Girl Scout Daisy Planning: Money Counts Leaf and a Hair Clip Craft!

Since they're in school enough hours out of the day, the last thing I wanted is a Math lesson. I wanted to make sure this was a fun meeting and the girls were engaged. Financial literacy is very important and an essential part of Girl Scouts and the Cookie Product sale.

You can find large cardboard cut outs of all the coins and dollar bills at the Dollar store. I would go through a brief explanation of each and pair it up with the real coin or dollar. The large cut outs help for better viewing but girls also like to see and feel the real thing. I also set aside a bag of 100 pennies and showed the girls what a dollar can equal in pennies. This helps them visualize and compare. You can do this with the other coins or dollars, too. For example, hold up 4 quarters and compare it to a dollar bill. We also talked about how much our cookie boxes cost and what the troop profit was from each box.

Once we explained the different kinds of money and compared and contrasted, we talked about the difference between what costs money and what doesn't. We had each girl come up with one way they can have fun with or without money. Here are some examples....

Costs money:
Going to the movies
Going to a theme park

Free:
Playing a board game at home with your family
Playing with a friend in your yard
Going to the park
Renting a book from the library.

*another idea is to cut out pictures of things that cost money and things that don't. Use a large poster board and draw a line down the middle. Have one side represent things that cost money and the other side represent free. Have the girls glue the pictures to the right section.

*If the girls are doing a personal scrapbook you can use the above idea in a smaller version and they can glue the pictures right into their scrapbooks.

Now starts the fun!!!

We had a guest speaker, Designs by Denise, come and speak with the girls. She is an entrepreneur and has her own handmade hair bow business. Guest speakers are great because the girls have a natural interest in something unfamiliar.

She talked about what an entrepreneur is and why keeping track of her money was so important. She discussed profit and how much materials cost. She had a display of the bows she had made and explained where and how she sells them. This was a great introduction to ownership and business skills for the girls as we are upon the Cookie Product season.

The girls were very engaged as it was a new face and they could relate to the pretty hair bows. Our speaker lead us into our final activity. I like to close each meeting with some kind of fun craft!

Activity: The girls made their own hair clips!

Materials:

for 10 girls

3 Ashland daisy flowers from Michael's in blue (each flower will give you 4 large flower pieces)

3 Ashland daisy flowers in white

10 hair clips

felt

Gem for the center about 1 inch

*use a coupon and look for sales on the florals. I got mine for 50% off!

(I believe the whole thing came out to $1.40 per girl)

I first cut the felt pieces ahead of time. I separated everything into each individual flower clip bag so the girls had all their materials in one place.

Cut a 1 inch circle out of felt for the backing of the flower.

Cut a 1 inch long by 1/4 inch wide piece of felt to glue on the inside of the clip so the girls hair doesn't get caught.

You can let the girls choose the order of the two different color flowers. This allows them to make it their own. Although, it does look best with the blue behind the white :).

We used a hot glue gun. BE CAREFUL with this and only let adults handle the glue guns.

Glue a couple of dots on the center of the bottom (blue) flower. Have the girl place the top (white) flower on top and line it up. 

Glue a couple of dots on the center of the top (white) flower and let the girls place the gem in the center on the top.

Glue the circle felt on the back of the flower 

Glue the other piece of felt on the inside of the top part of the clip. (adults)

Glue the flower on to the clip. (adults should do this)

They were so excited to do this and it was a great round up of the entire meeting. As we were assembling the hair clips we talked about the materials and the individual cost of each. I held up the equivalent in our cardboard money so the girls could see.

They really loooooved this idea and I even saw the girls wearing their clips to school the next day!! Probably their favorite craft so far and we were able to tie in something fun with the Money Counts badge!

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