I volunteered to help my daughter’s Brownie troop by planning and leading a meeting in which we earned the Household Elf Try-It. \u00a0In addition to reading the badge requirement info for this Try-It, I searched online for meeting plans for this badge, but found very little. \u00a0Possibly this is because the badges have been revised very recently. \u00a0I am posting my meeting plan with the hope that it might help another Girl Scout leader or volunteer.<\/p>\n
The Household Elf Try-It is about making your “home clean and green.”<\/p>\n
I created a Conservation Log and emailed it to the troop a week before the meeting, asking the girls to look around their home and school for ways that they can<\/p>\n
1) save energy
\n2) save water
\n3) recycle and reduce trash
\n4) and clean the air.<\/p>\n
The text from my log is below. \u00a0The girls were asked to bring the log to the meeting.<\/p>\n
At the meeting, I divided the girls into three groups. \u00a0Each group was assigned one of the first three topics. \u00a0They discussed their answers to their assigned topic and planned which to present to the whole troop. \u00a0The girls were encouraged to present NEW ideas to the troop as opposed to the ideas they had heard before. \u00a0I had an older girl or adult in each group to assist them in coming up with additional ideas by asking questions such as<\/p>\n
What do we throw away and what can we do with it instead?<\/p>\n
How could we use less energy instead of driving to school or a friend’s house?<\/p>\n
How could you save water when you shower? \u00a0How could you make your shower shorter? (sing or use a timer)<\/p>\n
My older daughter and I modeled the presentations by presenting ways to clean the air since that seems like the most challenging topic to me. \u00a0The girls were also asked to choose several ideas from the presentations to use at home to help the environment more and note them on their conservation log. \u00a0Ideally we’ll discuss how that goes at a later meeting.<\/p>\n
Since our meeting was a month before Christmas, we decided that our project would be to make reusable gift bags that the girls could use for the holiday. \u00a0We collected small paper shopping bags (around 8×10″, such as Starbucks or Bath and Body Works) from the families. \u00a0We cut red and green card stock (from the craft store) for both sides of the bag to cover store logos. \u00a0Recycled holiday cards were used to decorate the bags, as well as holiday stickers. \u00a0A recycled holiday card also makes a great gift tag that you can tie onto the handle of the bag with ribbon.<\/p>\n
It was difficult to get the paper to stick to some of the bags. \u00a0We used double sided tape, but it seemed to need at least 5 large pieces and a lot of pressing down to get it to stick. \u00a0(Some of the girls also seemed to get the tape stuck to the floor or their pants which made it much less sticky.) \u00a0I think the tape works better than glue sticks, but maybe there’s still another better adhesive. \u00a0Also, remind the girls to only write their name on the bottom of the bag, not the sides.<\/p>\n
While we made our gift bags, we sang an ecology song that I found in a campfire song book. \u00a0To keep with the green theme, I printed the song on half sheets of paper (2 to a page) and printed song sheets for every two girls to share.<\/p>\n