Girl Scout Leaders Day 2024 is on Monday, April 22, 2024: Girl Scout ideas needed?
Monday, April 22, 2024 is Girl Scout Leaders Day 2024. GS Leader Appreciation Day – April 22 Girl Scout Leader Appreciation
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The four fundamental goals of Girl scouting is to encourage girls to:
Develop to their full potential.
Relate to others with increasing understanding, skill, and respect.
Develop a meaningful set of values to guide their actions and to provide for sound decision-making.
Contribute to the improvement of society.
Girl Scout Promise and Law
The Girl Scout Promise and Law are shared by every member of Girl Scouting. The Girl Scout Promise is the way Girl Scouts agree to act every day toward one another and other people, and the Law outlines a way to act towards one another and the world.
The Girl Scout Promise
On my Honor, I will try:
To serve God* and my country,
To help people at all times,
And to live by the Girl Scout Law.
The Girl Scout Law
I will do my best to be
honest and fair,
friendly and helpful,
considerate and caring,
courageous and strong, and
responsible for what I say and do,
and to
respect myself and others,
respect authority,
use resources wisely,
make the world a better place, and
be a sister to every Girl Scout.
* The word "God" can be interpreted in a number of ways, depending on one's spiritual beliefs. When reciting the Girl Scout Promise, it is okay to replace the word "God" with whatever word your spiritual beliefs dictate.
You should also register your troop, and find out the rules and regulations of being a leader, you may find that you will have to get a police check, and possibly some training. You can not issue awards/badges etc with out being registered.
I would display some to the merit certificates and badges the girls can earn through being a Girl scout, including photos of activities such as jamborees, rowing, camping, cooking etc. If you have access to a computer maybe even a power point presentation.
You will need to have a few different activities, depending on the type of venue and where you are (country).
If in a warmer climate you could have an outdoor activity such as a obstacle course, where they girls can climb, jump, skip, hop and run (be sure to keep the obstacle course simple, but loads of fun).
What about a nature walk, talking about the animals they may find, in and round your area, are they dangerous etc.
Or a nature/scavenger hunt
Equipment - Pen and paper, team of 5 or more, each team leader has list of things to find, e.g a leaf from a particular tree, a feather, etc.
The first team with all objects return to base. Obviously if you have asked them to find a particular animal, they don't bring it back, but they have to describe where it was found, and what it was doing etc.
You could also have a barbecue, inviting the parents back early to see and try some to the obstacle course, while the meal is being cooked.
In colder climates, a few indoor games that will warm them are;
Tangles
In a circle each person to put there right hand into the middle, and hold on to the hand of someone not next to them, repeating the same with the left hand.
Object of game is to untangle with out breaking the link of hands. It can be done.
Memory game
Each person has to say a word starting with a letter E or what ever letter you wish. Passing to there right, as they say a word, e.g ear, the next person, says ear and adds elephant, the next person ear, elephant, electricity going around the whole group.
Object of this is to remember what each person has said, and repeat every word said with out forgetting a word.
Whisper a variation on the above game
Team leader to whisper a sentence, and each person passes it on by whispering. When it reaches the end ask the last person to say what was told to them, usually not what it stated out as.
Crab soccer
Equipment - 1 soccer ball, team, goals (not to far apart). Everyone crawls on floor with using hands and feet with tummy facing towards the ceiling, no bum shuffling.
Again inviting the parents to come back early to have a hot tea/coffee and scones/slice etc. Parents may participate in some of the girls favourite activity.
Before the end of the session, give the girls a talk about the importance of the Girl scout Promise and Law, giving each girl a copy of both the Promise and Law to take home and learn.
Good luck
Does anyone have kids in Girl Scouts?
I was a girl scout, and my mom was a girl scout leader. I'm sure some things have changed but basically I would recommend it from my own memories in the 70s.
For now at age 6 she will probably not learn a whole lot, but like kindergarten it is about socialization: "this is how we do an afterschool club." But as she grows, scouting offers really practical living skills when you start working on badges, and not just housewife stuff like cooking and cleaning...teaches about environmental stuff, culture, professions, leadership, computers, art, safety, child care and a great deal of other stuff. What badges are...is that the girl chooses a topic to learn about and through different projects that you help her with, she resarches and presents her information to the troop leader to prove that she learned something about that topic. There is a checkoff system for things they do to earn that badge. Then at meetings and award ceremonies they get the badges or recognition for them. There are also badges for advancing as a scout. It empowers girls to dabble in different things of their choosing and gain some mastery in a variety of things. If she joins, please encourage her and help her stay on top of her badges. It isn't about the prestige, it's about the skills. You should know that working badges is NOT what they do at meetings, this is largely independent study type stuff with YOU, at YOUR expense, plus dues at meetings which are largely field trips, or speakers, or good citizen type stuff.
Then there is sleepaway camp. For younger kids, they have day camp and maybe one or two nights. Mid elementary age is when I started going for the whole week.
The most common thing Girl Scouts are known for is the cookies. Kids don't sell much of anything anymore, just so you know, not without LOTS of help from parents. This is safety related. Mostly what cookie sale is anymore is kids parents taking the brochure to work and collecting that way, and selling to relatives and close neighbors or family friends or organized sales on a Saturday, outside of a store like Walmart. NO door to door is even allowed. So there is your involvement with that.
Scouting will cost as little or much as any other activity, depending on how you approach it...but at least the point of Scouting is learning. When they do the cookie sale, each kid usually earns prizes or credit toward uniforms and camp and trips.
I guess the warning is that at the age of 6 she won't likely get the full experience to even know if she will like it later. But the brownie troops are there to get them started early. And this will be quite a bit of commitment from YOU as the parent, maybe more so than another after school activity. But as with anything else, she can be as involved as she wants, AND the club might be really super active or not (depending on the leaders and number of girls in the troop.)
Girl scouts...?
8 year's old is a bit young to be sewing buttons and fixing toys. The typical 8 year old won't have the attention span for that and your poor mom may end up doing all the work.
How about having the kids make thank you cards for the soldiers overseas? Since it is the day after Memorial Day, it will be timely as well. My daughter's troop did this and it was awesome. They looked on a map for Iraq and Afganistan and saw how far away they were. Then they made the cards and took them to the post office. The post office gave them a quickie tour and they loved it!
You could also take them to a senior center and have the kids sing to the seniors or read a story to them. My daughter also did this and I am not sure who had more fun, the kids or the seniors!
Good Luck and remember to keep it simple!
