In the course of Girl Scouting, there are so many important moments. Most will agree that the single most important moment is when a scout receives her Gold Award (from experience, I can tell you, that really is a big deal!). But, before the Gold Award, there are plenty of other important moments as well. When a new scout comes into scouting, they are often "brought into" scouting through an investiture ceremony. The short is that this ceremony welcomes the new scout into the sisterhood of Girl Scouting. Many leaders also hold at the beginning of the year a rededication ceremony, where returning scouts reaffirm their commitment to scouting. Often times, we hold these two ceremonies simultaneously, as they hold near identical meanings (and because we often have a mixture of new and returning girls).
First order of today's meeting was to practice for our investiture and rededication ceremony. I found a cute ceremony online that I adapted for our girls, but more on that later. Once we had our practice out of the way, we continued work on the badge My Family Story (the one that we sent supplies home with the girls at our previous meeting so they could created family trees). The abbreviated version- we went over our family trees and the remaining requirements for the badge (sorry, preggo brain has forgotten them, but this is why I always keep the badge pamphlets with me at meetings!).
Now, onto the important part of the meeting! The ceremony began with the girls standing outside in the hall, and knocked on the door. We asked who was there, and they responded some Girl Scouts. We opened the door and asked them what they wanted. Their response was, to become Brownie Girl Scouts! They then filled in, and we sang the Brownie smile song (a classic!). First, we gave all of our returning girls their Brownie insignia tab and pin. We saved our new girls for the end and read a poem to them about becoming a Girl Scout. After everyone had their pins, we also used this as a chance to hand out our first batch of earned awards. We finished off by reciting the Girl Scout promise (a little backwards, but it worked for us). It was very touching to look at the troop and see all of them wearing their new Brownie pins. Some of our girls have been with us since the very beginning. I hope that all of them will stick with us to the end and one day, we may have the honor of giving them their Gold Award.
Showing posts with label rededication. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rededication. Show all posts
Saturday, November 2, 2013
Saturday, November 17, 2012
Daisies, Year 2, Meeting 5
My Daisies never cease to amaze me. Seriously. These girls are already making waves! Today was just one of many, many reasons why I believe all of theses girls are going to do big things in life.
Before the big hoopla of our investiture and rededication, we had some free time planned to use as a planning session. At the end of last year, we sat down with the girls and asked what they wanted to do. Knowing that we would have a lot of new girls this year, we only planned out the first half of the year. All of the girls came up with amazing ideas! Some of them they aren't old enough to do, but we promised them that when they are old enough, if they still want to do them, we will.
One of the things they asked to do was a second take action project. With the plans for the garden already underway, we figured why not. The girls asked for the opportunity to be able to visit local nursing homes and help out there. I'm not really sure what a Daisy can do at a nursing home, but we are looking into it (so we'll get back to you!).
So, what is an investiture and rededication? An investiture ceremony is when a new scout dedicates herself to Girl Scouting. Traditionally, this takes place or after the fourth meeting of the year. A rededication is for returning scouts who are renewing the promise they first made at their investiture. This also takes place at or after the fourth meeting. This is a very important moment for our scouts!
We resused the poster we made last year and used a more simplified ceremony. The girls began by doing a very simple flag ceremony. We used small, desktop flags (we couldn't really ask a group of six year olds to carry full blown flags), but it still served the purpose. From there, we explained what we were doing, and had each girl place their petal on the board and say what it was. That was followed by giving all of our new girls their insignia tab with the Daisy pin. We then pulled up our returning girls and gave them a special rededication patch. We retired our flags, and so ended our ceremony. Needless to say, our girls did amazing!
Before the big hoopla of our investiture and rededication, we had some free time planned to use as a planning session. At the end of last year, we sat down with the girls and asked what they wanted to do. Knowing that we would have a lot of new girls this year, we only planned out the first half of the year. All of the girls came up with amazing ideas! Some of them they aren't old enough to do, but we promised them that when they are old enough, if they still want to do them, we will.
One of the things they asked to do was a second take action project. With the plans for the garden already underway, we figured why not. The girls asked for the opportunity to be able to visit local nursing homes and help out there. I'm not really sure what a Daisy can do at a nursing home, but we are looking into it (so we'll get back to you!).
