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Beyond Ziploc bags and Envelopes
Do you give out your badges & patches in
envelopes or Ziploc bags and send them home with your girls? Would you like to
add a little bit of fun and excitement when giving the girls their awards? Below
is a collection of ideas to use to spice up your award presentations. I do
not take credit for these ideas, if they are your ideas please e-mail me with
your name so I can give you credit.
Starting as Daisies or the girls or troops
first year, give the girls a silk flower with a ribbon attached. On the ribbon
is all the badges and patches earned so far. At each ceremony use a different
silk flower after all the girls years in scouting they will have a lovely
bouquet to remember their award ceremonies with.
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Staple the girls badges & patches onto a wide ribbon with a pin at the top so
the ribbon can be fastened to the vest/sash or staple badges & patches directly
onto the vest/sash so parent knows exactly where to sew it! The latter takes a
good stapler (one of those little wimpy ones won't work) but the girls liked it
the last time we did it this way.
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Get one of those straw wreaths (one for
each girl) wrap the wreath in fabric, you can have the girls bring
in fabric they like. It takes about 1/2 yard. If there is material left over a
bow can be added. Use straight pins to attach the badges to the wreath. The
size of the wreath depends on how many badges they have earned.
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Cut out of poster board a vest/sash the
program age level color and attach the patches/badges on them.
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Make trefoil shapes out of poster board as
a troop - tied it into GS traditions. Each girl makes one. At a Court of
Awards Ceremony, the patches were attached with double-stick tape. Simple, but
eye catching.
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We studied Egypt all year as our country
for Thinking Day so I made pyramids with poster board and
had the badges and patches inside of it.
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Earned your Sign of the Satellite?
Make a shooting star. On The star part put everything that goes on the front of
the vest/sash and on the shooting part put all of the other patches earned.
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Theme your ceremonies. For example: Gardening - give girls small bags of
potpourri and the adults garden glove memo pads for lending a hand. Staple
the girls recognitions that they earned since the last ceremony on a themed
cotton ribbon 3-4 inches wide (the kind you use for wreath bows) and cut nice on
the bottom. Many parents don't get around to sewing the badges and patches for
a few months,
so this long ribbon was sure not to get lost in the shuffle during the summer
months. you could even put
a magnetic strip on it so it could be hung on the fridge!
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Use pinwheels and attach streamers to it
and on each streamer was a try it or patch.
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Make chocolate kiss roses and attach to
each leaf a badge
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Use needlework ornament start frames and
last year when my girls earned their leadership pin I covered the cardboard with
fabric and put the leadership in the center and then from the Junior green and
Cadette blue ribbons I attached badges and patches.
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Put the badges in Ziploc bags and insert into a big balloon, blow up or use a
helium tank. Should be a hoot watching those girls try and figure out how to
get the badges out!
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Pin each badge to a ribbon--one ribbon for each girl, could have a name tag or
even a "mum" at the top.
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Make paper flowers with a cardboard backing in the shape of the trefoil behind,
with streamers in the colors of the world hanging from it. Use little
wooden pieces for the girls to hold on to. The badges and pins were then put on
the streamers and given to the girls as they crossed the bridge.
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Make a necklace of the Try-Its and patches girls were receiving. Tape on curly
ribbon.
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Make Daisies out of construction or poster board. Attaching badges to petals,
also attaching to ribbons that can be pinned onto the girl's uniform during
ceremony.
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Staple the badges/try-its to a thin ribbon and then tie the ribbon very tightly
to a lollipop stick.
Take assorted lollipops and stick them in Styrofoam and then...let's see, what
will we do with them????
Have the Styrofoam spray painted brown already and precut to fit small clay
flowerpots. Now you
have a flowerpot full of flower- lollipops!! You could do one of the flower
ceremonies and then hand these out as each girl says her part or at the end of
the ceremony!!!
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Make a vest from a plane brown grocery bag, then attached the one year
star, Try-It, and Bridging patch, they had earned during the bridging steps or
throughout the year.
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Use with Try-Its - make a mini Pizza Pan and mount them with a
dab of hot glue on the back, to form a portion or whole Pizza.
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With Junior Badges perhaps a mounted on a
fun foam Ice Cream dish, like scoops of Ice cream
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Then for the IPP's you could build
a Pyramid, as they are the 'Building Blocks of Life'
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Staple patches/badges to a strip of wide, kind of stiff ribbon. Attach a
sticker/label to top of ribbon with girl's name so you know whose it is. When
presented to the Scout, pin it to her sash/shirt.
