Last Month Before Bridging

It seems like my first year as a Daisy leader has gone so fast! We had a leader meeting the other day and I realized we only have a few meetings left before part of our troop becomes Brownies.
So much to fit in!
Girls have told me all year that they want to earn all their petals. Well, that is getting tight for the 1st graders. We started with only two girls that had been in Daisies before and have been gaining girls at several points during the year. I wanted to leave at least half of the petals for the kindergarten girls to earn next year, so we have had the 1st graders work on petals separate from the group. I've only had a few complaints from girls who want all of them NOW, but I explained they will earn them next year and that seemed to help a little. One of the girls that transferred to our troop had all of her petals and I worry sometimes that she doesn't have an incentive to come to the meetings where we work on them.
The older girls now just have 2 petals to finish. Tula is on the schedule for this week for them while the younger girls make cards for them offering them congrats on bridging to Brownies.
Last year I had concerns about the bridging requirement of Brownies coming to the meeting to talk to the girls. My daughter was the only one not bridging and I didn't want her to feel left out, but I decided to talk it over with her. She was sad her friends were going up and she wasn't, but I should have given her more credit because she handled it like a pro. She wanted to know about Brownies because she knew she would be there one day. I currently have parents with concerns about this same thing. However, I feel it is important to offer all the girls the chance to visit with older girls and hear about what they do. I also feel it is the time to explain what is going to happen to our troop. This is the time to start talking about it so that come the end of May when the 1st graders get to walk across the bridge my husband built they all understand what is going on. That a multi-level troop is in their future and we will coordinate as much as we can so they can still have fun together.
Well, that's my thoughts for now.
KH

Thinking Ahead to Brownies for a Minute

I recently went to a Brownie training in preparation for next year. We have a mix of Kindergarten and 1st graders in our Daisy troop. So next year I will follow my daughter to Brownies. We want to keep the troop together and plan to meet in rooms next to each other. We have talked about opening the meetings together, then splitting so we can work on our separate programs. Hopefully we can work on coordinating journeys and have activities we can work on together.
I needed a Brownie binder for the training and the leader guides for the journeys. Well, I found out that each journey had coordinating badges. Wow! This has totally changed since I was a Brownies in the 1980's. I miss having to purchase just a badge book.
Anyway, I ended up picking up all the badge requirements with everything else. I got to thinking that it would be handy to have a badge tracker for each girl in the troop. I have one for Daisies, but couldn't find one I like for Brownies. So I made this one for the Legacy Badges, Financial Literacy & Cookie Business Badges. (Hoping to create more of these soon!)
Here's a couple preview pictures, but if you want the .pdf click on the link below.





















Here's the link, enjoy!
KH
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8MOGiEkVKqZWHd0Y0Z2cmhVc1U/view?usp=sharing

Hi, Welcome!

I am currently a Daisy GS leader and have been getting ready for our badge ceremony this week. I like to give the girls a certificate for each item they earn. I find a lot of help for making these on Pinterest from awesome people who spend time and make stuff. Sometimes though, we earn stuff that there isn't an easily available certificate. So I make one myself.
We recently worked on the WAGGGS World Thinking Day Patch available from wagggs.org (requirements there too). I made a certificate for this patch, here it is...
















Please feel free to use and share.
KH