Juliette decided that she wanted to earn the light blue petal next, Honest and Fair. This badge made me realize just how much each of the action plans are geared to troops and that I should really ask my parents how they led our troops in the late 80s and early 90s before the internet.
Learning about Honesty
We followed the Girl Scout Daisy Handbook badge plan and played “truth or lie.” Juliette and I took turns sharing one truth about ourselves and one lie and had to guess which was which. She LOVED this activity. I don’t think she realized that I always knew the truths since we’re together all the time. She’s only 5 and she tells me her favorite things all the time, so when she tells me her favorite color is green, I know it’s a lie (her favorite colors are actually pink, purple, and red… usually in that order). Even after we went back and forth several times, she wanted to play more and was giggling the entire time.
Learning about Fairness
Juliette enjoys making something she calls “banana salad.” She grabs a banana and a child-safe knife, chops up the banana, and eats it in a bowl or on a plate. Earlier in the day, she made banana salad for her and her brother. I had seen her choosing how much they would each get to make it fair, so we talked about what she did and the difference between equality and equity. If we all get the same amount of food for breakfast, that’s equality. If the adults get more because they’re bigger, and her baby brother gets less because he’s smaller, that’s equity.
Understanding Honesty and Fairness
The Handbook included an activity where the girls would run around the room to decide if things were honest, fair, dishonest, or unfair. I read out each scenario to Juliette for her to judge and soon learned we had a problem. Even if she understood what being honest meant, she still got confused by categorizing the stories. Once I broke it down to good and bad, she could then decide whether it was honest or fair if it was good or dishonest or unfair if it was bad. It’s probably an easier activity when the girls can read, but I’m also guessing that there’s a lot of peer influence when done in a troop setting. It was fun to find out how my daughter specifically thinks about things and talk about the various situations.
Badge Number 4!
Juliette’s completed 4 badges and we’re making plans for a bunch of badges and petals in the coming months. I’m planning to go straight through the rest of the petals instead of choosing them based on color (Make the World a Better Place is actually the 9th petal according to the Girl Scout Law, but Juliette wanted the pink petal first!). We can intersperse various other badges and patches as we go!
- Promise Center (and Home School patch)
- Democracy for Daisies (and 2024 Election patch)
- Make the World a Better Place
- Honest and Fair