Planning Your First Daisy Girl Scout Meeting
Your first Daisy Girl Scout Meeting with the girls in your troop can set the stage for the future meetings. We spent time getting to know the girls and helping the girls make new friends during this first meeting. We need to get to know the girls, their interests, reasons for joining Girl Scouts and goals. The girls also need to become familiar with each other so that they are able to work in groups. Consequently, they begin to feel confident leading some activities. This rapport is critical.
Name Tags for Daisy Girl Scout Meeting
Depending on your troop, you will want some kind of nametags for the girls. Name tags make it easier to know their names during the first few meetings. Our opening activity was to make nametags. Super easy activity for the girls to do mostly on their own while leaders are available to talk with parents.
Flower Necklaces
We used foam flower cut outs with the girls. Before the girls arrived, I punched a hole in each of the flowers. We had the girls write their names on the flowers with sharpie. We suggest writing the name large on both sides as this name tag may spin. Then the girls could decorate using some flower stickers and the markers.
When we were ready to start the meeting, each girl chose a piece of yarn. We had them hold their name tags for a bit because we were going to have them put beads on their necklace in a little bit. But you could always help them to tie their yarn to make necklaces at any time during the meeting if you want to skip the bead activity.
If you want an easy way to allow the name tags to be temporarily closed, a safety pin could work. This would allow your scouts to wear their name tag, but also make it easy to open later when adding the different beads to the name tag.
Daisy Flower
Instead of the above name tags, you could have the girls assembly the daisy flower as their name tag. I would suggest precutting the different color petals and the center blue circle from construction paper or foam. For efficiency, you could put all the pieces a scout would need into a bag for each girl. The girls would be able to glue their petals around the blue circle. Then they could write their name on the circle as well as decorate using markers or anything you have available. These could be attached with a safety pin or made into necklaces using yarn. Another option is to just attach to their Daisy smock or vest.
If you use yarn to make necklaces, we suggest adding their name to both sides as the flowers do tend to spin. For this method, I would suggest cutting out two center blue circles for each scout. They could glue the petals onto one and then turn the entire name tag over and glue the second circle on the back. This makes an easy place to write their name on both the front and the back.
To really bring this back to the girl scout law, you could have the girls glue (or already have printed) the lines of the Girl Scout Law onto the petals. Now your scouts have a beautiful way to practice the law.
First Daisy Girl Scout Meeting Agenda
We like to follow a similar agenda from meeting to meeting. This helps to move the meetings to more girl led and makes it easier for our girls to anticipate what is coming next. You can view our FREE agenda in our shop.
Daisy Girl Scout Meeting Talk Time
When all the girls had arrived and parent’s questions were answered, we called all the girls to the floor to meet with us. We introduced ourselves and had all the girls introduce themselves. We asked the girls to share their name, grade, school, favorite color, and something special about themselves. It gives the girls a chance to learn a little about their friends and see that they have a lot in common already.
Be prepared for lots of comments from your Daisy Girl Scouts. They will want to share based on each girl’s experience and make connections with each other. We encouraged this to help the scouts feel more comfortable together. However, if you have a busy meeting planned, you may want to think about a talking stick or other method to remind girls to wait their turn.
After this, we introduced the Girl Scout promise and law. We explained that all Girl Scouts learn the promise and law. These help us remember our goals as Girl Scouts and encourage us to always act like a girl scout. We let the girls know that they would learn these too, but for right now we are all learning together. This led into a repeat after us for both the promise and the law where one leader said a line and the girls repeated the line together. We were going to go move into detail with both the Girl Scout Law and Girl Scout Promise in a bit.
Activities for First Daisy Girl Scout Meeting
Daisy Petal Necklace – Girl Scout Law Focus
Since we made our necklace name tags, we wanted the girls to add a bead of each color of the daisy petal before tying their name tags. We had all the beads sorted by color into Ziploc bags and we wrote the name of the petal on the bags plus the line of the law. This made it really easy to pass out the beads to the girls to add to their necklaces.
We also had a felt flower with the colors of the daisy petals to model for the girls. On each petal, we wrote the name of the flower and the law of the line to guide us as well. Then we started with the beginning of the law. We would introduce a flower, say her line of the law, pass out the beads and have the girls tell what that line meant as they added their bead to their necklace.
This gave us plenty of time for each girl to add their bead before introducing the next line of the law as well as ensure that the girls understood the words in the Girl Scout law. We repeated with each line of the law. At the end, we tied the girls name tags.
