purpledragon

I have a multilevel troop right now. There are various reasons I am multilevel. Right now I have 3 girls that bridged to Cadettes, 4 girls that are starting their last year as Juniors and possible 2 Daisy Girls starting. I think one of my Cadettes and one Junior may become inactive. I will be posting that I am looking for more girls (and hopefully helpers.) I honestly do not see any reason not to have a multi level troop if you have help. I take that back. Here we cannot have any money earning events (except for money earning projects) unless all girls are in the 6th gr

Oh yeah, I know about the participation. That i not the issue. If we sell one item for each sale then officially we participated. I have that one down pat. No our trouble is that our ACT has made it a rule that we cannot participate in any running any events as a fund raiser if we have girls that are in grades below 6th grade. This makes it challenging to fundraise. With the further restrictions on not being able to sell anything that benefits another company...well the options are really looking slim now. What fundraisers have you had that have produced real income fo

Hmm rereading my post I noticed a few typos. Just so people understand and have some patients with my typing, I am a bit dyslexic...so I tend to mess up typing. Anyways, I just wanted to warn everyone.

"We are constantly sabotaged by the division into tiny single age group units, lack of support for adult leaders. lack of a trained troop committee chair or sizable pool of parent volunteers." Amen Cheerful Eagle

ROFLMAO about the cookie comments. Yeah aren't they fun? he he And on top of that the girls HATED the theme this year and were not that motivated by the prizes (yes I said it PRIZES instead of incentives ... oh no the GS police might get me). Just wait until the fall, then you get to sell nuts and candies (or at least that is what we do here). After I found a group to sponsor our troop we are not obligated to play the cookie/nut games any more. We participate until the girls are sick of it and then we stop. We cancelled our last weekend of booths because we sold out and no

Hi Everyone, I am Jean. I have been away form the computer lately trying to survive school and cookie sales. I am a single mom with a boy and a girl, so I am involved in both programs. BS- my son stared BS the last 6 months of Weeblos 2. He earned his Arrow of Light and all 20 pins. He is now in a BS troop for the past 3 years. During this time he has been involved in a leadership/PLC continuously. He is a Star rank working on Life right now. He just completed a term as the SPL and is off this weekend to Brown Sea Training. He will be returning to Brown Sea as a Troop Guide this

Hi Everyone, I am Jean. I have been away form the computer lately trying to survive school and cookie sales. I am a single mom with a boy and a girl, so I am involved in both programs. BS- my son stared BS the last 6 months of Weeblos 2. He earned his Arrow of Light and all 20 pins. He is now in a BS troop for the past 3 years. During this time he has been involved in a leadership/PLC continuously. He is a Star rank working on Life right now. He just completed a term as the SPL and is off this weekend to Brown Sea Training. He will be returning to Brown Sea as a Troop Guide this

AnneinMpls & Cheereful eagle, Sorry about the late response, I have been going crazy with the cookie booths this weekend. When we went to ride and do our horse badges we only went for a few hours during the day. We needed to have the facility fax their proof of insurance as well. They had to carry a million dollar policy. Council needed this to be able to add the horse ranch to their list of approved places for Girl Scouts to visit. Something about the GS insurance, if we go to a non approved place and something happens they will not cover anything. SO that is the mystery about t

AnninMpls I fully understand about the copyright for the material you have gathered and use. Do you think that you could please post the books titles, isbn numbers, and the pages that you have used for your handbooks? That way others can start looking for the information and we will be able to use it as well. I'd hate for good information to not be shared. I am trying to get back into the older style for running a GS troop and I enjoy finding the older stuff to use (the stuff they have dropped from the program for some reason, like the outdoor skills and now this). If you c

Excellent Cheerful Eagle, That sounds Awesome! Too bad it is located too far away for us to check it out (unless we plan it as a trip... he he I will have to bring it up with the girls. But we will have earned our Horse Badges by then I am sure.)

