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Create a Girl Scout Scrapbook That Will Be a Memory for Years to Come
To preserve your troop's memories of their years in scouting together, you can have them create a perpetual Girl Scout scrapbook.
Photo by Hannah Gold
If you are going to do this activity, your co-leader and you need to decide early in the school year so you can take pictures at every meeting (or else you will have nothing to put in the scrapbook!) These are the pictures we took at each meeting:
-The girls working at the tables as a group
-One group shot at the end with all of the girls holding the craft
-Individual shots of each girl
By doing this, you can take advantage of photo printing sales online or in camera stores.
By deciding early in the year that you will be making a scrapbook, you can get the stickers you need while they are in season.
Buying the Materials Cheaply
The cost of doing a scrapbook is prohibitive if you use what is sold in craft stores. For our scrapbooks, we used Avery Clear View binders.
For this activity, you will also need scissors, glue sticks, and markers. Fancy edging scissors are not necessary for the scrapbook, but if your Girl Scouts want to use them, ask parents if they have any you can borrow.
We also asked for donations of stickers and invested in some themed ones, like Daisies and holidays. The holiday stickers are always on sale right before and right after the holiday is over. Stock up when you see them!
Prep Work Before the Meeting
Using the Cheri Liney font, a cover was made for our Girl Scout scrapbook. The girls colored them in any way they wanted. Leaving a space at the bottom permits the girls to glue an individual photo or a troop photo. Always run off a few extra, in case one of the girls makes a mistake.
The troop photographer needs to be in charge of organizing the photos. This task is made simple if she does it on an ongoing basis and not all at one time, when it can become an overwhelming job. Each girls' photos need to be put into a plastic bag with her name on it for distribution at the troop meeting.
The stickers need to be cut and clipped together for each girl so everyone gets the same amount. I put them into a plastic bag with for each girl.
If you are doing this craft with Daisies or first year Brownies, I strongly suggest you have a few volunteers to help out. Young girls are apt to cut too much from the photos or put way too many stickers on one page, leaving very few for the other pages.
At the Meeting
Have the girls create their own cover and slide it into the front of their scrapbook.
The next steps depend on the age of your troop. While older girls can be given all of the materials at once and left to their own devices, Daisies and Brownies need to do this one step at a time. That way they are glued and inserted into the binder/scrapbook.
Photo from Pixabay
For example, we had the girls take out the field trip pictures and put them on the autumn themed paper we purchased. We did the same thing for the Halloween dance pictures. Since we are Daisies, we did one page at a time. For meetings that had no paper theme, we had the girls use white copy paper and draw the motif. For our Saint Patrick's Day craft, the girls drew clovers, rainbows and leprechauns and glued their pictures around them.
If you are saving all of the photos for the end of the year, it will take at least two meetings to finish your Girl Scout scrapbook. An easier way to do it is every two to three months, make the meeting a scrapbook meeting.
Once the perpetual scrapbooks are completed for the year, have the girls put them away until fall. Purchase new plastic inserts for the papers and at a late fall meeting, have a scrapbook craft time. Over the course of a few years, the girls will have a keepsake of their time as a Girl Scout.
