Earth and Sky Daisy Journey In A Day

submitted by Staci Jansma

Our last journey as daisies we are stepping into the Girl Scouts Daisy Between Earth and Sky journey. This journey will help us reach our daisy summit pin and the girls are so excited.

As the leader, I’m even more excited. This is my first Badge In A Bag® kit we are using. I decided to use the 7 meetings as planned by MakingFriends.com and we will work it into our last year as daisies. We have completed just about every badge, award, event you could imagine. You will find that the Daisy Earth Troop Kit by MakingFriends aligns perfectly with Girl Scouts Daisy Between Earth and Sky journey.

Seek out local events to help add more experience to your journey:

When looking through our local council’s event guide for the year we found a Nature’s Art event that was hosted by our local Nature Center. The description for the event and timing couldn’t have been more perfect for us: All artists need inspiration and supplies to create artwork. Join us to find art in nature. Girls will discover that colors, shapes and textures are vibrant in the world around them. They will create artwork from natural materials. This workshop goes with the Between Earth and Sky Journey. There was a small fee of $8 to attend, which girls took care of on an individual basis, as we didn’t have everyone from the troop join us.

But they all had a blast, here’s a few snapshots from the day:

Beginning the Earth journey!

Following this local event, we dived right into the journey troop kit at our next (first-of-the-year) meeting. We sat down and listened to our flower friends and the first portion of the friends’ journey. We then worked together to begin our journey using the paper roll.

Having fun with our Flower Friends puppets:

After our break time, we also enjoyed a play that the girls wanted to perform for the adults by using their flower friends from MakingFriends.com that we colored.

Learning the Girl Scout Law:

At a later meeting, I had the flower friends all assembled and we practiced the Girl Scout Law with each of them. I even wrote on the back of the flower friends what each of them stood for. We are looking to use the flower friends at our next Green & White Celebration as Brownies. At our school, we have daisies say the Girl Scout Promise, and brownies say the Girl Scout Law.

I outlined each flower friend on card-stock and cut out the flower’s shape. Then I glued the card-stock to the back of each flower and printed what line of the Girl Scout Law aligns with that flower friend.

This was not something that was listed within the MakingFriends Troop kit, but thought it would work out even better, as the girls are daisies, and still learning. Our goal as daisies was to memorize the Girl Scout Promise, which they have that done. So as brownies, we will work on memorizing the Girl Scout Law.

Earth Adventure Troop Kit was a time saver for this troop!

You can see more of the troop kit in the following video, as well as the flower friends in our big blue bucket.

The Earth Journey Troop kit is just a blessing for any troop leader. Knowing that all 3 daisy journeys could be done with a troop kit and an individual girl kit for each daisy girl, I just wish I knew about them when I signed up to be a leader. Reading through all the online materials, what council has to offer is great, but it doesn’t really give you a direct approach to how you can accomplish it.

I spent many hours the first few months when I signed on to learn as much as I could and try to guide the girls on the best path possible. Sometimes I found it frustrating that I didn’t have enough time to devote to it and felt rush when I got to the meetings because not everything was planned out.

When we began the Earth Journey, I knew exactly what I needed to pick up to compliment the lesson if it wasn’t already included in the journey troop kit, and I knew what I needed to bring to complete that session at the meeting. MakingFriends.com just makes this so simple for busy leaders, or leaders that would like some guidance along this journey path. I’m glad that the girls enjoyed it too. They were especially excited to color the coloring sheets and then place them into their scrapbooks which they were given at the end along with their special patch and certificate.

I can tell that the girls were eager to see what we would do at each meeting. They would walk in and ask, and I told them we will have to see. So they were always completely surprised at what was to come.

The first meeting that I introduced their little blue buckets and had each girl write their name on the tag, they were just overjoyed. To see how much their giggled and talked about what nature items they could find for their little blue buckets was rewarding as the leader, and I knew this was just so perfect.

Daisies had a blast using everything included in the Earth Journey Individual Girl kits!

In the following video, you can see a few of the coloring sheets, one of the invitations for the end-of-journey celebration:

Take Action Project for Between Earth and Sky

Here are some ideas:

• Plant flowers to help someone within the local community
• Improve upon a landscaped area
• Help someone in the community with picking up leafs
• Volunteer at a local community garden

Completing the Earth Journey was so rewarding for the girls as we finished up our last year as daisies, we were more than ready to bridge to brownies. The girls were so excited to see what else we could do as Girl Scouts. They think that all Brownies do is eat a lot of brownies, so we shall see what the next two years bring.

Put resources together for Future Daisies!

We decided to combine our Step 1 of Bridging to Brownies and our Take Action Project for the Earth Journey into one… we’d help a future daisy troop. We know a new troop will begin as daisies this coming fall at our school and we also know that when we began as a troop, we had to figure a lot out on our own. So together we added notes, supplies and words of encouragement for a future daisy troop.

We added in one copy of each leader guide for the three journeys, each girl’s journey book, the Girl Scout – Girl’s Guide to Girl Scouting Binder, tips on how we completed each of our journeys (which are also outlined in other blog post that have been shared on MakingFriends.com), we mentioned that we created our own Daisy Days events when we heard that none existed and wasn’t listed within our council events. We filled up two binders for the future daisy troop to utilize.

There are several take action projects you could do for Between Earth and Sky, we just felt this was very fitting to put our efforts and resources into creating this kit for a future troop.

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!

Editor’s note: This kit has been updated and includes the following:

For Your Troop:

• Step-by-Step Instructions
• Girl Scout Law Poster
• Convenient Carry Box
• Wooden Sticks, Skewers and Plastic Straws
• Emotion Faces
• Strips of Colored Card Stock
• Foamie Ovals and Flowers
• Wiggle Eyes
• Paper for Scrapbooks
• Paper Roll for Mural

For Each Girl:

• Vinyl 4″x 6″ Scrapbook
• 6 Coloring Pages
• Stickers
• Small Blue Bucket
• Tag
• Foamie Sticks
• Invitation
• Certificate
• Bonus Fun Patch!

Included Activities:

• Decorating Scrapbooks
• Collect Items Found In Nature
• Make a Paper Chain
• Make Flowers
• Making Nature Rubbings
• Identify Their Special Skills
• Making A Mural