Meeting Ideas?

Leaders are always in search of ideas for their meetings.  Activities that not only teach the girls, but that are fun and entertaining.  How do you go about planning your meetings? Where do you start?


As an educator, I use lesson plans and schedules to keep me organized and on task.  When I plan my year, I begin with a calendar and my Girl Scout level book.  When my friend and I had a Daisy troop, we planned each meeting using the first Journey book.  We workd our way through the book and activities one meeting at a time.  We used both the girl and leader books to find ideas for entertaining activities, but we also took time to read through and discuss the material like we would in our classrooms.


Once our girls bridged to Brownies, we used the Try-It book.  Which Try-Its can be accomplished in a meeting vs. those that need/should/could be done at home?  We chose to focus on one Try-It a month.  We decided which activities we could do during the meeting and then assigned other parts as "homework."  The girls were asked to bring their work with them to the next meeting.  I'll go into more detail about what we specifically did in another post.


What materials are needed for the activities?  Who will get those?  Are there any parts the girls or parents can donate?  Get your parents involved.  That will be another post as well.


Think back to successful meetings . . . What did you do?  Share your ideas with us.