Kick-Off Parent Meeting

There's a lot to go over at the first parent meeting of the year, but in my opinion there are two areas that need to be addressed. The first area to look at is all the paperwork that goes with the scouting year. The Girl Scouts do LOVE their paperwork!

• First, make sure that all the girls have their paperwork filled out. You'll want to check with your council to make sure that you have all the official documents in order.
• Next, make sure you have all the information that you are going to need for the upcoming year. I know that a lot of the information about the troop members is available by logging into my council website, but sometimes that isn't convenient or it doesn't contain everything I need. So I created a few forms of my own that help me contain all of my troop information in my handy Troop files.
• Tell Us About Your Daughter - This asks a few basic questions about the girl so that I know a bit more about her than what is included on the Health History form.
• Parent/Guardian Communication Survey - Here I ask for communication information (phone numbers, emails, etc.) for everyone that parents want to receive my emails and texts.

The second area, and possibly the most important for your mental well-being, is setting expectations for the parents. Let them know what's coming up for their daughters, what you are going to need from them, and what their level of commitment needs to be for a successful troop.

• Troop Handbook - I spent a lot of time online exploring other troop's handbooks to see what they had to say to their parents. I finally came up with a handbook that sets the tone for our troop and what we expect to do with our time together. A handbook is optional, but I do like to use one as a place to keep all of my troop policies.
• Yearly Planner - This one page document is a simple listing of meeting dates and special events as I know them now at the start of the scout year. This is handed out so that families know now when the important events for the troop are happening (Court of Awards, scout holidays, field trips, etc.). Of course, dates are subject to change, but the basic outline of the year will remain the same.
• Review Volunteer Opportunities - To have a successful troop, you need to have a lot of volunteers willing to help out. I like to share my list of available volunteer options with my parents right from the beginning. I also talk to them about the required paperwork that they need to complete for themselves so that they can be a part of the troop.
• My Promise, My Faith Award - This is a pin that we will not be working on as a troop, but is something that I let the parents know their daughter can work on in their own time. As long as they get me proof of the pin requirements before the end of the scout year, they will have earned the pin.
• Money - The final thing to discuss is what is expected as far as payments to support the troop. Dues, fall sales, cookie sales, prices of trips, etc. I do as much planning as I can up front so that my families can plan ahead for any financial commitment that they might be required to make.

Get-To-Know-You Pizza Party

To kick off a new troop year, and in an attempt to welcome new troop members before our first meeting, my Daisy and Brownie multi-level troop held a Pizza Party.

Welcome to the Party

As the girls arrived, there were pizza-themed coloring sheets for them to color. We always have coloring pages out at the start of our meetings, so this continued our tradition and allowed our new members to get accustomed to it as well.

Check out the coloring pages I used here and print them out for your party!

In addition to the coloring pages, we posted a few signs around the room asking the girls what toppings they liked on their pizza. Each sign asked something like "do you like pepperoni on your pizza" and then had two columns underneath, one for yes, one for no. The girls wrote their name in the appropriate column. We then shared the survey results with the girls as a part of the evening. This was a fun way for the girls to get to know each other and get them walking around the party room as well.

Here's a look at the survey signs I made. Hope you love them too!

A Simple Menu

The theme of the party may have been pizza, but it wasn't the objective. We really wanted the girls to have a great time and get to know each other so that we could hit the ground running at our first meeting. So we opted for a very simple menu:

• Pizza
• Veggie tray
• Fruit tray
• Cookies
• Water Bottles

Let's Get Crafty

Once everyone was there and had nice, full bellies it was time to get down to business and start having fun. First on the agenda was a Girl Scout pizza SWAP. SWAPS are Special Whatchamacallits Affectionately Pinned Somewhere. They are often made and then traded at Girl Scout events. Since we had a few events on the schedule this year, we wanted to get started building SWAPS right away. MakingFriends.com has a super-cute pizza swap that was perfect for our party.

Here's a link to the Pizza SWAP kit we used. It was super simple and looks great!

Before You Leave

What would a party be without a goodie bag? At the end of the evening as the girls were leaving, we gave them two small presents.

The first was a Back-to-School Survival Kit. Containing only items from the local Dollar Store, this kit was a cute way to tie-in the start of the school year, the start of the scout year, and a party gift bag all in one. Each item in the Survival Kit represented a bit of positive inspiration for the girls.

Here's the printable I created for our Back to School Survival Kit. Print it out on colored paper to add some POP!

My favorite of the gifts was a personalized pizza slice keychain. It's kind of like a group best-friends charm. The slices fit together to make a pizza! And each slice had a charm with their first initial on it. They were so cute! Purchased from SummerJewelryLA on Etsy, they were the perfect way to top off the evening. And SummerJewelryLA was so nice to work with - I highly recommend them.

Check out the pizza slice charms here. You will be glad you did!

Fun Patch

Our troop tradition is to give fun patches at our Court of Awards, held periodically throughout the year. Each girl who attended the party will get the Pizza Party fun patch just for coming. It's a surprise for them after the fact. When we purchased the SWAP kit from MakingFriends.com, it came with a free pizza fun patch, so I just bought a few more and we were good to go!

Here's the fun patch we used. Isn't it cute?

That's it! That was our Back-to-School Pizza Party! I hope these tips help you and your troop kick off an amazing year.