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!

Science 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 Science Fun Patch.  This was a very cool patch to earn.  It was girl planned - we had two of our girls that wanted to plan it, so they got together and came up with the steps.  Then I helped them implement it. 

The three requirements that the girls chose were:

-Interview with a scientist

-Learn about the scientific method

-Complete 2 experiments

The interview was simple for us - my husband is a scientist, professionally.  He was easily roped into talking to the girls!  However, if you don't happen to live with a scientist, don't fret! Professionals LOVE to help girl scouts, and I have asked over 20 professionals to speak to my girls at various times.  I've been turned down once.  You just have to ask!

We asked our scientist to talk about his job and profession for 5-7 minutes, and we asked each girl to come prepared with one question to ask him.

Our next step was to learn about the scientific method.  I love the scientific method - its so simple, straightforward, and kid friendly.  It matches a child's inherent nature to discover, and learn.  The parts of the scientific method are:

1. Purpose: Ask a question.  This is simple for kids - they do it all day long.

2. Research: Gather information about your topic - learn all you can.

3. Hypothesis: An educated guess on how things work.  Ideally, the hypothesis goes like this: "If _____[I do this] _____, then _____[this]_____ will happen."

4: Experiment: This is where you test your hypothesis.  Essentially the meat and potatoes of science. And the most fun for littles!

5. Analysis: What did you learn? Analyze the data - was your hypothesis true or false? Draw a conclusion.

6. Conclusion: Report your findings.

Experiments used with this patch:

1. Fizzy Fun -

Materials:

-Vinegar

-Baking Soda Bombs

-Plastic Shot Glasses (I got 12, for 6 girls)

-Mini Pie Tins

-Dawn Dish Soap

I made baking soda 'bombs' (I added water to baking soda to make a thick paste, and added some glitter to make it pretty, then formed them into balls, and let them dry).

Each girl will get a pie tin, a baking soda bomb, an empty shot glass, a shot glass half full of vinegar and 2 drops of dawn soap.

They will make a hypothesis on what they think will happen when they mix the two - Vinegar is an acid, and baking soda is a base.

Then the girls will pour in the vinegar. The cups will bubble a glittery white bubbly substance over the edge of the cups into the pie tin.

Afterwards, we will discuss what happened and why. Acids and Bases make a chemical reaction where CO2 is released and thats what causes the bubbling, etc.

2. Colorful Milk Magic

Materials:

-Whole fat milk

-Clear plastic plates

-Food coloring

-Q tip

-Dawn Dishsoap

-Papertowels

Each girl will get a clear plastic plate (clear is important), a paper towel with a few drops of dishsoap on it, a q tip. I will add milk to the girls plates - enough to cover the surface, and one by one they will each add 4 drops to their milk (at the points of a cross shape, if that makes sense).

They will hypothesize what they think will happen when they touch the plain q tip to the center of the milk, and then what will happen when they dip the q tip n soap, then touch it to the center of the milk.

With the first, nothing will happen. With the second, the color will rush away from the q tip. It may also get drawn down into the milk and appear in another place, due to the convection that happens.

With this experiment, we will talk about surface tension. Food coloring is less dense than milk, so it didnt move when they first place it. The soap, however, lowers the surface tension of the milk, by dissolving fat molecules (which is why you want to use whole fat milk).

When you add the soap, the surface tension inside the soap drop has a lower surface tension, so the milk (higher surface tension) draws the surface away from that spot, taking the food coloring with it.

Depending on the cognitive understanding of your girls, you'll want to modify the explanation to be somewhere between that^^ and, the soap breaks down the fat in the milk, which causes the movement of the color.

Here is the template for the lab write ups in the picture!

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!