Our inaugural Girl Scout troop meeting

Today was my first-ever meeting troop meeting with Evangeline and her fellow Daisy Scouts.

It was a good experience, although we will do better next time, now that we're better acquainted with how the meeting is likely to flow. The main thing we'll need is to have more hands-on activities fully planned and ready to go, especially given the propensity of one or two of the girls to go all-out silly and rambunctious.

We have nine members registered, although another two girls expressed interest today and only six of our nine registrants actually appeared today.

We kept it simple, introducing the girls to the Girl Scout Law, the Girl Scout sign, taking a few minutes to get to know one another, and then engaging in some games to get the blood flowing and help them to loosen up.

I was surprised how many of the girls had trouble making the sign. It's a fairly simple thing — just extend the middle three fingers of the right hand upward, while holding down the pinky with your thumb — but it was still a challenge for about half the girls. I actually had to help one girl get her fingers into position so she could do it.

Everyone was pretty quiet and serious at the start of the meeting, mostly I think because they didn't quite know what to expect and some of them probably didn't know one another, since the troop is open to all five of the school's lower classrooms.

We're going to have an investiture ceremony in four weeks, at the Girl Scout center, provided we can get the space reserved. That's when we'll formally present the girls with their uniforms, and let them read the Girl Scout Pledge for the first time.

All told, the meeting went well, even if I did make a fool of myself playing Duck, Duck, Goose with the kids. I'm going to put a little more effort into planning the next meeting — we had been told to shoot for 45 minutes, but the troop leader found out during training that an hour is supposed to be the actual length — such as getting some arts and crafts projects to do, and we're going to see about having the girls start out as Brownies, since they're supposed to become Brownies next school year any way, and that's only a few months away.