So, what is an investiture and rededication? An investiture ceremony is when a new scout dedicates herself to Girl Scouting. Traditionally, this takes place or after the fourth meeting of the year. A rededication is for returning scouts who are renewing the promise they first made at their investiture. This also takes place at or after the fourth meeting. This is a very important moment for our scouts!
We resused the poster we made last year and used a more simplified ceremony. The girls began by doing a very simple flag ceremony. We used small, desktop flags (we couldn't really ask a group of six year olds to carry full blown flags), but it still served the purpose. From there, we explained what we were doing, and had each girl place their petal on the board and say what it was. That was followed by giving all of our new girls their insignia tab with the Daisy pin. We then pulled up our returning girls and gave them a special rededication patch. We retired our flags, and so ended our ceremony. Needless to say, our girls did amazing!
Saturday, August 4, 2012
Investiture and Rededication prep, take two, part one!
New troop, new girls. Traditionally speaking, investitures are supposed to take place around meeting four. I'm not yet sure as to exactly when we will be working this into our fall program, but it's on the list!
At the beginning of last year, we did a cute investiture and rededication that involved a poster with the Daisy petals and a cute "play" about it. So that's out for this year. After flipping through a booklet I got at our local GS store, I got an idea on what we could do, but still keep it within the Daisy theme- ribbons! So, challenge time:
Challenge 1: Do the ribbon theme, and figure out the logistics of it
Challenge 2: Do this as cheaply (inexpensively) as possible
Challenge 3: Figuring out when to do this
Challenge 4: Coming up with "new" dialog for the girls to say during the ceremony
Challenge 5: Figuring out the logistics of the ceremony
Challenge 6: Trying to figuring out the when part
First up, with challenge four- I have a few ideas already. I've been researching how we can do this. It also depends on how many girls we will have to participate, so the exact logistics will have to wait until the time comes. My first idea is to do a cute skit about Juliette Gordon Low. I found an adorable story on scouting web. The story had the girls do various actions for certain words. We worried back in October if the girls would be able to memorize their lines. This is easier since we can do it so that all the girls do the action (that story has one girl at a time doing it). My next idea was to do a series of songs. There's so many more songs we haven't introduced yet, but could. The girls catch on to them quickly, so that would be easy enough to accomplish, and the parents love having moments like that to record. The next idea involves an actual skit, though with how much time we might not have, it might not be the best idea I've had, though still cute. Thankfully, we have some time to decide.
Challenge five isn't entirely horrible. After looking through many resources, I'm sure we'll be able to find a fresh way to do this. Challenge one and two go along with challenge five, but once we sit down and do some solid planning, I know we'll figure it out.
I'm hoping that once recruitment season is over and we have a set meeting place, the logistics of our investiture and rededication will fall right into place. For the most part, we have an idea of where we want to take this, and that's half the battle!
At the beginning of last year, we did a cute investiture and rededication that involved a poster with the Daisy petals and a cute "play" about it. So that's out for this year. After flipping through a booklet I got at our local GS store, I got an idea on what we could do, but still keep it within the Daisy theme- ribbons! So, challenge time:
Challenge 1: Do the ribbon theme, and figure out the logistics of it
Challenge 2: Do this as cheaply (inexpensively) as possible
Challenge 3: Figuring out when to do this
Challenge 4: Coming up with "new" dialog for the girls to say during the ceremony
Challenge 5: Figuring out the logistics of the ceremony
Challenge 6: Trying to figuring out the when part
First up, with challenge four- I have a few ideas already. I've been researching how we can do this. It also depends on how many girls we will have to participate, so the exact logistics will have to wait until the time comes. My first idea is to do a cute skit about Juliette Gordon Low. I found an adorable story on scouting web. The story had the girls do various actions for certain words. We worried back in October if the girls would be able to memorize their lines. This is easier since we can do it so that all the girls do the action (that story has one girl at a time doing it). My next idea was to do a series of songs. There's so many more songs we haven't introduced yet, but could. The girls catch on to them quickly, so that would be easy enough to accomplish, and the parents love having moments like that to record. The next idea involves an actual skit, though with how much time we might not have, it might not be the best idea I've had, though still cute. Thankfully, we have some time to decide.
