ORGANIZING A TROOP
Calendar Planning
Why?
It may not seem like it now but, a Girl Scout year can fly by! There are so many activities and outings to choose from. Our council sponsors events, as does our Neighborhood. What awards do the girls want to work on?
della Martin of Pines of Carolina Girl Scout Council has graciously shared with us the planning method she uses with her older girl Troop. It can be easily modified to be appropriate for different age levels. This is a wonderful way for girls to make choices and learn just what is, and isn't, possible and realistic to do in a scouting year!
How?
Step 1: Decide on the Activities
Each girl gets a bunch of sticky notes - as many as they want!
Go through the list of council events available to their program level in the G.R.E.A.T. Guide and in the Neighborhood Event Calendar.
The girls then write down each activity they want to do on a sticky note, along with the fees for the event.
Once they are done writing down the activities they wanted to do, have them post the sticky notes all around the room, trying to match up any duplicates. (Spread ‘em out---WAY out).
Then each girl gets 7 self-stick stars of any color, and one red one. The red one means, "I’d rather die than do this event!" (make sure they know the don't have to use this one!). Any other color means, "I want to do this event."
Let ‘em loose and put their stars on each activity. Letting them mill around helps eliminate clique voting, because they’re so worried about using their stickers the way they want!
Tally up the number of stars. All stars count as one point, except for red which subtracts a point. Only those that got votes were considered, and were ranked from most to least points.
Add up the cost of each. Depending on the total cost, you might need to have a discussion about whether they can really manage the cost of all their choices!
Step 2: Preplan the activities
For each of the activities, list (each on another sticky note) everything that needs to be done. For example, for a Campout, you might need to do: SWAPs, meal planning, a kaper chart, and shopping for the food.
Don't forget about money earning projects and Cookies! Cookies might need a meeting to go over the info, at another you might collect pre-orders, and another to cover booths.
Go over each event to make sure each has the proper number of sticky notes.
Step 3: Schedule the activities
On a loooooong sheet of freezer paper (about 12 feet), make a large calendar of the year, lengthwise. Underneath the name of the month, put your meeting days, weekends, and any pertinent activities.
Mark the dates of council events (especially "individual" events like PA training), put Cookie dates on the calendar, major holidays, and anything else you can think of. Each day/weekend on the calendar is big enough for a sticky note (another reason for not writing all the dates!).
Now, one event at a time, place the events where they need to be. For planning work, put the post-its on the meetings--no, we can’t do SWAPs, meal planning AND shopping all in one meeting!!!
Now they see how many meetings are still empty. Now they can decide how many Try-Its Badges, IPAs they want to try to accomplish.
Step 4: Choose Awards to do
Use the same process with sticky notes and stars to come up with the list of Awards to do.
Final Words
Because your calendar can be rolled up quickly, your troop can use it to track their progress during the year (repositioning sticky notes if they need to)!
della shared the following about the success of this planning method:
"We have spent 2 meetings on this so far, and they have had FAR MORE FUN planning than I thought they would. They feel VERY much in control of their activities, they are VERY interested in what’s coming down the pike, and (the best part for me), I keep hearing, "Ms. Della, this is HARD to figure out how to do all this!" One even thanked me because they didn’t know how much work planning a GS year is! We had to make a lot of difficult decisions, because there’s only so much time during the year, and so much to do! I saw a lot of teamwork, consensus building, compromising, and other good qualities that we’re trying to build in GS!"
Download this more detailed sheet on the Girl/Adult Partnership.
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