mixing them to make a variety of colors. 

3.  Next, fill the jars with the cake mix.  Mix, layer and swirl the colors for fun designs.  I put each color in a large ziploc (like you would for frosting) and cut the corner off, so the girls could just squeeze the cake batter into their baby food jars.  My girls were *very* creative!

4. Place the baby food jars on a cookie sheet and bake the jars (baby food jars are tempered, so they won't have an issue in the oven) for the appropriate cupcake time.  

**The one thing we DID learn, a little to late, is that you CANNOT fill the jars as full as we filled them in the first and second jar in this picture...because it bakes over! LOL!**

5.  With the excess cake batter that baked over, we just lopped it off (leveled it), and set it aside. Set the cupcakes aside to cool, once they have been leveled. 

6.  The final step for the cupcakes is to top with whip and sprinkles.  It made a super cute, super simple cupcake the girls could take home, and was a great serving size!

7.  Since we are girl scouts, we didn't want to wast anything, so once we were done with all the cupcakes, we decided to have a taste of cupcakes - and we took the part we cut off earlier, and added some whip and sprinkles to it! 

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial! If you do this badge, please tell me about it! How did it go - did you do it the same, or tweak it a little? I love hearing about other's experiences. 

Arts and Crafts Fun Patch

One of the MANY great things that girl scouts do, is to complete 'fun' patches.  Fun patches are just that - fun.  They technically have no requirements, and you can purchase them through the council, or through a variety of websites - www.snappylogos.com is a go to for us.

When my girls do a fun patch, our troop implements some rules.  This isn't for everyone, but we really like this process.  We choose a patch, and then we choose 3 requirements to go with it.  One requirement must be a hands on activity, one must be education based, and the third can be whatever they wish.

The patch we will talk about in this post is the arts and crafts fun patch.  As a topic, it's pretty open ended, so I looked for something that would be cute and fun to do.

The three requirements chose were: 

- Get excited about art

- Learn how art benefits people

- Make decorative string ornaments

The first thing we did was 'get excited about art.'  We took a trip to the local art museum - Cameron Art Museum, here in Wilmington, NC.  They have this pretty cool event once a month or so called 'Kids at CAM'.  It is an event that takes place on the weekend, usually Saturday, and lasts a few hours.  The museum hosts an artistic event that allows admission by donation - which makes it extremely affordable for everyone, in all income brackets, to attend.  It is an event designed to inspire creativity in art, and every month uses a different medium - from artistic dance, to food design, to paint, and more.  It is a great time for families AND troops, and got my little ladies very excited and pumped up for art!

The next thing we did was talk about the ways that art benefits people - all people.  I asked my girls to answer 3 questions.

1. How does art help people?
1. Art helps people in a variety of ways. For small children - ie. toddlers - it helps lay the foundation for their future education.  For school aged children, it helps expand their imagination.  For adults, it can be relaxing and keep their minds sharp.  It also calms people, makes them happy, etc.
2. How does art help you?
1. Everyone will have their own personal interpretation to this question.  For me personally, my art is through music, and creating music allows me to focus, and provides great stress relief.  It makes me happy, and content, and gives me a sense of accomplishment. 
3. In what new way do you think art could help you?
1. This question will allow your girls to expand upon and build their awareness of the benefits of art.  If they need guidance, you could say something like, Do you think creating art could help build your self esteem? Or, do you think art can help you express yourself?

The last thing we did was an art project.  It was simple, yet complex enough for the girls to have a need for focus and concentration.  We made a version of yarn ball ornament, or home decor.  

Supplies:

• Embroidery string
• Water bottle - one per girl
• Homemade mod podge (a 1:1 mixture of glue and water)
• Small 5 in balloons - 9 in balloons are really too much for this. 
• Cookie sheet lined with parchment paper
• Drill
• Tweezers

1. A value pack of embroidery thread works well for this, because there are many colors available.  Have each girl pick one or two colors.  If they just pick one color, they can use the whole skein, and if they pick two, you'll want to help them get 1/2 skein from each color.
2. Make home made mod podge.  This is a 1:1 mixture of white glue and water and is simple to make.  As you can see, I took a bottle of white glue, and poured it into an empty water bottle.  Then I filled the glue bottle with water and dumped that in too.  We closed the bottle, and my girl shook it up until it was mixed. I would use about 1/4 c per girl, so each 4 oz bottle of glue should be enough for 4 girls.  You'll want to put 1/4 c in each empty bottle. 
3. This next step is a *LEADER ONLY* step.  Use the drill to drill a small hole in the lid of each water bottle.  I used a 1/8" bit - it doesn't need to be huge - just big enough for the embroidery string to fit through. When you are finished, hand out the lids to the girls. 
4. Have the girls wind the embroidery thread around two fingers, and the grab one end.  The other end will be shoved into the bottle - it should look like this photo to the right.  **Only do ONE color at a time - repeat steps 4 and 5 if you are doing more than one color**
5. Each girl will want to thread the piece hanging out of the bottle through the cap of the bottle.  Then they can secure the lid on the bottle.
6. Next, blow up a balloon for each girl, and hand them out.  Have them start to draw the string
   
   out of the bottle, and wrap it around the balloon.  It needs to be wrapped pretty securely - nice and tight, because as it dries, it will loosen.  **Don't tie your starting end to the balloon - just hold it down with your finger, otherwise you will have a struggle to remove the balloon at the end.
7. When you come to the end of the string, just lay it down on the balloon - you wont be able to tell where it begins and ends once it dries.  Everyone can place their balloon on a lined cookie sheet to dry for 24 hrs.  You'll want to rotate them every six hours so they don't end up with any flat sides.
8. Once they are completely dry, gently pop the balloon, and draw it out with a tweezers.  The end result is a super cute thread ball, that can be placed in a bowl, on a shelf, or hung from the ceiling. 

These took concentration, and sometimes caused failures.  This was good though - while you are working with wet materials, they are very pliable, and easily fixed. Its a good thing for the little ladies to encounter struggle and figure out how to get through it.  In the end, they were all very proud of their decor, and seemed to really enjoy the process.

This craft can *also* be used to complete one of the 4 requirements from the girl guide Craft badge!

If you have any questions, please let me know! I hope your troops enjoy this patch work.  If you try it out, please let me know how it turns out and how you tweaked it to fit your troop! 

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