Challenge five isn't entirely horrible. After looking through many resources, I'm sure we'll be able to find a fresh way to do this. Challenge one and two go along with challenge five, but once we sit down and do some solid planning, I know we'll figure it out.
I'm hoping that once recruitment season is over and we have a set meeting place, the logistics of our investiture and rededication will fall right into place. For the most part, we have an idea of where we want to take this, and that's half the battle!
Thursday, October 6, 2011
Investiture and Rededication prep
Raise your hand if it feels like our little girls were just babies!!! Ok, it's nice to know I'm not the only one with my hand up. Our fearless leader and I started planning our investiture and rededication ceremony the other night. We have a few girls who were Daisies last year, but most of them are new. We did the generic Google search for Girl Scout ceremonies and got a lot of good material to work with. The short version, we took pieces from a few ceremonies we found and smooshed it all together into one big happy thing.
First site we looked into was this one. We thought it was a good jumping point, and we knew we liked the idea of having each girl being able to say something. That lead us to this gem. We took the second part and put that into our ceremony. After that, we started looking for something that we could do to involve candles. Our fearless leader thought it might be a really nice touch (and I agree!). While searching, we stumbled upon (literally, used Stumbleupon) various candle ceremonies and got an idea for what we wanted to put in there.
In the mean time, we worked out the rest of the kinks for the ceremony. Seeing as how each girl will have a line, we made index cards. Each card had the girl's line on it, as well as who she would follow. The lines are short, and very easy. Some of the lines, as you can see from the ceremony above, are representative of the GS law. Next up, was making the board we would be using for the petals. Now comes the fun....
What you will need:
2 poster boards (1 can be in green)
1 roll of velcro, with sticky backing
hot glue gun
glue stick or a bottle of glue
scissors
1 cut out in each of the Daisy colors- blue, light blue, yellow, spring (light) green, red, orange, purple, magenta, green, rose, violet
For the full photo, head over here
2 short candles
1 tall candle, wrapped in yellow ribbon (or already yellow)
For the petals:
Step 1: Print out the petals over 4 sheets of paper (to do this, I used the program Print Shop, which allows you to "blow up" posters)
Step 2: Put together your 4-page "poster" of the petals over a poster board (to give it a "solid" backing)
Step 3: Begin to cut out your petals, but do not cut all the way (this allows you to properly line then up
Step 4: Place your velcro over each petal and the center
Step 5: Place the petals on your green poster board
Step 6: Finish cutting out your petals
Step 7: Using small post its, label each petal (so the girls know where to place it)
Ok, so maybe that was a little bit of overkill, but I'm a bit of a perfectionist (or as my husband puts it, slightly neurotic). In addition to the lines on the note cards, we also wrote which petal each girl will have to place, and who they will speak after. As you will see from our program below, not every girl has a petal to place, but it ended up working out to our benefit. Most of our troop is comprised of first graders, but we have a few kindergartners mixed in. We gave those girls the short lines that had no petals to place (we tried to make it easier on them). It killed me a little because those girls are super smart, but we had to be fair all around.
Obviously, the girls who are rededicating, will not be receiving their pins this year (since they got them last year). We didn't want to leave them out though, so I had a nifty little idea. I love working with Fimo (polymer clay), so I decided to make them some cute pins that we could give them (a "fun" pin). Now, onto the fun stuff!
Ceremony
Girls will line up and walk in, then line up at designated spot
ALL: Pledge of Allegiance
Leader: Welcome and thank you everyone for coming out tonight for troop {troop #}’s Investiture and Rededication ceremony. I’m {leader name}, and this is my Co-leader {co-leader name}.
Co-leader: Tonight we will be inducting our new girl scouts and welcoming back our returning girl scouts. We’d like to start out with one of the songs we start our meetings out with.
Opening song, I’m a Little Daisy
Petal Ceremony.....
Leader: Troop {#}, you are about to become Daisy Girl Scouts. Together we will
explore all the fun and adventures of Girl Scouting. Do you know about scouting?
Girl 1: The founder of Girl Scouts was named Juliette Gordon Low.
Girl 2: Her nickname was "Daisy".
