Welcome!


Welcome to my blog! I started it when I was a new Girl Scout leader and needed some kind of organized "to-do" list. I decided the best way to keep things organized was to start a blog. So here it is! My oldest troop has since bridged up to Juniors, and I've taken on a Daisy troop as well, so I will continue updating with new Juniors information and additional Daisy stuff too. My hope is to continue to update with every level as my troops advance. But we'll see.

Thanks for stopping by, and I hope it's helpful!

Wednesday, September 4, 2013

Getting Started with Brownies Part Three -- Agenda

For our first year of Brownies, I've got the (loose) dates set up for meetings .

The plan is to meet the first and third Friday of each month, for an hour and 15 minutes right after school. Having meetings last this long allows us to have time for two activities/games, a snack, and includes time for the Pledge, Promise, Law, etc. We often have time left over, even, to go out and play (which all the girls love, of course!).

The first year we will be focusing on Legacy and Cookie-related badges. For those of you who are looking for information on Brownie Journey badges, you'll have to head on over to Google and Pinterest. We're not planning on incorporating Journeys this year. That's next year's agenda. Maybe. However, I will be posting details on each badge we're working on here as we go, and you may find some activities that you could use towards a Journey (I hope!).

Given our meeting days (based upon our school year, and taking into account vacation/holiday time) here's our agenda plan:

Meeting 1 - Welcome and Intro to Brownies
Meeting 2 - Brownie GS Way
Meeting 3 - Brownie GS Way contd.
Meeting 4 - Painting
Meeting 5 - Brownie First Aid
Meeting 6 - Celebrating Community (for us, this hits in December, a great time to focus on community)
Meeting 7 - Snacks
Meeting 8 - Intro to Cookie Sales
Meeting 9 - Cookies Meet My Customer
Meeting 10 - Fair Play
Meeting 11 - Cookies Financial Literacy
Meeting 12 - Bugs
Meeting 13 - Catch Up/Bonus Day for whatever we need to catch up on
Meeting 14 - Last meeting of the year - Review and Fun!

Non-Meeting - End-of-the-Year Party/Ceremony

You are allowed to earn one Financial Literacy and one Cookie Business badge per year.

EDIT: Some leaders prefer to have the girls create the agenda from the get-go, first year of Brownies. I did talk to the girls about which badges they wanted to work on (they really wanted to do Painting -- so much so that it would've required at least two meetings, and we had too many snow days to include it, so we're saving it for year two), but there were some badges I felt were important, foundational ones that we really needed to include (GS Way, First Aid, Community, etc.). Plus, I had to schedule visitors far in advance, so the badges that had an outside expert come in had to be pretty well set in stone.

We ended up booting Fair Play in favor of camp-themed activities instead. This was the girls' choice.

As always, you do what works best for your troop. This is just basically a sample of how to set up a rough itinerary for the school year. In year two, the girls will be determining the agenda and which badges/patches we work on. Give them as much opportunity for leadership/input as possible, while keeping it age- and troop-appropriate. You know your girls better than some other leader would. So you do what's best for your troop. :)

5 comments:

  1. It looks like I might end up being a Brownie leader this year (I had hoped to take a year off with the move ... but we are still looking for a troop for M). TOTALLY stealing your plan :)

    Also, I still have the seeds to send to your girls -- they ended up packed so will send to you once we are settled in our new home!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Troop Leader Mom, you've done it again! Turns out, we will have a daisy/brownie combo troop and your ideas are excellent. I commented in the past on one of the posts about how helpful your ideas are (teacher to teacher, thanks for keeping it practical! :) )and how grateful I am to you for sharing. I will most definitely continue to follow your blog!

    ReplyDelete
  3. I love your examples of the your Brownie Welcome pages, and other items that you created. Instead of having to download the picture is there a way I could get the actual document so that I can change some of it up a bit for our troop?
    My email is: missmolly819@gmail,com

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Unfortunately I am not able to reply via email to requests for graphics. I try to always post examples that could be used as templates. Hopefully one of those will work!

      Delete
  4. Thanks so much for all the examples and details you've put into your blog. Just finished my first year as a troop leader. Next year, we have the challenge of figuring out how to manage a multi-level troop of Daisies and Brownies. Thank you, thank you, thank you for helping others to learn the ropes.

    ReplyDelete

Thank you for visiting my blog! Please respect Girl Scout Privacy guidelines and do not leave any identifying information regarding a troop or its members, as this is a public site.

Also, I am happy to respond to comments posted on my blog, but I am unable to respond via personal email. This helps protect not only my own information, but that of my girls.

Anyone is welcome to use the templates I post here. I will always do my best to acknowledge my sources for any artwork or information I post, but I am human and may miss something along the way. Regardless, I strive to ensure that my blog's purpose and all its posts are in accordance with the Girl Scout Law in every way. The purpose of this blog is to assist new leaders based upon my own experience as a volunteer, and is not in any way intended to replace or subvert any information in official Girl Scout leadership training.

Thank you!