Earn The 5 Flowers, 4 Stories, 3 Cheers for Animals Journey In-A-Day

submitted by Staci Jansma

During our first year as Daisies, we completed the 3 Cheers for Animals journey-in-a-day as our Daisy Days event. We wanted to give the girls a goal to complete for that day and we selected this journey as the leaders who knew their troops could attend, haven’t started on the journey yet, or were just beginning. You can learn more about planning Daisy Days here.

Take Action project ideas:

1. Help volunteer at an animal shelter.
2. Raise money or collect items needed for an animal shelter’s wish list.
3. Do a performance, showcasing what you’ve learned about the journey. Invite family and friends to attend the performance. Helps to spread awareness about Caring for Animals.

What other ideas can you think of? Stop by and add a comment on our fan page, Girl Scout Leader 411 from MakingFriends.com at https://www.facebook.com/gsleader411

What do you do when new girls join troop?

This year we had new girls join our troop that were not able to be a part of our Daisy Days, last year. As the troop leader, I didn’t want anyone to be left out, especially since the original troop members had a goal in mind of the Daisy Summit pin and wanted everyone to have a fair advantage.

During our Journey In-A-Day I came up with an agenda, their own “posters” and we began the day like a Girl Scout meeting would.

I wanted the new girls to get a chance to earn the 3 cheers for animals journey as well. So I created Journey In-A-Day session that I held at my house with an open invitation that anyone in the troop could come. Even if you already earned the journey award set, come anyway because you could give great input and help bond with the newest troop members. And if the girls were not able to attend, I provided them with a Take-Home kit of the Journey to do on their own too.

5 Flowers, 4 Stories, 3 Cheers for Animals

During our Journey In-A-Day, we started with the Pledge, Promise and Law, then started into the journey. We let the journey led us and the girls followed along giving answers, feedback and talking here and there throughout the day.

Use your resources wisely: Create your nest

I had random notepads given to me by a neighbor that just didn’t need them. I said sure I’d use them somehow. When I was going through the supplies I’ve accumulated for our troop, I was moving the notepads around and then thought – what if I asked the girls to rip up the paper to build their bird nest. That would be using our resources wisely. So I gave girls a handful of things that were within our troop supplies: pom poms from left over swap, leaf stickers left over from our Welcome to the Flower Garden Journey-in-a-day, twine string from another previous project and flower petals. Each piece to symbolize something that a bird might find to help build their nest too. This was the peak of the project for the girls, I could tell they were having fun trying to decide how big to make their bird nest and when it was “good” enough and didn’t need anything else added to it. They kept asking, should I add more? I responded with, “Do you think it needs more?”

We had a snack time in our meeting for a simple Tea Party that the girls just loved. They spent the time talking amongst each other. After snack time was finished and we cleaned up after ourselves, we then headed back to finish up our Journey.

For this take action project we focused on the caregivers of the local humane society. I typed up the saying for each of the girls to copy. And we had them complete about 5 cards each. And because it was in the month of December, we did Christmas themed cards and the girls wrote our saying within the card. Thought it was very fitting, tis the season!

When the Christmas cards were done, I noticed on their fan page they needed some laundry detergent and the girls wanted to provide at least one item on their wish list. So before heading to the humane society, we used about $10 of the girl’s fall sales profit to purchase some laundry detergent and delivered the detergent and cards for the caregivers all at once.

Looking back and Paying-It-Forward with Resources:

When I was a new daisy leader, I read through lots of online resources, spent many hours on the girlscouts.org website, our council’s website and honestly amazed that it took me so long before I was introduced to MakingFriends.com. I found MakingFriends.com when I was planning our first Daisy Days event and was looking for quantity and quality for Swaps. My only wish was that I found them sooner. Looking at these Badge-in-a-Bag kits makes me want to do the journeys all over again and see if the girls would get more out of the experience, and look just how much fun is within. I know I tried to pull as much as I could through what the girl’s journey book had, as well as the leader guidebook. But when I see what MakingFriends.com has all prepared in each kit – if your daisy troop is working through this journey – I’d pick up the troop kit and individual girl kits right away. My troop has been very pleased and enjoyed our journeys even more with the fun activities we can do. As a troop, we just bridged to Brownies in May 2014, and we are looking to purchase our Brownie troop and individual girl kits with our fall and cookie sale profits – so we are budgeting for what we can afford. The girls and leaders are excited. We feel like it is making it even easier on us – as we all have busy schedules and don’t want to worry about picking up what is needed for the next meeting. It’s nice knowing we can follow the schedule, or change it slightly and the supplies we must get are so minimal – these kits are truly is a time saver!

If you’d like to see what is all included in the troop kit, check out the additional resource for completing the 5 Flowers, 4 Stories, 3 Cheers for Animals journey.

Makingfriends.com Journey Badge In A Bag®: Animal Journey

Order 1 Team Bag for your troop of up to 12 girls and 1 Girl’s Bag for each girl. They are packed with hands-on activities to make your Girl Scout Journey a fun, positive experience for your girls AND a stress-free, memorable experience for you.

PS If you didn’t know. The Troop kit comes with 2 schedule options – one for Journey-in-a-Day or spread out the journey within a few meetings.

Helpful Resources:

• Host Daisy Days + 3 Cheers for Animals Journey https://makingfriends.com/girl-scout-leader/girl-scout/host-daisy-days-event/
• More Ideas for 3 Cheers for Animal Journey https://makingfriends.com/girl-scout-leader/girl-scout/ideas-3-cheers-animal-journey/
• 3 Cheers for Animals Journey: Posters [PDF]
• 3 Cheers for Animals Journey: Agenda for the day [PDF]

My name is Staci Jansma. I am currently a Daisy Troop Leader and School Organizer. This is my second year as a leader for 2013-2014, and I have learned a lot within the past 12 months and I’d like to share that with you. My daughter is the main reason for my passion into Girl Scouts, plus I was a Daisy-Brownie when I was a little girl and my mom was my leader too. If there is a topic you are dying to know more about, drop me a comment and let me know. If I have some input on it, I will definitely share what I know. Here’s to a great Girl Scout year for everyone!