Girl 3: We are named after her.
Girl 4: Together we will learn more about Girl Scouting.
Girl 5: The Girl Scout Promise is the pledge that tells us how to be good citizens and scouts.
(Place the blue Promise Center in center of felt board.)
Co-leader: In Daisy Girl Scouts, the girls will earn the 10 Learning Petals. Each petal is a different color, which represents a different phrase from the Girl Scout Law.
ALL: I will do my best to:
Girl 6: (place light blue petal on felt board)
Be honest and fair
Girl 7: (place yellow petal on felt board)
Be friendly and helpful
Girl 8: (place spring green petal on felt board)
Be considerate and caring
Girl 9: (place red petal on felt board)
Be courageous and strong
Girl 10: (place orange petal on felt board)
Be responsible for what I say and do
Girl 11: (place purple petal on felt board)
Respect myself and others
Girl 12: (place magenta petal on felt board)
Respect authority
Girl 13: (place green petal on felt board)
Use resources wisely
Girl 14: (place rose petal on felt board)
Make the world a better place
Girl 15: (place violet petal on felt board)
Be a sister to every Girl Scout.
ALL: Raise right hands and recite the Girl Scout Promise
On my honor, I will try:
To serve God and my country
And to live by the Girl Scout Law!
Pinning Ceremony
Leader: Each living thing begins as a small ray of light, of hope. The seed needs to be nurtured in order to grow. In Girl Scouts, these rays of hope are the girls of the world. Each seed is planted with love. The value of each young girl is recognized by older people-parents, siblings, friends, neighbors, leaders, and community members. Our Daisies have been nurtured in their homes and in their community. They are now ready to bloom!
Co-leader: Troop {#}'s Daisy meetings will be a place where each girl's individuality is valued. It will be a place where the importance of caring for ourselves and others will be emphasized. We will learn about our world and ways to care for nature. We will have fun! Our troop will be a place for each girl to live the new Girl Scout motto, "Girl Scouts. Where Girls Grow Strong!" We are here to greet the newest buds in the Girl Scout world. It is time for our new Daisies to emerge!
Leader: Our precious Daisies, at this time, you will officially become Daisy Girl Scouts. As we place this trefoil pin on your ribbon, notice that we will be placing it upside down. Each time you do a good turn, your parents can turn it for you, until you have it right side up.
Co-leader: We hope that by our next meeting, all of you have your pins right side up. We can’t wait to hear about your good turns! At this time, we will call you one by one to receive your pins.
(pin girls)
Leader: In addition to our newest members, we have several girls who are rededicating themselves tonight. I've worked with these scouts, and helped them to grow. I'm sharing them now, but want you to know... These girls are precious, as precious can be. Love them, take care of them, and you will see a bright new memory with every day. They grow in such a special way.
(pin girls)
Candle Ceremony
Leader: This candle represents the spirit of Girl Scouting. It burns eternally to represent the friendship and fun we will enjoy together.
(lights center, big yellow, candle)
Co-leader: This candle represents tonight’s investiture by welcoming our new girl scout sisters
(lights first small candle)
Leader: This candle represents our girl scout sisters who have rededicated themselves to a new year of scouts
(lights other small candle)
ALL: Line up to do a semi-circle friendship circle (leader on each side) and sing the Friendship song, turning out when done
Make new friends,
But keep the old,
One is silver and the other’s gold!
Co-leader: Let us pause for a moment in this rededication and investiture, quite mindful of the Girl Scout Promise and Law to uphold, remembering our duty, to serve God and country, and to live our lives by the Girl Scout law. And so when we travel away from each other, we will still be alike in our hearts and our minds. Girl Scouting will guide us, our Promise will bring us together as the great world of the Girl Scouting sisterhood.
Leader: We proudly present to you the Daisies of troop {#}!
