Daisy Meeting Four: Yellow Petal - Friendly and Helpful

Daisy Meeting Four: Yellow Petal - Friendly and Helpful

This week we focused on Friendliness and Helpfulness with the help of Sunny the Sunflower. This is the 2nd of 10 petals the Daisies are going to earn throughout our journey.  

We began our meeting by awarding each Daisy with their blue petal for Honesty and Fairness Certificate from last week! We also had a pinning ceremony for the "Promise" they made which is representative of the middle blue circle of the daisy. The girls were thrilled to receive their Daisy Blue Vest, along with their pin/certificate. 

 

The Daisy Petal Patches have been purchased and will be kept on file in an effort to keep them all in tact. (If you lose one, a whole package must be bought). We will perform a ceremony at the end of our GS year in which all petals will be put onto their vests. 

**If you wish to have these petals and iron/glue them on, please notify either Crystal or Christine and we would be happy to send them home with your Daisy. 

In an effort to demonstrate how each Daisy could be helpful during our GS meeting, our Kaper Chart was utilized so that everyone could be helpful. 

This weeks reading was "Stone Soup", by Marcia Brown which is an old folk story in which hungry strangers compel the local people of a town into sharing their food. The helpful people who each provide one edible ingredient turn what begins as stone soup, into a delicious soup for all, delivering a message that by being friendly and helpful, the outcome will always be better than the opposite. 

Our Activity for this week was to create our own version of stone soup by using our imaginations and helpful suggestions with each other about what ingredients to put in our soup. 

                                                          

After the friendship squeeze each girl went around the circle to give an example of what it meant to be helpful. We ended the meeting asking each girl to do something "helpful" for someone before our next meeting and report back. 

We can't wait to hear how our Daisies have been helpful. 

Our Daisies set out to be more helpful at home, school, and in their community.  

Way to go Daisies!! Until next time! Be friendly and helpful wherever you go! 

Daisies Meeting Three: Blue Petal - Honest and Fair

Daisies Meeting Three: Blue Petal - Honest and Fair

This week we focused on Honesty & Fairness, the light blue Daisy Petal named Lupe. Lupe the Lupine helped the girls understand why being honest and fair is important to friendship. 

Our children need to learn to be honest with others...and with themselves. That's not an easy task. Teaching children Fairness is not any easier. Children will often cry out, "That's not fair," when things don't go the way they want them too. 

However, it is important to teach our children why they should know the rules and follow them. It is also important to teach them ways to change those rules if they need to, and how to do so in a way that is "fair" to everyone involved. 

In order to model honesty and fairness this weeks activities involved games and role-playing situations. To further help girls to develop ways to communicate their understanding, we participated in discussions, games such as; identifying a truth from a lie game (ex.. Bananas are purple), and creating a Lupe Puppet for role-playing. 

Most of the girls in our troop are six-years-old (a few have turned seven). If we were dealing with younger Daisies, I might've approached this petal a little differently.

As it is, though, these girls have a pretty good grasp on what it means to be honest, and why it's important to tell the truth. Instead of reading The Boy Who Cried Wolf, which many sites suggest, I just asked the girls why they felt it was important to always be honest. They didn't need that story. They'd heard it before. Since honesty was something they had a good grasp on already, we spent the bulk of the meeting covering Fairness. But not in a way you might suspect. . . .

Many online sites suggest activities like giving the girls an unequal number of treats, then talking about being fair, and then giving a treat to those who were left out.

I wasn't comfortable with this for a number of reasons:

1. It makes some of the girls feel left out (rightfully so) from the get-go. To me, that's not ideal at this age.

2. It ties the concept of Fairness to material objects only. But being fair goes beyond things; I wanted to focus on actions (and perhaps more importantly, reactions) as well.

3. Sometimes things aren't fair, or sometimes they are, but they don't feel fair. I wanted to give the girls a way to respond in that situation.

After we finished talking about honesty, I stood in front of them and asked, "Has anyone here ever felt like something wasn't fair? Has anyone here ever done this?" and I stomped my foot, put my hands on my hips, and whined very loudly, "THAT'S NOT FAIR!" (I over-exaggerated, so it was a little funny, but at the same time, familiar. I'm pretty sure they've all done this. All kids at some point have. At least mine have.)

Then I said again, "Has anyone ever felt this way?" and I raised my hand to show I have.

Immediately the girls' hands shot up in the air.