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Take a small terra cotta pot and paint it (we used silver and blue since several
of the girls earned their silver award). Put Styrofoam into each pot. Take
pieces of coated floral wire in varying lengths (4" up to 10") Wrap one end of
the wire tightly around the end of a pencil, then slide the wire off the pencil.
You should have something that looks like this O--------- Be sure the coil
of wire is coiled tightly. Take each piece of wire and stick it into the
Styrofoam in the pot. These will be standing up looking like flower stems. Take
the badge or patch and wedge it into the coil. Now you have a pot full of
patches and IP's. Once the girls take the patches out to be sewn on their vests, they can still
use the pot and wire to display their favorite pictures.
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Have the leaders write down something ahead of time to say about each girl,
something fun-outstanding
memory of the activities, etc. This keeps the ceremonies from being dry no
matter what props are used in handing the girls their badges, patches, and other
awards. Tell them to invite parents and relatives, having the girls make
invitations each time. The leaders should pencil in prospective dates on their
troop planning calendars so they and the parents are not caught off guard.
Parents deserve plenty of notice and troop information in a timely manner.
This keeps them on your side, no matter what mistakes happen during the year.
Too many leaders view parents as the enemy when they should be treated
as allies of the troop. They can easily transfer their girls to other troops or
out of Girl Scouting altogether.
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Another idea is varying the location of
the ceremonies from time to time. Having a lawn party where everyone brings
their own blankets or chairs would be a nice change of pace, esp. for younger
siblings. Have parents in charge of getting refreshments. Put a notice in the
newspaper afterward. Try to include a group picture.
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A way to thank troop parent
volunteers is to give each one a small plant for their garden. The girls can
decorate Styrofoam cups or small pots. Baskets can be made of paper. Or the
girls can present their parents with a flower- live or homemade. Have the girls
take turn with parts or running the ceremony. The busier they are, the less
fidgety they are during the ceremony. Start and end on time! Everyone's time is
valuable! Do not wait until the last minute to plan the meeting or buy the
supplies. A rushed leader takes a while to settle down and everyone wants the
leader's attention as soon as she gets there. Keep a notebook of ceremonies and
evaluate them. Keep notes on each one you have used.
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Tie silver and gold ribbons to the flowers and silver and gold rings (found in
the wedding section of our local craft store). They represented the make new
friends but keep the old, one is silver the other is gold.
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Make "Brownie" angels - Materials: Brown grocery bags, toilet paper tube, doll
hair in various shades, markers or crayons, 1/4" or 1/2" wide ribbon, hot
glue.Using brown grocery bags - cut out 2 angel shapes for each angel using
"pinking shears" ( they looked like paper dolls with long skirts ) - leaders
cut and glue the angel except for the bottom of the skirt. Cut a toilet tube in
half and glue into opening of shirt to make it stand up. Girls add details like
doll hair, faces and decorations on dress area with markers. Glue a piece of
ribbon between the angels hands and stapled the Try-Its and other awards to it.
At your ceremony line up on the table. The girls cam later put them on their
Christmas tree as a decoration.
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Cut green trefoils - about 4" size
and wrote each girls name on them - staple to this a gold wire edged ribbon (
about 2" wide) and stapled all the Try-its and membership stars to each one -
the girls pinned this to their vest using the star pin ( this was great because
they didn't lose it before the end of the meeting !)
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For a holiday themed ceremony, Make wreaths out of construction paper and tape
the girls try-its and patches around the wreath add a red bow at the top with
their names on it.
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Get 1 helium balloon per girl. Tape or staple try-its/patches to the end of the
streamer on the balloon.
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Cut a huge trefoil out of green poster board. Put green crepe paper
streamers behind the trefoil -- 1 streamer per girl w/try-its and patches
attached.
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Get a cheap clay pot (1 per girl). Sponge paint/decorate it. Attach one
try-it or badge to a paper cupcake cup, then to a green chenille stem (in other
words, make each patch/try-it into a flower, add leaves, etc.) "Plant them" in
florist foam in the clay pot.
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Do a Hawaiian theme (great in the winter!) Order cheap Hawaiian
decorations from Oriental Trading or buy at your local "party and paper" store.
Put each try-it/badge on a lei and present the lei to the girl.
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Do a "Make new friends but keep the old" theme ceremony. Decorate everything
in silver and
gold. Buy cheap silver and gold metallic material and make little drawstring
bags big enough to hold patches/try-its. Give the gold to the "old" scouts (3rd
graders?) and silver bags to the "new" brownies (1st graders?) or random or
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Use Microsoft Greetings Workshop to make up presentation certificates. Use
the borders option to border the certificate. For the space explorer try-it,
use little planets. For the Christmas Parade patch, I use Christmas trees.