In addition to the pins, we made a few fun things for the girls. Our fearless leader is a nifty knitter, and knitted some fabulous hats for the girls. I made some awesome pencils for the girls much like these pencils, and we made some cool certificates for them. At this very moment, I still need to make rededication certificates, but I did finish these nifty investiture certificates:
Here's the full version in case you want to use it:
Investiture Certificate
And, we also made a rededication certificate that is very similar to the investiture certificate:
For full version, go here
The day of our ceremony is also going to be our kick off the year party for our meeting. Our plan is to practice the ceremony once or twice, and then let the girls let loose and have fun. We're going to have some fun games for them to play. An hour after our meeting we will be having the ceremony, with a pot luck dinner to follow. We still have a few weeks to go before our ceremony, so that means the girls should all remember their lines by then (we sent out the ceremony cards after meeting 3, and our ceremony will be after meeting 6).
First site we looked into was this one. We thought it was a good jumping point, and we knew we liked the idea of having each girl being able to say something. That lead us to this gem. We took the second part and put that into our ceremony. After that, we started looking for something that we could do to involve candles. Our fearless leader thought it might be a really nice touch (and I agree!). While searching, we stumbled upon (literally, used Stumbleupon) various candle ceremonies and got an idea for what we wanted to put in there.
In the mean time, we worked out the rest of the kinks for the ceremony. Seeing as how each girl will have a line, we made index cards. Each card had the girl's line on it, as well as who she would follow. The lines are short, and very easy. Some of the lines, as you can see from the ceremony above, are representative of the GS law. Next up, was making the board we would be using for the petals. Now comes the fun....
What you will need:
2 poster boards (1 can be in green)
1 roll of velcro, with sticky backing
hot glue gun
glue stick or a bottle of glue
scissors
1 cut out in each of the Daisy colors- blue, light blue, yellow, spring (light) green, red, orange, purple, magenta, green, rose, violet
For the full photo, head over here
2 short candles
1 tall candle, wrapped in yellow ribbon (or already yellow)
For the petals:
Step 1: Print out the petals over 4 sheets of paper (to do this, I used the program Print Shop, which allows you to "blow up" posters)
Step 2: Put together your 4-page "poster" of the petals over a poster board (to give it a "solid" backing)
Step 3: Begin to cut out your petals, but do not cut all the way (this allows you to properly line then up
Step 4: Place your velcro over each petal and the center
Step 5: Place the petals on your green poster board
Step 6: Finish cutting out your petals
Step 7: Using small post its, label each petal (so the girls know where to place it)
Ok, so maybe that was a little bit of overkill, but I'm a bit of a perfectionist (or as my husband puts it, slightly neurotic). In addition to the lines on the note cards, we also wrote which petal each girl will have to place, and who they will speak after. As you will see from our program below, not every girl has a petal to place, but it ended up working out to our benefit. Most of our troop is comprised of first graders, but we have a few kindergartners mixed in. We gave those girls the short lines that had no petals to place (we tried to make it easier on them). It killed me a little because those girls are super smart, but we had to be fair all around.
Obviously, the girls who are rededicating, will not be receiving their pins this year (since they got them last year). We didn't want to leave them out though, so I had a nifty little idea. I love working with Fimo (polymer clay), so I decided to make them some cute pins that we could give them (a "fun" pin). Now, onto the fun stuff!
Ceremony
Girls will line up and walk in, then line up at designated spot
ALL: Pledge of Allegiance
Leader: Welcome and thank you everyone for coming out tonight for troop {troop #}’s Investiture and Rededication ceremony. I’m {leader name}, and this is my Co-leader {co-leader name}.
Co-leader: Tonight we will be inducting our new girl scouts and welcoming back our returning girl scouts. We’d like to start out with one of the songs we start our meetings out with.
Opening song, I’m a Little Daisy
Petal Ceremony.....
Leader: Troop {#}, you are about to become Daisy Girl Scouts. Together we will
explore all the fun and adventures of Girl Scouting. Do you know about scouting?
Girl 1: The founder of Girl Scouts was named Juliette Gordon Low.
Girl 2: Her nickname was "Daisy".
Girl 3: We are named after her.
Girl 4: Together we will learn more about Girl Scouting.
Girl 5: The Girl Scout Promise is the pledge that tells us how to be good citizens and scouts.
(Place the blue Promise Center in center of felt board.)
Co-leader: In Daisy Girl Scouts, the girls will earn the 10 Learning Petals. Each petal is a different color, which represents a different phrase from the Girl Scout Law.
