Brownies & Daisies: Cookies Part Three--Arrival and Delivery

Once your cookies have arrived, organize a time for your Cookie Mom/Co-Leader to meet to pick up the cookies from your Service Unit. The sooner the better! Be sure that ALL of your parents know well in advance when cookie pick-up day will be, as well as what their totals due are.

Make sure wherever the cookies are to be stored has air conditioning and is enclosed so no pets/children have access. Remember that even in cold weather months, chocolate can melt if it's left in a sunny window or car.

You will likely need:
- sticky-notes
- pencils/pens
- calculator
- list of prices per box
- initial order list, including $$ totals due
- list of booth order cookies (if you ordered extras for a booth, and/or for add-on orders)


Be sure to set aside your Booth sale cookies immediately. That way if you have parents picking up cookies and asking (yay!) if they can pick up an extra box of Thin Mints, etc., then you will be able to keep a running list of how it affects your Booth inventory. And then once all the cookies have been picked up, you will have a good idea of whether you need to go to your Council's Cookie Cupboard for more.


Organize the rest of the cookies so that each girl's order is organized and ready for her parents.

Make each parent recount with you when s/he comes to pick up the cookies. Both of you should sign a receipt. In our troop, I made the parents write the troop a check for the total of their cookie orders. They post-dated it for the Friday before the date our Council started debiting money from our account. That gave the parents plenty of time to deliver the cookies, and helped reduce the time and confusion among the troop that otherwise would've been spent collecting money in bits and pieces along the way.

And it allowed parents to deliver at their own pace, as well. It also prevents any issues of parents not paying for cookies they ordered (unless a check bounces, but you can take that up with your local Council. There should be information detailing all this in your Cookie Training packet).

While some people call before delivering cookies, we just went around the neighborhood at the same time as we'd taken orders, and anyone who wasn't home got a note in their mailbox:

Everyone else got emails, PMs on Facebook, etc., and phone calls until finally all the cookies were gone! Don't forget to take change with you when you deliver. :)

Remember, if you have to ship any cookies, make sure to protect them well with bubblewrap, and label them well (fragile, perishable, do not heat, etc.).

Once your cookie sales are complete, be sure to double check all you incentive count and orders and make sure to get sizing information for any t-shirts earned.

EDIT: I wanted to address the "Money Leaves" badges Daisies can earn here. Girl Scouts requires that the leaves be split by year, meaning one set of two leaves the first year of Daisies, and the second set the second year. You can find more information on the leaves here. 

And don't forget the Cookie Sale Activity Pin:

Daisies: Dark Green Petal

How to explain the difference between green petal and pink petal?

This one stymied me. But, being a huge proponent of the three Rs (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle), I decided it really didn't matter. I'll just focus on all of it for both petals.

So here's what we did for the green one:

Who can tell me what Resources are? (Things we use.)

What are examples of Natural Resources? (Water, air, land, etc.)

What is being wise? (It's more than just being smart; it's also thinking ahead.)

How can we be wise about using resources?

Well, water is a resource. When you brush your teeth, do you think you should let the water in the faucet run while you're brushing? Or turn it off until you're ready to rinse? ("TURN IT OFF!" they all shouted.)

Right! If you turn it off, you're saving water. You're using water wisely.

I held up a piece of paper and said, "This is a resource too. Where does paper come from?" ("TREES!")

So if you are coloring, should you use one side of a page, or two? Which saves paper?

Since we meet in a classroom in our school, I always bring a recycle and garbage can with me. We always put our recyclables in our own can, and I take them home with me to recycle. It's even on our Kaper Chart, that one girl is in charge of making sure recyclables so in the right can.

So I showed them the recycle can and the garbage can and asked which is using resources wisely. Why?

Then I held up one side of our coloring page (from this site):

And I held up a plastic, disposable water bottle (the kind that crinkles when you squeeze it.)

Reduce means using only what you need. (Like the water when brushing your teeth. And I shook the water in the bottle.)

Reuse means using something more than once. (Like drinking from a washable water bottle instead of plastic ones that would melt in the dishwasher if you tried to wash them.)

Recycle means turning something old into something new. (I set down the paper, and held up the bottle and this pen.)

I'd found the pen the week before, and brought it in to show them. I told them that the best thing was to drink water out of a bottle that could reused and washed and reused over and over. But if you needed to drink from a non-reusable bottle, be sure to recycle it, because it can be melted down and made into other things (like this pen!). And when the ink runs out in my pen, instead of just throwing it away in the garbage, or taking it apart and recycling the pieces that can be recycled, I can buy a new ink cartridge and keep using the same pen!

They were amazed. (It was odd, because I remember ink cartridges from when I was a kid. Now everything's disposable...but we're changing that!)

Then I flipped over their coloring page to show them this side (from here):

We had a snack, passed out crayons, and the girls had a blast coloring both sides of the page. Be sure to not use markers for coloring pages like this though, as they can sometimes bleed through!

Daisies: Magenta Petal

We have worked on blue Promise center, light blue for Honest & Fair, yellow for Friendly & Helpful, light green for Considerate & Caring, red for Courageous & Strong, orange petal for being Responsible for What I Say & Do, purple for Respecting Ourselves and Others, and this meeting we worked on our magenta petal for Respecting Authority.

I asked the girls, "Who can tell me what Authority means?" (Someone in charge, a leader, someone who sets the rules, helps us follow rules, and/or keeps us safe.)

Then I asked, "What are some examples of people in authority?" (Parents, teachers, principals, firemen, police officers, etc.)

We talked about respecting not only people in authority, but following rules and obeying laws. Rules and laws can help keep you safe. I asked the girls to come up with some examples of rules that help keep us safe:

- Wear your seatbelt/sit in your booster

- Look both ways before crossing the street

- Don't run in the halls at school

- Walk with your family in a parking lot

(And so on....)

I had contacted our local police headquarters a few weeks prior, and asked if they had anyone who could come and speak with the girls.

They sent a School Resource Officer, who is a policeman and wears a slightly different uniform (it's not as intimidating-looking), and he was kind enough to come in and give a talk to the girls about Authority and Rules.

At the end of his talk, the girls asked him some questions, and he gave them scenarios asking if each one was about respecting authority or not.

Some interesting examples (these can vary for your own troop, based on age and maturity, obviously):

- If an older kid/teenager tells you to do something, but it's against the rules, is it respecting authority to do what he says? (This was a toughie for some of the kids.) We talked about bullying and the difference between a bigger person and someone who is a Person of Authority.

- Is it respecting authority to cooperate when your teacher or parents ask you to follow the rules?

- If you disagree with someone in authority, is that respectful? (I loved this one and explained it's fine to have your own opinion. For example, if I said, "Blue is the prettiest color," that was my opinion. And it was okay to say, "Well, I think yellow is the prettiest," and that's just fine. You can disagree over an opinion, and be respectful about it. That is not the same as arguing against the rules though. In the moment, you follow the rules. If you have a question about them, you can ask and talk about them in a respectful manner.

In the end, I was surprised at how in-depth the discussion went, and I think we wore out the SRO. ;) We gave him a box of Girl Scout Cookies in thanks, and then worked on some crafts and had a snack.

For crafts we worked on some fun trefoil/St. Patrick's Day ornaments. I'd hoped the weather would permit us to go outside and play Red Light/Green Light.

Since the weather didn't cooperate, we did a fun craft instead.

More to come!