The local VFW was gracious enough to donate us their hall which, besides being free, provided us with ample amount of inside and outside space and parking. The weather wasn't great, so we elected to keep all of the activities inside as we didn't want the floors to be covered in mud.
In hopes of enticing current Girl Scouts to attend and get prospective girls excited, we made the Welcome Party a Badge Day! The badge we felt most appropriate was the Girl Scout Way as it is constant throughout the levels.
We created quite the display with boards the previous recruitment chair created. We used my girls Daisy, Brownie, and Junior vests as examples. The badge books and journey books were displayed as well as swag provided by our council.
The girls wrote their information on an index card which included spots for five stations. Once the girls completed the stations, they dropped off the cards. The purpose was two-fold. One, I wanted to collect their contact information. Two, I wanted to encourage them to go to every table.
Table 1 was singing and one of the older girls provided song books and led the girls in songs.
Table 2 was celebrate Juliette Gordon Low's birthday. We decided decorating cupcakes was a great way to celebrate her birthday! We saved money by making homemade cupcakes instead of buying them pre-made from the store. Plus, this allowed the girls to add their favorite flavor of icing and their choice of sprinkles!
Table 3 was Share Sisterhood. We have two separate activities for this table.
The first was to have the existing Girl Scouts write welcome notes to the prospective Girl Scouts, sharing with them their favorite part of Girl Scouts, favorite field trip, or basically welcoming them to Girl Scouts. The new girls were given these notes that day.
The second activity was to introduce the new girls to the Girl Scout Law through candy! The different color candy represented a line of the Girl Scout Law. I mean, who doesn't like candy? In the past, I've found all ten lines with jelly belly's. This time I used starburst and jolly ranchers and eight lines were represented.
Table 4 was Make the world a Better Place and we chose to do this by making cards for hospitalized kids. The girls enjoyed creating cards using construction paper, a variety of markers, and stickers, lots and lots of stickers!
http://www.cardsforhospitalizedkids.com/
Table 5 was Girl Scout traditions and we used this to read "Here Comes the Girl Scouts" and to play some great JGL games. I found this amazing packet all about JGL!
http://www.cranfordgirlscouts.com/Forms/do-you-know-juliette-low.pdf Is a resource I used prepare for this Welcome Party and will use with my Girl Scout Troop when we celebrate JGL's birthday!
There's a plethora of fun tidbits and games about Juliette Gordon Low. Below are some examples.
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