Daisy Girl Scout Leaders

[LisaNJ25]

Welcome! the backpack idea is really cute!!

That's a cute idea also.. I just dont like them not having an official vest for event, parades etc.

 

[mickimousemama]

That's a cute idea also.. I just dont like them not having an official vest for event, parades etc.

I would have to say I totally agree, however one of the first things we were told in becomming a daisy leader is that our girls were not allowed to wear anything that could identify them as a girl scout while out for community events, cookie sales, ect, because of the fear of someone tracking them down personally I thought it was pretty rediculous, but rules are rules, and it seemed crazy to spend the money on something they could only wear to our meetings? The 2nd year Daisies gave us the idea for the backpack, and the girls love that they have something to carry their projects back and forth in, we were able to get them all with coupons at Hobby Lobby for under $5 each!

 

[QVCshopper]

Yikes!! No I have never heard of that. Although 24 boxes would be no problem to sell at all you may not have the type someone wants.

We do pre-sales here that last for 3 weeks. Pre-sales ends 1/30/11 and the cookies come in 4-5 weeks later.

What I personally do to get my girls numbers up is I will order extra boxes to have on hand.. this year we are going to go do to door with product in hand. We are actually encouraged to do that as a troop. Kind of like a moving booth sale.

Also we are allowed to get extra cookies up untill the end of march so I always go back for more a few times. All of this and booth sales count towards the girls totals.

I found out more from the cookie mom. We are to sell the two cases (24 cookie boxes) and keep the money since I already paid $84 for them. I can exchange the cookies for different types early next week (need more thin mints). Then, we are signed up for 2 booths at a local food store; those are more cookies and count toward my DDs cookie count. Wish we could have preordered instead, as I now have all of these cookies at my house. But, hopefully we can sell them quickly--I just think the mixture of types of cookies isn't very helpful b/c I will definitely have to exchange.

 

[LisaNJ25]

I would have to say I totally agree, however one of the first things we were told in becomming a daisy leader is that our girls were not allowed to wear anything that could identify them as a girl scout while out for community events, cookie sales, ect, because of the fear of someone tracking them down personally I thought it was pretty rediculous, but rules are rules, and it seemed crazy to spend the money on something they could only wear to our meetings? The 2nd year Daisies gave us the idea for the backpack, and the girls love that they have something to carry their projects back and forth in, we were able to get them all with coupons at Hobby Lobby for under $5 each!

Yeah that is insane.. sounds like a crazy local council rule.. Personally if I was in your council I would be contacting the national level.

Honestly.. whats the point of spending all of that time(and money) earning badges if you cant wear theme proudly unless you are behind closed doors?

We are not allowed to be out selling cookies without wearing our vests.. other wise you look like anyone off the street and not representing girl scouts. We also wear them to any GS event we go to, marching in the parades etc.

 

[LisaNJ25]

I found out more from the cookie mom. We are to sell the two cases (24 cookie boxes) and keep the money since I already paid $84 for them. I can exchange the cookies for different types early next week (need more thin mints). Then, we are signed up for 2 booths at a local food store; those are more cookies and count toward my DDs cookie count. Wish we could have preordered instead, as I now have all of these cookies at my house. But, hopefully we can sell them quickly--I just think the mixture of types of cookies isn't very helpful b/c I will definitely have to exchange.

Good luck! Maybe this way the leader feels she will get at least 24 boxes per parent(sometimes you get girls who will sell nothing). I would think the troop would get better sales by doing the pre-orders.

 

[amez]

We had a meeting Thursday night and went over session two of our journey. Many of the girls turned in their cookie order forms--some of them are selling machines I'm sitting today waiting to log in for our cookie booths. I hope I can get the dates, times and places we want. Next Sat. we getting together and watching a dvd movie and having pizza as just a fun get together. In Feb we have two meetings planned and Thinking Day with our service unit. Our troop has Romania. So at one of our meetings we will make a bunch of swaps, create a poster, make a flag--I still need to decide on an acitivity or craft for the girls to do when they visit our display--any ideas??

I don't think I will plan anything "extra" for March since we will already have two meetings and cookie booths.

Amy

 

[Suellen]

We had a meeting Thursday night and went over session two of our journey. Many of the girls turned in their cookie order forms--some of them are selling machines I'm sitting today waiting to log in for our cookie booths. I hope I can get the dates, times and places we want. Next Sat. we getting together and watching a dvd movie and having pizza as just a fun get together. In Feb we have two meetings planned and Thinking Day with our service unit. Our troop has Romania. So at one of our meetings we will make a bunch of swaps, create a poster, make a flag--I still need to decide on an acitivity or craft for the girls to do when they visit our display--any ideas??

