Building Your Troop Team Your Girl Scout troop is a team. When you learn to work together and support each other, your troop will create bonds to last a lifetime. Establish a strong team early in your Girl Scout year. Use these ideas as a starting point and have fun setting the tone for a successful Girl Scout experience! T— Talk about what a troop is. You’re a group of girls who all have different skills, stories, and dreams. But you all have one thing in common—you’re all Girl Scouts! Encourage girls to learn from each other and be open to everyone’s ideas and suggestions for how your troop will operate. E— Ease into Girl Scouts by dedicating a couple meetings to teambuilding activities (see our suggestions below!) instead of jumping right into badge work. We know you’re excited to start in on programming, but don’t skip over the critical step of getting to know the girls (and having them get to know each other)! A— Ask the girls what their interests are and what really gets them excited. This gives you an opportunity to learn more about each girl individually and might spark some ideas for badges and field trips that would appeal to the troop. M—Meet My Girl Scout Form. Give each caregiver a copy of the Meet My Girl Scout form and ask that they return it at your next meeting. This gives caregivers a chance to tell you more about their Girl Scout, and you’ll appreciate the additional insight on the girls you’re working with.
Teambuilding Activities Engineers Divide group into teams of 3–4 girls. Give each group the same amount of supplies and instruct them to build the tallest tower possible. Supply suggestions: toothpicks and grapes, mini-marshmallows and dry spaghetti, pretzels and gumdrops. As the groups are working, take some mental notes on how the girls work together. Afterwards, ask the girls what worked well in their group and what did not. Link Ask one volunteer to stand with one hand on their hip and share something about themselves (e.g., my favorite color is orange, I have a horse, I’ve never been camping before). Once someone in the group hears a statement that also applies to them, they run up and link their elbow with the person who shared the original statement. Then they share something about themselves, and the game repeats until the whole group is linked in one large circle (yes, that means the last person to link has to find something in common with the person who started the game). Talk with the group about how easy or difficult it was to find things in common with other people. Group quilt Provide participants with art supplies and paper cut into squares. Each person should decorate their own square with things that are important to them or that will tell the rest of the group who they are (e.g., drawings of pets, sports they’re involved in, how many brothers or sisters they have). Once complete, assemble all the squares together with tape to make a troop quilt. Have each girl share her square and tell the group about it. Revisit teambuilding activities each time a new girl joins the troop!