Then, type the try-it or patch name, the date, a Congratulations, and the girls
name. Make the certificate about 3 inches by 8 inches, so you can get about 3
or 4 on a page.
Print out about 4 pages, cut them out with pinking shears and staple the patch
or try-it to the certificate.
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Put the badges or patches in little stockings
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Give out badges or patches in a card.
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For a winter themed ceremony cut out snowflakes from poster board and attach
badges & patches to it. Hang from ceiling and take down at the end of
ceremony. (Angela Brown)
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A Christmas tree decorated with Try-It "ornaments". Perhaps out of green
poster board. You could also add tinsel or draw lights etc. with metallic
marker.
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Make felt flowers, and attach the badges to the centers of them.
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Make envelopes out of Girl Scout wrapping paper.
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Attach the badges to heart doilies in
February.
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Attach the badges to a paper
Jack-o-lantern in October
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Create a charm bracelet using their badges as the charms. (Angela Brown)
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Take pockets from old jeans and add a jute handle, staple the try-it to the
pocket and fill the pocket with important troop information.
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How about putting them in a home-made booklet, with the badge or award on one
side, and a brief description of what the girls did to earn it on the facing
page. The cover can be made out of construction paper, and it can say, "My Fun
Accomplishments" or something like that. I do this for my girls, and realized
that as they read it to themselves they remembered exactly what activities were
done to earn the badge. (Months later I overheard someone admiring their sash,
and asked what the badge was for, and the girl scout actually described all of
the activities she did to attain it. I was proud of her.) The book gets a little
"fat" but it is really cute. Make a tassel type bookmark to put in it.
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We just finished our first year of Jr.'s--so the theme was TRAVEL. I got
empty black video boxes from our video store donated-my Asst. and I cut handles
out of black foam sheets and simply closed the box on them--instant "luggage"!!
We made luggage tags with the girl's names on them and they were done. We then
used a dab of hot glue to put the badges earned on like stickers on a suitcase
when you've been traveling and incorporated travel themed comments-(-We're begun
our journey, etc..--here's some of the things we've done-..)-each girl spoke
about an activity we did this year and how it helped us grow as a scout.
The girls loved the suitcases and so did !--We also put a message from the Asst.
and I about how proud we are of them inside. It was great to do something
so different--Total cost-79 cents for a sheet of foam-we had some old plastic
cards with holes that we glued each girl's name with a brown border--made it
look like a luggage tag that was looped around handle. Kathy - Junior Troop
Leader Tampa, FL
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I wanted to make our ending Court of
Awards very special since it was our last as a Junior troop, and we had finished
some things that we had been working on all year, such as the Junior Leadership
Pin, the Bronze Award, Bridge to Cadettes, etc. I bought 8x10 frames at Dollar
General for $1 each. I used yellow paper and printed the girl's name using the
FunStuff font, and then trimmed the page to fit the frame. This was used as the
background in the frame. Then I used Plasti-tak to hold the patches and badges
on. The pins I stuck directly through the paper and cardboard backing. Then I
put the glass back in the frame, and they looked wonderful. The only award that
I didn't put in the frame was the Bronze Award, which we gave out separately.
Beth Ranado Cadette Leader Cumming, GA
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Our girls (mostly 6th grade Juniors) decided to have a dance party with pizza
for the end of the year. We made individual sized pizzas on cardboard circles
with red felt and yellow and orange yarn bits, and their badges as pepperoni.
They really looked cute. Clare Fazackerley Iverson
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What I did for the Mom's who helped with everything in our troop this year. I
got on e Bay/girl scouts and got a couple of old GS 1st edition postcards or
envelopes. They were from 1948 1st edition postmark of GScouting or/& JGL
birthday. Really cool stuff. They were only a couple of bucks. Once Igot them I
mounted them on GS green paper and put them in a glass no frame frame. They
turned out beautiful and the Moms where shocked! They will be a forever
increasing in value GS gift. These two Mom's were GS themselves so it meant that
much more to them. e bay has a ton of GS stuff that is great for gifts. This
year I also took the "Because You said yes" poem and printed it out on nice
stationary,. added a group picture of the girls and framed it. You could do that
quickly. Deb Elliott Troop 6381 Atlanta
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Wrap awards in festive packages Put awards:
On pipe cleaner stems in a flower pot.
In a plastic egg for a springtime
ceremony.
On leafy branches or pine boughs
In a bandana on a stick
On a paper doll chain
Attached to international flags
On cardboard hearts
On tongue depressors
On paper airplanes
Grace Nolan Leader, Junior Troop 1251 and Service Unit Manager Sunland-Tujunga
Girl Scouts
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