Daisies Year 2, Meeting 14

Just a few days after meeting 13, my appendix decided it was high time to become a nuisance and burst.  Therefore, what should have been our end of the year meeting ended up being canceled. So instead, I will share with you all what we would have done in case anyone needs any ideas on meetings.

With Christmas around the corner, and the girls being restless to do something downright fun, we thought today would be a great opportunity for that.  But, this being our troop meeting, I couldn't just have a simple fun day, so of course I had to tie in the fun with something Girl Scouty- considerate and caring!  Our plan for the meeting was to read Zinni's story first, and then let the girls make Christmas presents for their family and friends.

It's no secret that we as troops are often hard up for money, so when we do crafting activities, we have to think outside of the box for ways to do amazing things with spending little or no money.  Thankfully, places like Pinterest, Stumbleupon, Crafster and more have great ideas for projects you can do with recycled materials.  Our first idea was to make little table ornaments with toilet paper rolls.  You can either decorate it with construction paper and pipe cleaners, or color them, whichever floats your boat!  Our next idea was to let the girls make whatever they want to make with popsicle sticks.  The most common one I've seen done is reindeer, but you can also make things like stars, Christmas trees, snowmen, toy soldiers and more.  The girls at least had options on what they could do.  Our last option, if we had enough time, was finger printed snowmen on an ornament.  The principle is that you take a simple bulb ornament (a plastic one) and let the girls dip their fingers in white paint.  They then make a whole finger print around the ornament.  Once it's dry, you can decorate with sharpies to give your snowmen the final touches.

We were planning on finishing up our meeting with a patch ceremony.  All of our new girls earned their blue center, plus we had a few journeys, petals and a lot of fun patches to hand out.  I'm a little bummed we had to skip out, but we're having another patch ceremony in the Spring (so we can have all the pomp and circumstance then).

Daisies, Year 2, Meeting 13

When you have a group of first graders, how do you touch on the subject of religion while not offending anyone?  Case in point- within our troop, we represent approximately 6 different religions!

My Promise, My Faith is a pin that a scout can earn every year.  Last year when we introduced it to the girls, we tried touching on all the major religions and tied it all into one big lesson- it doesn't matter what your religion is, they all have the same core beliefs (be nice to everyone, be a good person, ect.).  This year we got a little more specific. The first half of the day we tried relating certain aspects of our religions back to pieces of the Girl Scout law.  We learned that as a whole, the Girl Scout law is represented in all our religions.  After that, we got into our religions and learned about special holidays we celebrate, and why they are so important.

This year's lesson was shorter than last year, but seeing as how it was the follow up, the girls already knew quite a bit.  We finished up by playing a few games and just having some fun!