ALL: I will do my best to:
Girl 6: (place light blue petal on felt board)
Be honest and fair
Girl 7: (place yellow petal on felt board)
Be friendly and helpful
Girl 8: (place spring green petal on felt board)
Be considerate and caring
Girl 9: (place red petal on felt board)
Be courageous and strong
Girl 10: (place orange petal on felt board)
Be responsible for what I say and do
Girl 11: (place purple petal on felt board)
Respect myself and others
Girl 12: (place magenta petal on felt board)
Respect authority
Girl 13: (place green petal on felt board)
Use resources wisely
Girl 14: (place rose petal on felt board)
Make the world a better place
Girl 15: (place violet petal on felt board)
Be a sister to every Girl Scout.
ALL: Raise right hands and recite the Girl Scout Promise
On my honor, I will try:
To serve God and my country
And to live by the Girl Scout Law!
Pinning Ceremony
Leader: Each living thing begins as a small ray of light, of hope. The seed needs to be nurtured in order to grow. In Girl Scouts, these rays of hope are the girls of the world. Each seed is planted with love. The value of each young girl is recognized by older people-parents, siblings, friends, neighbors, leaders, and community members. Our Daisies have been nurtured in their homes and in their community. They are now ready to bloom!
Co-leader: Troop {#}'s Daisy meetings will be a place where each girl's individuality is valued. It will be a place where the importance of caring for ourselves and others will be emphasized. We will learn about our world and ways to care for nature. We will have fun! Our troop will be a place for each girl to live the new Girl Scout motto, "Girl Scouts. Where Girls Grow Strong!" We are here to greet the newest buds in the Girl Scout world. It is time for our new Daisies to emerge!
Leader: Our precious Daisies, at this time, you will officially become Daisy Girl Scouts. As we place this trefoil pin on your ribbon, notice that we will be placing it upside down. Each time you do a good turn, your parents can turn it for you, until you have it right side up.
Co-leader: We hope that by our next meeting, all of you have your pins right side up. We can’t wait to hear about your good turns! At this time, we will call you one by one to receive your pins.
(pin girls)
Leader: In addition to our newest members, we have several girls who are rededicating themselves tonight. I've worked with these scouts, and helped them to grow. I'm sharing them now, but want you to know... These girls are precious, as precious can be. Love them, take care of them, and you will see a bright new memory with every day. They grow in such a special way.
(pin girls)
Candle Ceremony
Leader: This candle represents the spirit of Girl Scouting. It burns eternally to represent the friendship and fun we will enjoy together.
(lights center, big yellow, candle)
Co-leader: This candle represents tonight’s investiture by welcoming our new girl scout sisters
(lights first small candle)
Leader: This candle represents our girl scout sisters who have rededicated themselves to a new year of scouts
(lights other small candle)
ALL: Line up to do a semi-circle friendship circle (leader on each side) and sing the Friendship song, turning out when done
Make new friends,
But keep the old,
One is silver and the other’s gold!
Co-leader: Let us pause for a moment in this rededication and investiture, quite mindful of the Girl Scout Promise and Law to uphold, remembering our duty, to serve God and country, and to live our lives by the Girl Scout law. And so when we travel away from each other, we will still be alike in our hearts and our minds. Girl Scouting will guide us, our Promise will bring us together as the great world of the Girl Scouting sisterhood.
Leader: We proudly present to you the Daisies of troop {#}!
In addition to the pins, we made a few fun things for the girls. Our fearless leader is a nifty knitter, and knitted some fabulous hats for the girls. I made some awesome pencils for the girls much like these pencils, and we made some cool certificates for them. At this very moment, I still need to make rededication certificates, but I did finish these nifty investiture certificates:
Here's the full version in case you want to use it:
Investiture Certificate
And, we also made a rededication certificate that is very similar to the investiture certificate:
For full version, go here
The day of our ceremony is also going to be our kick off the year party for our meeting. Our plan is to practice the ceremony once or twice, and then let the girls let loose and have fun. We're going to have some fun games for them to play. An hour after our meeting we will be having the ceremony, with a pot luck dinner to follow. We still have a few weeks to go before our ceremony, so that means the girls should all remember their lines by then (we sent out the ceremony cards after meeting 3, and our ceremony will be after meeting 6).
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