Brownies/Girl Scouts advice needed (LONG)

[stacieps]

Thanks for all the suggestions!

 

[believe]

You must have another adult at all meetings (SafetyWise req.)
At the beginning of each year I did a sign-up sheet for the parents. I required one parent to be the meeting helper & one mom to be the snack person. This way I had plenty of help. The snack helper sets up the snack table & coordinates clean up. If you don't have help for the meeting, cancel. This is to protect you, the girls and everyone's sanity. Everyone takes a turn, no exceptions. A co-leader would help with planning, purchasing craft items & making phone calls. It would be great for them to have some training, but unless you are taking them on trips it is not necessary.

I think this truly depends on the council in your area. Ask them what the requirements are for co-leaders/volunteers. I am an assistant and am in the process of completing trainings 2 and 3. This is required no matter if I travel or not. They have even told our leader that volunteers have to pay the $10 fee and go to some of the training. This doesn't sound right to me. Does anyone know if this is based on individual council decisions?

 

[CarolA]

Our council does require training. However, they stress that the TROOP should be expected to pay for it. (I do pay for my own since I have several troops and it would be a hassle to figure out who should pay for what)

Being a cookie mom involves going to training (VITAL and FREE), training the girls/parents, collecting the order forms, picking up the cookies, delieving the cookies to the girls and dealing with the money. If your troop decides to do booths you would also order cookies for those and collect the money. It's generally a short period of time involved.

 

[QueenTriton]

I work fulltime and co-lead a troop. The key is to keep the number of girls manageable (10-12 max) and utilize your parents. Our troop has 10 girls and four of the moms have gone through the training. We have one offiicial leader, as required, but because we've all been trained, we can take a meeting or two a year for her. We sit down together twice a year and plan out a tentative schedule and pick the meetings we want to be in charge of (including getting the supplies together, etc.). We meet twice a month nine months of the year, so only 18 meetings total, some of which we devote to field trips, cookie sales, etc.

There are lots of good activity ideas in the handbook and online.

The ones our girls like best: crafts, crafts, crafts; mock slumber party with karaoke and make your own pizza; sports day (set up at a park with different stations: shoot a basket, walk a line, shoot a goal); manners meeting (pass the teacup, place setting relay, phone etiquette, make believe restaurant)

These were all really easy!!!

We've found many free field trips, etc. Petco, grocery store, local pizza place, candy factory, farm. We find a tryit that the trip somewhat matches, and voila, easy meeting with part of a tryit earned.

Also, we toyed with the idea of assigning each girl a meeting to be in charge of craft instead of dividing up snack, but since we had so many moms involved, we didn't need to.

Good luck!

Just remember, you do not have to be a commando leader. The girls will get just as much out of a low key group and you will not burn out as quickly.

 

[sskem96]

I am co-leader of my daughter's 2nd grade Brownie troop and I work full time. There are 9 girls in our troop. We meet every other Monday. Last year, we collected $10 per girl dues for the year because it was our first year and cookie money does come late, so we needed some money to get started. We made about $250 on cookies, so we didn't feel we needed to collect any dues this year. We try to spend a max of $20 per meeting total for supplies. Last meeting we made Thanksgiving placemats. This week we're making dolls out of yarn for the puppet badge. Next time we're meeting at my house since the school will be closed for Christmas, and we're making homemade pizza and brownies for the make it, eat it badge. We let the girls pick 3 badges they want to work on, and we plan our activities around that. Once we have completed all 3 badges, we will start working on 3 more. The main thing is, having a co-leader you can depend on and trust. There's no way I could do it on my own, and I couldn't depend on most of the moms to help out. We do have them take turns bringing snack, but we don't require anything beyond that.

 

[Kallison]

Tell the parents that everyone MUST plan 2 meetings. That is what we are doing with our 5th grade girl scouts this year. So far, so good, we've got through December planned. I'm ready to be done with it, and so is the leader, we've been doing it since 1st grade. What is frustrating is when we plan stuff, 12 girls say they can go then 5 actually show up. We've both decided we want out after this year, the same Moms do everything. Good Luck - p.s. don't forget to get a commitment from someone to be the dreaded cookie mom.