Yeah for this Thread. I saw the old thread first and was semi frustrated that is had no recent posts then I found this new thread. AWESOME!
I was recruited in May to be a Leader for my DD5's Daisy troop. At the time they had only one other girl interested for this coming fall. I have been a registered GS volunteer for a couple of years as I give a week at resident camp as a counselor(nurse/lifeguard or whatever I end up doing) so that my niece can go to camp at a drastically reduced rate. So I sat for 4 months now having no idea what exactly Daisy's did or what I would need to do for them. Luckily my camp friends from the 80's have come to my aid. I have an awesome co-leader that I worked with at GS resident camp in the late 80's that is willing to help. Between her and I we could sing camp songs for hours without stopping. You may need earplugs, but the kids don't mind.
I have finally had some time off of Nursing school this week to work on this Daisy plan. The one thing I am concerned about for my girls parents is the cost. When you are starting up a troop it is hard having no start up money. I enjoy my DS7 cub scouts that ask for dues once a year of $40 and that covers his registration renewal and all of his awards, activities, banquet, etc. I really would rather not deal with $1 per meeting, etc. the bookeeping on that is tedious. However, having nothing to start with and all of the drama and hoops of opening a checking account for the troop makes things tough as well.
I went to the scout shop recently and purchased all of the "uniform" and books necessary to be a Daisy and the cost came to over $50 and that only included the tunic(apron thingie) and pins/petals/patches an activites book and 1 journey book. Ugh. That is on top of $12 reg. and troop dues. That is a lot of money to shell out on a 5 year old that you are not sure will even last the whole year. So, I talked to a Service Unit member and troop leader and she suggested something a friend of hers in MI had done. They had t-shirts made with the daisy on it and then as the girls earned each petal they used fabric markers to color them in.
So I checked into this and found a huge local screen printer that is willing to print the t-shirts for $9 each with a set up fee of $40. They will put the troop number on the front of the shirts as well for identification purposes. I am having ours be white t-shirts with blue lettering and outline. I asked about pricing for sweatshirt for winter etc. She mentioned that if we order both items at the same time the cost would be significantly lower. It ended up with the approximate cost being $20 for both a t-shirt and a hoodie or more like $16 for a t-shirt and a crewneck sweatshirt. The adult sizes were the same price as I priced them out for my co-leader and I. I picked either a royal blue or a pink sweatshirt for the color. I am going to run all of this by the parents to get their input. I am thinking that since this is Oct. already and the shirts will take 2 weeks to have made that I plan to give my DD5 her sweatshirt for Christmas.
The good news is that when I asked her about other troops using my set up, she was ok with it and would only charge a different troop $5'ish to change the troop name. Now I just have to find all of the colors of the petals in fabric markers. One of the mothers in my troop has some of them already. I am thinking once we get the promise down we will start wearing our insignia with the daisy scout pin. So essentially the parents will have to pay for an activities book, a t-shirt, and we will probably take the pin/insignia piece out of the dues. We are also planning to see fall product and hope to use some of those funds to purchase items as well.
I think the one journey book would be a good Christmas present from parents as well.
Since this post has gotten really long winded I will post again with some of my activity ideas.
Kari