Basic Meeting Plans are designed to have minimal supplies and still hit the GSUSA Requirements. Most meetings can be done in a 90 minute time frame.
PLEASE NOTE THAT FOR DAISY MY MONEY CHOICES AND COOKIE GOAL SETTER ARE PRETTY MUCH THE EXACT SAME ACTIVITIES AND COULD BE COMBINED INTO ONE, or divided and done total in two meetings as doing all the activities could feel rushed.
Items needed:
- Print out of Circle Needs for each scout
- Troop coloring supplies (markers, crayons, or colored pencils)
- Three activities your troop would be interested in and the costs of how much it would be to take the whole troop.
- Three community service projects your troop would be interested in and the costs of how much it would be for the whole troop to do. Divide that by the number of scouts to also show what the cost per scout is.
(Note, troops with a larger budget might want to use the Pretend Shopping method as a fun activity to do after discussing Costs and Goals. Challenge them to only get needs when shopping, or only wants.)
Needs and Wants
Info Needed: If you Need something, you can’t live without it. Food, water, clothing, and shelter are things humans need to survive. We might die if we don’t have them. Wants is anything else. Humans want toys and art supplies and pretty looking things. But we won’t die if we don’t have them.
Fun Activity: Let each scout Circle Needs on their print out and compare the troops answers.
(Requirement 1 Earned)
Fun Activity Costs and Goal
Info Needed: Money can buy needs and wants. We only have so much money and need to spend it on the things we need before we can buy what we want. If we buy 100 candy bars, we won’t have enough money to buy the food for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. A budget is a plan for where to spend your money. We find out how much things costs and plan before we spend on how much we’ll pay for different things. The troop has money. We spend it on supplies for meetings and for badges we earn. We need supplies or we cannot have meetings. We want badges because we could wear our uniforms without them and still be Girl Scouts. Some activities cost more than others. We can plan ahead for an activity we want that costs more money than our usual supplies.
Question Needed: What activity do we want to do?
Action Needed: Plan a Goal to do an Activity! Show them the three ideas you have already priced out for them. Explain that the total cost is for the whole troop to go. Show them that if you divide the total cost by the number of scouts, this is how much each scout would need to pay to do this activity.
How much is that? After the scouts try to figure out the value of how much the price per scout is (How much candy can $20 get you? How many toys?)… then tell them that Girl Scouts can use Cookie Money to go. Cookie Money is the money earned during the cookie sale each year. Explain that every box of cookies, the troop can use 50 cents to go on a fun activity. (If your council gives you more, use that for the other troop expenses, this is just for the fun activity and 50 cents is easier for scouts to use.)
Remind them that 50 cents is half a $1 bill. Take the cost per scout price and times it by two. If the cost is $10 per scout, we would each need to sell 20 boxes of cookies to go. If it’s $50, they need to sell 100 boxes per scout. Explain that some scouts will sell more and some less, but if the whole troop is working towards the goal, we either reach the grand total (the total amount for the troop to go), or the troop doesn’t go. Have the scouts help you calculate the costs for all the activities priced out and then vote for which one they will try and get this cookie season.
(Requirement 2 Earned)
Community Service Costs and Goal
Question Needed: What community service do we want to do?
Action Needed: Show them the three ideas you have already priced out for them. Explain that the total cost is for the whole troop and you have already done the math on how much it is for each scout. Have the scouts figure out how many boxes of cookies would they need to sell to do each activity. Then vote for which one they will try. Give them the grand total of how many boxes they each need to sell for the fun and service activities they voted on. Then give them the total that the whole troop is going to aim for, reminding them that we can try our best, but some will sell more and some less – the point is the whole troop will aim for this bigger number.
(Requirement 3 Earned)
Meeting End
Scouts can come up with new ideas the leader and look up the costs for until it’s time to go home. They have already voted, but these ideas can be used for a future wish list.
OR
Scouts can draw their needs and wants on the back side of their Circle Needs sheet until it’s time to go home.
General Notes
Note to Leaders – No Basic Plan compiled by The Badge Archive will earn multiple badges in one level. Part of being budget friendly is not costing more than the price of one official GSUSA badge per meeting. PLEASE NOTE THAT FOR DAISY MY MONEY CHOICES AND COOKIE GOAL SETTER ARE PRETTY MUCH THE EXACT SAME ACTIVITIES AND COULD BE COMBINED INTO ONE, or divided and done total in two meetings as doing all the activities could feel rushed.
Some badges will take two meetings to finish. This helps scouts enjoy activities and keeps the troop budget in mind by only needing one GSUSA badge for every two meetings. Troops may choose to get a fun patch for one of the meetings if scouts want a badge/patch for every meeting. Scouts can earn the fun patch if they only attend one meeting and get a fun patch and the official badge if they go to both.
The Badge Archive 