Well, here's a kind of party I haven't had to plan since I was a girl (a million years ago). I had a bit of trouble finding ideas for Brownie Bridging (also known as Fly Up) online, so I thought I would share what I came up with here. Bridging in Girl Scouts is when the girls move from one level to another, such as from Brownies to Juniors. It's a pretty big deal. All the families are invited to celebrate all that the girls accomplished in the past couple years, and talk about what they have to look forward to in the next level of Scouting. Being in Girl Scouts made a HUGE impact on my life and I am very happy that my daughter is loving her experience as well.
The Ceremony
Our troop's Bridging Ceremony was to take place outside at a local park. The girls learned to cook over a fire early in the day, and then the families came later for the Ceremony. Lots of ceremony ideas I saw online used candles, but I knew those would blow out in the windy great outdoors. The script I wrote uses flowers that the girls place in a vase. I patched together this script from various ideas I saw online. A Girl Scout always uses resources wisely! Here is a PDF of the Bridging Ceremony Script we used:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Byh3C6Lxek0gdGFBMjljLUtTSGs/view?usp=sharing
The Bridge
The actual bridging part of our ceremony was outside on a real bridge over a creek. I wanted to make it special with some decorations so the girls would like it. The decorations needed to be 1) inexpensive, 2) not damaged by rain or wind, 3) bright and cheerful. I decided on rainbow colored duct tape and a pack of multi-colored balloons. My husband was enlisted to help me wrap the duct tape around a tree, trail it across the bridge and wrap it around a stick that we stuck into the mud (there not being an appropriate tree on the other bank). We blew up the balloons and folded the duct tape with the balloon knot in the middle to suspend everything over the creek. This worked well as there was no railing on our bridge. If the bridge had a railing, it may have been even easier to decorate with balloons. I didn't feel like we had to go crazy with decorations - I mean, we were outside and natural beauty surrounded us. But the balloons and bright tape did make it more fun for the girls to run across the bridge and into their future of Junior Girl Scouting. Of course, we removed all trace of the decorations when we left the site. (Take only photographs, leave only footprints!)
Don't Forget
- Recognize your leaders and parent volunteers.
- Let the girls help plan the ceremony - who has what part, what songs to sing, etc.