A Few Optional Tips
A tip for making this activity a little quicker is to sort the beads by scout instead of by the petal colors. You could put one bead of each color into a bag for each scout. Then the girls could all find the same color bead, say the corresponding line of the scout law and add to their name tag necklace or safety pin.
For added scout law practice, you could type up the scout law, laminate it, add a hole and add these to the girls’ name tags. Now they have a quick and easy way to practice at home, at meetings, and in the car too!
Movement Activity
I would suggest a movement activity next. Keep it simple. You could play the “Make New Friends” song while letting the girls show us their best dance moves. Our girls loved to be the center of attention and asking the other girls to copy their dances was always so much fun! But really, anything that gets your scouts up and moving is so helpful right now. Remember, these are mostly 5 and 6 year-olds.
Girl Scout Sign and Promise Craft
Afterwards, the girls needed something a little less structured, so we introduced the Girl Scout sign and the Girl Scout promise craft. This is a great craft for the girls to have a visual of the scout sign and a way to practice the Girl Scout Promise.
We let them do the next craft mostly on their own so they could have plenty of time to socialize with their friendly scout group. Our goal was to encourage the girls to talk with each other and get to know their troop.
We had a variety of skin toned paper colors and printed green trefoils with the Girl Scout promise typed inside. The girls traced their hand, then folded their fingers to make the girl scout sign. This does take a little fine motor coordination, so your girls may need a model and some assistance. Next, they glued this onto a piece of construction paper. Afterwards, they cut out the trefoil with the Girl Scout promise typed on it. They glued this next to their hand. Last, the girls could decorate their promise using markers and extra flower stickers.
Ending the Meeting
We brought the girls back together and gave them a bookmark with the Girl Scout law on one side and the Girl Scout promise on the other. Then, we let the girls know that most Girl Scouts have the promise and law memorized and that they could practice, but that we would practice at all of our meetings. There was no rush to memorize it just yet, but a little practice at home would help. After, we talked with the girls about which petal of the law they wanted to work on next week.
Then we taught the girls the “Make New Friends” song. We stood in a circle, crossed our right hand over our left, and held hands. We had all our girls raise their right hand so we could ensure we did this correctly. Next, we sang the song with the girls using a call and repeat method, where the scouts repeated each line after a leader. After the song, we began our friendship squeeze. To keep track of the squeeze, the girls would put their foot in the middle of the circle once their hand was gently squeezed.
After the friendship squeeze passed through the circle, all the girls would spin out to face outwards. If the arms are crossed right, this should work easily. We ended with our “Goodnight Daisies” song.
Pro-Leader Tips for Friendship Squeeze
Before holding hands, ask all your scouts to hold up their right hand. Leaders, double check that the girls have the correct hand up. Then cross your right hand over your left (or the other way). Again, we suggest double checking the hands look right!
Ask your scouts to put one foot in the middle of the circle once their hand was squeezed. This is a great visual for leaders to see where the squeeze is and remind the girl of what she should do. In addition, this helps leaders know that the squeeze has passed around the entire group.
Talk with your scouts about a soft squeeze to show friendship and love. We have found that our girls liked to try to squeeze as hard as they can after awhile. Best to start setting the expectations early on and keep reminding them as they go.
Dismissing the Scouts to their Families at the First Daisy Girl Scout Meeting
At the end of the meeting, we have all the girls sit down as we dismissed one girl at a time. We wanted to make sure we could pair the scouts with at least one parent. We asked each girl to share one thing they learned about scouting or are excited for in scouting before they left. Additionally, we asked each parent to remind of us their name. This will help you learn the names and faces of your girls’ families.
When the parents arrived, the girls could grab their reminder note (a piece of paper with the next meeting details and any work for home) and hand out. We kept this routine as similar as possible to what we would expect from the girls at each meeting going forward. But if you need to change something or want to try something new, that’s okay too! Young Daisy Girl Scouts are super flexible and usually willing to try new things.
With your first meeting planned, be sure to check out our posts on the different Daisy petals too. We offer a guide for each of the petals with extra activities for you to try out. Moreover, we offer multiple ways to make your Daisy Girl Scout meetings girl led. Drop us a comment below and let us know how your first Daisy Girl Scout meeting went.
Hi, I’m Nicole.
Here at Creatingbutterflies we provide families with practical solutions to real life problems for everything parenting, scouting, dual language, and enjoying time outdoors. We are a family of 6 with 4 wonderful becoming bilingual children who loves scouting, camping, and hiking with their family. Mom is an educator and dad is a firefighter/paramedic.
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