...3 Cheers for Animals! - Session 1

It's Your Story - Tell It!: A Leadership Journey
Girl Scout Daisies

Tessa is a Girl Scout Daisy. Although this is her first year as a Girl Scout (regrettably, we missed sign-ups last year), she's a first-grader, so she's considered a second-year Daisy. At the end of the year, she'll bridge to Brownies. That means we only have one year to explore all of what Daisies has to offer.

Our troop is a mixed troop. That means there are girls from various levels of Girls Scouts in Tessa's troop. That makes planning challenging for the troop leader. Since our Daisies are focusing on earning petals for their Daisy Flower during meeting time this year, I volunteered to create and facilitate a virtual/home study Journey group. Our first Journey is 5 Flowers, 4 Stories, 3 Cheers for Animals!: It's Your Story - Tell It!

(In all honesty, this may be the only Journey we get to embark upon as a group due to time constraints. Our troop meets twice a month. There are ten sessions in this Journey that will take us several months to complete.)

5 Flowers, 4 Stories, 3 Cheers for Animals! introduces Daisies to the stories of the flower friends: Daisy, Sunny, Tula, Gloria, Gerri, Rosie, Vi, Clover, Mari, Lupe and Zinni. Each flower friend corresponds to a value in the Girl Scout Law.

The girls in our Journey group complete most of their work at home. I provide packets at each troop meeting that contain pretty much all of the materials needed to complete the current session. The girls arrive a few minutes early to the meetings to add their parts to the Team Mural, Team Birdbath, etc.

In order to make the Journey more home-friendly, I am tweaking the sample lessons found in the ...3 Cheers for Animals!'s how-to guide. Upon completion of the Journey, the girls will have earned the special patch pictured below.

The "5 Flowers, 4 Stories, 3 Cheers for Animals!" Journey patch consists of three small embroidered patches that iron on top of a larger background patch.

The following is an outline of what Tessa and I did for the first session of the ...3 Cheers for Animals! Journey. Feel free to download a copy of the handout I gave parents. It provides detailed instructions for what we did and why.

Session 1 - Starting Our Animal Adventure

Opening Ceremony:
Animals Around the World, page 29 from "How To Guide"
(Bald Eagle: United States)

• Completed "A Purr-fect Surprise in the Garden - Come Out, Come Out...Wherever You Are!" (pages 6-7) from the girls' book.
• Shared important information about the Journey and bald eagle with Tessa (most of the italicized parts from page 29).
• Read "Bald Eagle" mini-book from Lets Learn Mini-Books: Our Nation by Scholastic.
• Visited National Geographic Kids: Animal Creature Features to enjoy facts, photos, sounds, a video and more pertaining to bald eagles.

Although Scholastic often features the Lets Learn Mini-Books: Our Nation eBook mentioned above during their Dollar Deals specials, it's unlikely too many people who aren't in the education field will have it on hand. Run a search for "bald eagle, symbol" on your local library's electronic catalog to find a suitable substitute.

Get Creative!

Team Animal Mural, page 30 from "How To Guide"

• Read "Explain to the girls..." to Tessa.
• Traced hand onto brown card stock for the eagle portion of the Team Animal Mural.

The eagle portion of the Team Animal Mural will look similar to "Handprint Bald Eagle Craft" featured on All Kids Network when completed. Depending on how many girls complete this part of the Journey, we will double-up on the hand prints for the wings and may even swap out the drawn tail for a hand print one.

Story Time:

"Welcome to This Amazing Animal Adventure," page 31 from "How To Guide"

• Read "Welcome to This Amazing Animal Adventure" (page 5) from the girls' book.
• Read last paragraph from page 31 to Tessa.

Get Creative!

Building a Team Birdbath, page 32-33 from "How To Guide"

• Decorated a paper cup with one of Tessa's favorite animals.
• Completed "Team Talk" draw and write prompt cards.
• Completed "Animals Need Care and So Do You" (pages 78-79) from the girls' book.

The "How To Guide" provides directions for a paper mâché Team Birdbath. That wouldn't work for us, so I came up with the idea of the girls creating a paper cup and plate birdbath that when completed will look similar to the terracotta pot one below.

Using decorated paper cups and paper plates in lieu of paper mâché, the girls' Team Birdbath will look similar to this one made with terracotta pots. 

The girls in our Journey group are decorating paper cups with art that represents their favorite animals. Tessa chose to decorate her cup with drawings of cats.

Tessa's completed cup features a cat family. On one side is a mommy cat and her three babies, which are playing with a ball of yarn fashioned from a small green pom-pom. On the other side is the daddy cat. A toy mouse, food bowl, water bowl and litter box are sprinkled around the cup.

Tessa and the other girls will place their completed "Team Talk" draw and write prompts in the Team Birdbath.

Closing Ceremony:

Keeping the Girl Scout Promise, page 34 from "How To Guide"

• Completed Girl Scout Promise poster.
• Practiced Girl Scout Promise.

This activity also serves as a good starting point for earning the Promise Center patch of the Daisy Flower. I saw this idea floating around several places on the internet. Unfortunately, all of the printables I found were low resolution and looked grainy upon printing. I redesigned a high-resolution version.

Tessa completed the Girl Scout Promise poster to help her memorize the promise. After going over it just a couple of times, she pretty well had it down. (Oh, the power of a young mind!) We posted it in the playroom to help her remember.

My sample of the Girl Scout Promise poster. I chose a Daisy blue for the background, but the colors may be customized to fit any girl's needs.

Looking for more Girl Scout Promise and ...3 Cheers for Animals! activities?

Check out my Garden Friends: Girl Scout Promise Practice Pages - Girl Scout Daises & Brownies and Girl Scout Law Ring Book - Pets Version - Girl Scout Daisies & Brownies printable scouting helper.