First let me clear up one thing: PATCHES and not earned per-say,you receive a patch for two reasons: 1) You attended an event and you get the patch as a keepsake. 2) You can earn patches if you follow a patch program, which are supposedly easier than earning badges. Because of this they are only allowed to be worn on the back of your vest/sash. (Similar to BS with their sash, or the jacket/vest they have specifically for patches.) BADGES (TRY ITS or IP (Interest Projects) are earned. You much complete the necessary number of requirements to earn this award. As such these are

Rumor has it that part of the new GS model is going to include some materials to help leaders to plan and lead the girls better. I do not remember exactly where I read this, but here are a few links to give you some ideas about the upcoming changes in case you are not aware. www.gssjc..org/cin/fd/2008/Feb/programchanges2008.pdf http://www.girlscouts.org/for_adults/leader_magazine/2006_winter/setting_the_pace.pdf Either way things shake out, it will be interesting. I still hold onto the program direction of our BS Troop and will most likely continue down a road that parallels

Hi Cheerful Scout, I am have split off from a less desirable troop and just started a new troop as well. Right now we have 7 girls (which is the max most in this area have in a troop, and I disagree with that--- but that is a topic for another post). 5 of the girls that just joined have no scouting experience. One girl split with us and she sort of has one year experience (the less than desirable troop thing again). Then there is my daughter. She has 3 years in GS, but all with that same above mentioned troop. She has however been to her brothers BS meetings and sees what they boys

Hi Cheerful Eagle, Are you going to be doing a troop badge or a council's own badge? I was just wondering. My troop will be working on a council's own JR badge next week. We were advised by the council to look for patch programs that related to the badge the girls wanted to do. We will be going over these at tomorrow night's meeting and we will have a guest speaker attend next weeks meeting when we will work on the badge. It sounds like fun. The only things so far was the quest speaker. She wanted to do the badge for the girls and tell them what they should include.

Hi Gunny2862, They split the topic talking about crews and such. Check it out: http://www.scouter.com/forums/viewThread.asp?threadID=180952 There may be more information there as well. I hope this helps!

Yes, about the GS changes. We have actually began the changes this past October (2007)[They changed the ages/grades for the different levels and added one to the top called "Ambassadors". Now every level will last for two years with the exception being Cadettes, they will last three years.]. The next big phase is rumored to hit Fall of 2008. If I understand this one correctly they will phase in the "Discover", "Connect", and "Take Action" parts they are adding to the levels. For an example look at this years cookie pin activities. The format will be the same as in they will divide t

We have another Venturing Crew (VC) in the next city (about 10 mins. drive from here ... so very close) that is associated (however they do so) with a troop that we split off from. (Our troops are still on good terms with each other.) My observation on VCs is based on my limited interaction with this group. Here is the background of our troop. We started two and a half years ago with nine boys that had just bridged to BS six months earlier. We have averaged a gain of close to 17 boys each year since from bridging. Many of our boys are involved in sports or other activities. We hav

Welcome, I read your intro. and started to nod in understanding. I too had terrible issues getting my daughter into scouts (I was on the wait list for 3 years. When I found a troop on my own and called to let them know they could take me off the wait list I found out that they actually did not have me on it at all! Go figure.). After that we were in the troop .... well not a good troop it turned out. So I truely feel your pain. Here many troops run a the minimum level. They refuse to take more girls and the ones they take are all from the same school and the same grade...very cl

Hi all, I am a single mother of two. One boy scout and one girl scout. Right now I am a GS leader and the last weekend in Feb. I will finish OLS which will be my last training to be an ASM for BS. I am also the treasurer (and thus a committee member) for the BS troop. My son is currently a Star scout working towards his Life rank. He is currently the SPL of our troop of roughly 40 scouts (but we will most likely be adding 15-20 more this next month). Our troop started 2005 with 9 original boys. We have three of the original boys (mine included). This BS troop is a great tr

Thanks for the replies. I do not remember having a big Award Ceremony when I was a GS nor have we had one in the four years I have been involved as a leader. I asked my question because we now have a sponsor (who also sponsors my son's BS troop) and they asked about our event that is similar to the BS R&G / B&G. That is when the sponsor group usually visits the troop and gives us our sponsorship check and sees the boys and learns about some of their accomplishments. Our sponsor wanted to have this same opportunity with our GS troop. I had to think for a bit about this

Awesome. Thanks for the post. I have added this story to our scout website for all to read. This was a wonderful addition.

I was recently asked if the Girl Scouts had an equivalent to the Boy Scouts Red/Green and Blue/Gold. I have no idea, so I would like to hear from others. Thanks for you responses.