I lowered my voice, almost to a whisper (this is a great trick -- they will be extra quiet to listen, in most cases) and said, "I'll tell you a secret . . . Girl Scouts don't do that."

They all stared at me.

I said, "Instead of stomping our feet and saying 'THAT'S NOT FAIR!' Girl Scouts stop and think of a way to make it feel fair."

Then I had two girls come up and asked them their favorite colors. One was purple; the other was gold. I gave a pretend example of what if the first one had a gold crayon and the second had a purple, and each wanted to use the other's crayon. Instead of saying "THAT'S NOT FAIR!" what could they do to make it fair?

My Daisies knew the answers immediately: "SHARE!" "TAKE TURNS!"

Yep. I reiterated Girl Scouts look for a solution to the problem. I also tried to let the girls come up with the answers themselves.

So while I wanted to introduce the concept of fairness beyond material things, I still had to use a scenario involving (imaginary) things to get the point across. But, my focus wasn't on everyone gets the same. My focus was on not whining about things feeling unfair, but acting on making them feel fair.

Our first craft was coloring and creating Lupe Puppet, because it tied into the role playing activity we were going to do after snack: 

While they were coloring, I asked them to think about ways that they've experienced unfairness and how they could make it feel fair. 

After craft cleanup, we read them the Lupe story from the blue Daisy book. (Note: Lupe is pronounced "LOO-pay," and Lupine is pronounced "LOO-pin," because it's the flower/noun, not the adjective.) This is a cute little story and touches on both being fair, and being honest. Afterward we talked about what if Lupe had made different choices, and what that would mean, etc.

Circle Time Discussion: 

Identify a truth from a lie (ex. Bananas are purple)

Discuss why honesty is a good value

Problem solve what they should do if they ever do tell a lie

Discuss what it means to be Fair

Problem solve what they can do if they see someone being treated unfairly

Discuss ways to be honest and fair to themselves.

After Circle Time Discussion we read another book:

"It's Not Fair" by Carl Sommer - Busy bees learn that when everyone works together makes everyone happier.

Afterwards, we asked the girls to use their Lupe Puppets with each other to role play a time when something wasn’t fair, and how they can find a solution. The girls were eager to participate and had great ideas. 

At the end, I had them all stand and say they promised to try very hard to always be Honest and Fair, as a Girl Scout should be. They did. And with that, they'd earned their petal. :)

Second Meeting Promises

Second Meeting Promises 

Our last meeting was a success! The Daisies were so excited to start our second meeting so we quickly made our way over to our spot with friends in hand. 

We started our meeting with a snack and a book all about Juliette Gordon Low, the founder of The Girl Scouts. 

She was an ardent believer in the potential of all girls and the importance of fostering their individual growth, character, and self-sufficiency, Juliette is credited with establishing and nurturing a global movement that has changed the world.

 Ok

We then introduced the Kaper Chart to the Daisies, which is used for the opening ceremony of our meeting. 

The Daisy Scout Law and Promise, Kaper Jobs, and songs that we will sing each meeting are included on this chart. 

Each Daisy will have a job every meeting ranging from attendance, snack and craft helpers, flag holder, friendship and pledge starters.   

As a troop we gather in a circle and say 

The Girl Scout Law & Promise along with the Pledge of Allegiance. And to end the opening ceremony we sing the song "I'm a Little Daisy" (to the I'm a little teapot tune)

                       

The Daisies then sit down for the part of the meeting that we call "Circle Business", which is when we discuss the badge we are working towards. This week were learning about promises. After the book "A Promise is a Promise" by Robert Munsch was read, we opened it up to the Daisies to discuss what a promise was and what it meant to them. 

The girls were eager to share and promised each other to be a Girl Scout Sister to one another. 

After learning all about the promise of being A Girl Scout we moved onto our Activity which reinforced The Girl Scout Law and the meaning of each Daisy Petal. 

Since it was during the holiday season, we opted to create an ornament that could be a keepsake for our Daisies. Each bead is a different color that represents a different part of the law and a reminder to what it means to be a Girl Scout Daisy.  

After the activity, we cleaned up and prepared to close our meeting with a song "Make New Friends" and formed a circle for the Friendship Squeeze. 

We thoroughly enjoyed being with our Daisy Girls and look forward to our next meeting on 

Monday, January 4, 2016. 

Please remember to include a note to your child's teacher, an extra nut-free snack, and if possible the $27 fee for your child's uniform. 

Thank you kindly! 

Your Troop Leaders, 

Crystal, Christine, & Benares