I don't think I will plan anything "extra" for March since we will already have two meetings and cookie booths.

Amy

Do you have the girls to your house for the "extra" stuff? We were told explicitly that we could not have any GS related activities at our homes.

 

[karemore]

Does anyone know how the girls are supposed to carry their SWAP pins at an event for trading?

We plan to make 10-15 pins for each girl to SWAP at an upcoming event, but I'm not sure how they are going to keep track of them and have them displayed. A plastic baggie seems kind of boring.....

 

[Familyof4lovesDW]

We had a meeting Thursday night and went over session two of our journey. Many of the girls turned in their cookie order forms--some of them are selling machines I'm sitting today waiting to log in for our cookie booths. I hope I can get the dates, times and places we want. Next Sat. we getting together and watching a dvd movie and having pizza as just a fun get together. In Feb we have two meetings planned and Thinking Day with our service unit. Our troop has Romania. So at one of our meetings we will make a bunch of swaps, create a poster, make a flag--I still need to decide on an acitivity or craft for the girls to do when they visit our display--any ideas??

I don't think I will plan anything "extra" for March since we will already have two meetings and cookie booths.

Amy

Which journey are you working on? We are do in Earth and Sky. I cannot wait to do three cheers for animals.

The only thing I can think for Romainia is gymnastics. I know at our council store we had movie night and a pizza party patch. I just wanted to mention it since I noticed you were doing both.

Good luck getting your cookie booths. We had to get up at 6am to book ours. I know what you mean about March. We have 5 cookie booth and weekly meetings.

Do you have the girls to your house for the "extra" stuff? We were told explicitly that we could not have any GS related activities at our homes.

That is strange. We have our meetings at the leaders house and I know other troops around here do, too. Maybe it is a council thing for liability reasons?? I was actually suprised it was okay to have them there.

 

[Suellen]

Wrong thread... sorry!! LOL! Eh! One of those morning!

 

[Suellen]

They say it is because our home owners insurance won't cover something like that if there was an injury. If we run a daycare or something from home then you can meet there.

I just planned a Pizza Party and Movie thing for next week and am just not calling it an official girl scout event... but inviting all that girls.

We are going to talk about allergens and have some snacks and enjoy some fun time. They can get two patches ~ Pizza Party and Allergen awareness.

 

[amez]

Isn't it odd how different councils do things differently.

For the movie and pizza we are actually meeting at one of the parent's businesss--they have a movie screen for the movie. We are allowed to meet in our homes though. We do have to fill out a hold harmless/permission slip for everything we do too.

We are doing Between Earth and Sky--The leader before me picked it out and had already gotten the books. I think Three Cheers for Animals looks fun I wish we were doing that one.

I did get the cookie booths I wanted. I'm just not sure how many cookies to order for the booths? I read some where 100 boxes for every two hours, but I really don't want to have extra cookies left over.

Amy

 

[Leajess99]

We aren't selling Dulce de Leche and Thank You Berry Much this year. They said we were one of the test markets of only selling 6 cookies.

Our older girls have the option of not receiving incentives and making a bigger profit on cases sold but since I don't have older girls I didn't pay attention to the dollar amount

My son would have a fit if they didn't have Dulce De leche. as for Thank you Berry Much, those can go. My youngest only sold 1 box of those.

 

[Leajess99]

Do you have the girls to your house for the "extra" stuff? We were told explicitly that we could not have any GS related activities at our homes.

Not sure if it has changed here or not but when my 12 year old was a 1st year Brownie they did a couple of things at the Leader's house.

 

[TexasTodds]

I've read parts of this thread on and off, but the last few pages were very interesting...

I have a kindergarten DD, and am one of two asst. leaders (we are both new to girl scouts), and have a very experienced leader (for whom I am very grateful!)

So far, we have earned the blue center badge, and the red and spring green petals. We have a plan lined out to earn one at each meeting for the rest of the year, so they will be done with those, and then in the fall, we plan to start the first Journeys book.

Our first pre-orders for cookies are due tomorrow, and my daughter was super excited and loved going door to door. We sold 110 boxes, which I thought was pretty good for her first year (each girl's goal in the troop was 70 boxes). I also then ordered about 20 more so we would have a few to take door to door, to get those houses that we missed.

In our area, Daisies aren't allowed to have cookie booths at places like grocery stores, which is fine with me.

