Brownies, year 1, meeting 4

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.