Today was the last official meeting of the 21-22 season. Half of our girls are bridging up to Brownies, the rest will be 2nd year Brownies. Being girl-led can be challenging when they are so young. Throughout the year, we have presented them with options. Today was no different.
We started our meeting as we always do; with the Girl Scout Promise. Then we (usually) sing the Make New Friends song. Today we had a lot to cover, so we jumped right into practicing the skit the girls voted on for the Bridging Ceremony. This is the first time that they are seeing the "oven" assembled and we act out what we will be doing in front of the friends and families. Each 2nd year Brownie has a script to reference with her lines highlighted. We practiced our lines and ran through the physical motions of what we will be doing at the ceremony.
Next we moved on to explaining what Journeys are and if we wanted to complete any. Prior to the meeting, we polled the parents on our Band site if they wanted to move to every week or keep it as every other. 90% said every week, so we plan to proceed. We informed the girls that next year we would be meeting more frequently, so that they can earn more badges and complete more Journeys if they wanted. We gave a brief explanation of each Journey and the girls voted for their favorite. We also explained that we can always do more than one if they like following the Journeys.
In order to earn the bridging patch, the girls who are bridging up to Brownies need to Pass It On (share with younger girls what they love about GSs) and Look Ahead (talk with older girls about what they enjoy). We will be meeting with an incoming Daisy troop next weekend before our bridging. We talked about what we would be sharing with the new Girl Scouts and we made our first S.W.A.P.S.
After creating the S.W.A.P.S., we asked the girls if they wanted to do a troop crest. That is something we probably should have done at the beginning of our first year as Daisies, but we never did. We were running out of time and parents were arriving, so the girls decided to revisit that at the next meeting. (When school starts back up.)
