Daisies: Yellow Petal

This meeting we worked on our yellow petal for being Friendly & Helpful. First off, we talked about different ways to be friendly. I asked each girl to name one way to be friendly, and we went all the way around until someone said, "Always say 'please' and 'thank you'" and then I paused and said, "Yes! And we'll get back to that in just a minute."

We finished up letting everyone who wanted have a turn with a suggestion, then went back to the "please" and "thank you" one.

As part of earning one of their Brownie badges, another troop had made Happy Birthday cards for our girls, to celebrate Juliette Low's birthday. To work on our own yellow petal badge, we made Thank You cards for each of the girls in the Brownie troop (this would work well for Being a Sister to Every Girl Scout -- violet petal -- as well).

We talked about the importance of always saying "thank you," whether it be in person or in writing. Since the girls from the Brownie troop weren't there in person, we were making them thank you cards. Our girls used foam stickers and markers on construction paper.

During snack, my co-leader read the girls a story about helping your friends, and working together. Afterwards, we passed out more construction paper, pencils, markers, and scissors, and had the girls make "Helping Hands."

After tracing the hands and cutting them out, the girls colored them and wrote "A Daisy Was Here" on each one.

The girls put the hands in their folders to take home (each made at least three), with the assignment of doing helpful things around the house, and leaving a handprint where the helpful deed was done. Once all three hands had been used, the yellow petal could be ironed onto her vest!

Before the meeting ended, we scrubbed the tables really, really well and left a big handprint drawing on the board with a note, "Daisies were here!" for the art teacher, whose room we use as our meeting place.

Doing extra things like this helps show the girls to always clean up after themselves (and leave things even cleaner than we found them), to say thank you, and help someone who's been kind enough to do something nice for us.

**A personal note**

Girl Scouts has a wonderfully comprehensive approach for Daisies in the blue book and Journey books, and of course these are designed in accordance with Juliette Low's ideals (see below); the point as we go is not to earn badges as rewards, but to become proficient in these skills and wear the badges to show others they can rely on us to have those skills.

However, when you're dealing with five-, six-, and seven-year-olds, immediate gratification and tangible rewards can be much easier concepts for them to grasp than the notion of skill mastery.

In other words, showing what a "smart" girl you are can be a very good tool and reminder in helping the youngest Girl Scouts along the way towards understanding mastery. It doesn't have to be a "better than" approach (as in "I have X number of patches, thus am 'better than so-and-so'"). It can just simply be an "earned reward" one.

Don't forget, Juliette Low also said this (in reference to another mom asking about Girl Scouts): "Why should my daughter be a Girl Scout? FUN!"

So the point in the end is to prepare the girls, but the manner in which we're doing this is to frame it within FUN! And part of the fun is earning badges. Not just to show the world that she is prepared to help and give aid, but that she has completed steps necessary to earn a reward. At this age, the reward is a key factor, and while it may not be as important for some of the girls as the fun (or there may be an equal importance), it can be quite valuable.

Plus, this age is more about helping them memorize and understand the Girl Scout Law: setting the foundation for being prepared, gaining mastery, and continued work on individual responsibility. So we have petals representing each to help with this, but always in a (hopefully) fun way. This prepares them for Brownies and later stages.

While the stories and activities suggested in the official Girl Scout literature may be a perfect fit 100% of the time for many troops, it may not be for yours every single time, and that's okay. You adapt as needed, to meet the needs of your girls, and the situation and environment your troop is in. You make it as fun as you can, and (in my personal view) it's fine to have the badges be viewed as rewards, as long as it's not a competition, nor pointing out one child's accomplishments over another's in a way that can alienate anyone in the troop.

So don't be afraid to veer off slightly from the Girl Scout curriculum, as long as you are meeting your troop's needs, and at the same time instilling in the girls the lessons associated with each skill and petal represented by it.