I thought the prizes were pretty sad...Our themes were "Count Me In" with an Owl logo (and some handprints also)

1-44 boxes -- Cookie patch
45-79 Count me in embroidered bracelet
80-129 eco wood owl necklace (silver looking charm on blue leather like chain
130-164 -- owl carabiner clip
165-199 Portable mini jams FM radio
200-299 Owl Spiral journal (think small notebook)
300-399 Count me in Sticker kit
400-499 Owl pillow
500-649 Messenger bag
650-849 Owl Alarm clock
850-999 Friendship bracelet kit
1000-1499 e-reader (not specific, doesn't look like kindle)
1500-1999 -- $50 e-reader gift card
2000++ e-reader case

All prizes are cumulative. In addition, if you ordered 160 boxes on initial order, you would get 5 themed patches also.

On our cookie order form, it says to wear your girl scout pin, and/or clothing to identify you as a girl scout. I can't imagine being told to not wear your uniform while selling an official product. HOWEVER, that being said, I have two sons, one in cub scouts, and then other now in boys scouts, and it is a completely different set of rules. I have had a leadership role with the cub scout pack, so am pretty familiar with the requirements. From 1st to 5th grade, it is all about the family camping, and they do earn all of their own achievements by working either alone, with their adult partner, or with their group. A parent must be with each boy if they are in 1st-3rd grade. To make a long story short, my daughter just doesn't understand why we can't just go camping like the boys do, since she has been going with us since she was 3 (now is 6 1/2).

I didn't want to just drop my daughter off at a meeting where parents weren't really allowed to stay, or just send her off, even though they are "trained and have had a background check". I know it is all about "protecting girls" but sometimes I think it goes to far, and borders on secrecy if you strictly adhere to some of the policies. ok, must get off the soap box now!

I will say, it has been a good experience, not too time consuming outside of the meetings, we rotate "primary responsibilit" for the meetings, so that does help alot.

Does anyone else feel like they are "herding cats" at times? well, off to finish preparing for this week!

 

[acklepwifey]

Hello all!!! Its been quite a while since I last checked in on the thread! I have been uber-busy with our Daisy troop and with the PTA for my DD's school. We are in full swing with our troop! We made $400 on nut sales and we are doing cookie sales right now! I wont get total amounts till the end of this week but so far my daughter alone has 300+boxes sold for pre-orders!!! I am the cookie mom(since I am troop treasurer and leader I thought it would be easiest :]) and boy oh boy am I having fun!! We have dived right into earning our petals and I mapped out the year of earning our petals and Journey Garden patch! I thought doing both the petals and Journey simultaneously would be hard but its not as difficult as I thought.
How is everyone doing with cookie sales?? I am soo excited!!!

 

[Suellen]

Just curious how often and long everyone is meeting. We meet every other week for an hour and it just doesn't seem like enough.

Some of the girls have expressed an interest in meeting every week. I'm thinking that an hour isn't nearly long enough to get all our "business" done AND then have some fun too.

I also feel like I don't have enough time to really do what I want to do with them.

Problem is ~ we already meet from 5:30 - 6:30 ~ which I am sure means late dinners for some of the girls and rushing like heck for others.

 

[QVCshopper]

I'm not a Daisy leader, but my DD is in Daisies. They meet every other week from 3:15-4:45. They go right from their kindergarten class to Daisies; they meet at the school. Then we pick her up. She likes it a lot.

 

[acklepwifey]

Just curious how often and long everyone is meeting. We meet every other week for an hour and it just doesn't seem like enough.

Some of the girls have expressed an interest in meeting every week. I'm thinking that an hour isn't nearly long enough to get all our "business" done AND then have some fun too.

I also feel like I don't have enough time to really do what I want to do with them.

Problem is ~ we already meet from 5:30 - 6:30 ~ which I am sure means late dinners for some of the girls and rushing like heck for others.

We meet every other week from 6-7PM. We have field trips monthly, well at least 1 a month. I think an hour for the girls is short but then again anything longer and I'd probably wish to go back to an hour again . Next year I might up it to once a week instead of every other week.

 

[Suellen]

Hmmm so what if a parent works until 5:00?

That would work for me .... but my co-leader actually works until 5:00. I bet the extra 15 minutes would help a lot!

So as a parent of a Daisy Scout.... do you like the extra events (think weekends with fun stuff to do) or is it more of a feeling like just something extra you need to do?

I'm more than willing to plan stuff on the weekends for the girls... I just don't want to overwhelm mom's and dad's.