I divide up into age levels with 1 co-leader working with each group at meetings. Since badge work is ladder work it is easy to do it together. I have 13 but about 10 are truly active. Daisies in one troop. Brownies and Juniors in one troop. Cadettes and Seniors in third troop. So council sees 3rd and 5th in same troop and 6th and 11th in same troop. We became sister troops because the volunteers have MULTIPLE girls! I have 6 coleaders… we have a representative volunteer for each grade level. We have 28 girls, Daisies, Brownies and Juniors. We have 3 leaders and most of our parents registered and Coried. I have them all do a coloring or word search activity as they come in. One Brownie usually takes attendance and one Jr collects dues. We do our opening together, sometimes split up into three or four groups, then do our snack chat and share, and closing together. Kapers are a big thing, and I try to match up the younger kids with the older ones to get stuff done. For field trips, sometimes we get to do things all together, and sometimes its just with certain levels. I enjoy watching the interactions with the girls and sometimes my Daisies are the ones teaching the older girls a thing or two! A lot of troops do what Lisa suggests below. Lots of planning for the leader because of the needs of the different levels. Seems to work best when there is a leader over each level or two levels. Hardest part is doing things together because Daisy and Ambassadors have very different characteristics. VAST difference in roles. Those leaders can organize the parents of that group to get an assistant or assistants to help with cookies, fall product, meetings, crafts, chauffeuring, planning. Of course, if you have more than a handful of girls at each level, you have to get two or more full-timers. One of the leaders has to be the main leader. When I was a gs, we used the patrol system. Each patrol is a certain age group and does their activities, but open close and snack together. And sometimes events are for everyone and sometimes just certain patrols. Also need an adult for each patrol. Or at least the younger ones. ONe Monday is Daisy through Junior and the next Monday is Cadette through ambassador. My older girls come work with the daisys and get their voluntter hours for girl scouts that way. But I have awesome older girls that are great leaders.. I have cadettes that are working on their LIA so they take over the brownies for a journey.. I set out the agenda and the girls have to plan the meetings.. I oversee this and see how they are doing.. My 3rd grade Brownie troop just absorbed the 2nd grade Brownie troop this year… adding 6 girls to make our total 24. My son is in boy scouts with a troop of 78 boys from age 11-18, split into patrols by grade and it works out beautifully. If they can do girls can do it. A common arrangement for multi-level is to split into patrols by level daisy, brownie, junior, etc and split for part of the meeting to work on level-specific badges. Journeys are the same way. I recently did a Daisy money leaf with a Brownie money badge and it only took 15 minutes to figure out a gameplan to create 5 activities they could do together for everyone to earn their respective badges. We have kept our girls at around 18 for the moment. Our girls love it. We meet several times a month for meetings but also for other activities. The older girls help the younger ones to stay on task and set an example. I have really enjoyed it. My best advice is divide your girls during certain activities, either with another leader or parent volunteer. We do this when working on badges that way were not always focusing on one group. Make sure you have good volunteers. You will need them. We have a parent who helps with our money, others who help with groups, and still others who help with field trips. We have one overall leader, me, who coordinates and does the paperwork. I also work with the Seniors and do camping skills. Each younger level has an 02, an assistant leader, to do their Journeys and badge work, etc. We do all ceremonies together and work on service projects together. We plan our camping trips together. I try very hard to NOT use the older girls as babysitters or teachers. They still have skills to learn, badges to do, etc. To do this at meetings we start together to officially start the meeting, but then seperate by level for the reading of the Jouney stories. So we have 1 meeting for the Daisies and 1 meeting for the Brownies. We come together for special events and field trips. I have a co-leader for each group to help plan and run meetings. So we are all the same troop, just meeting separately. Next year, when the Daisies bridge to Brownies, we will be one big troop again meeting at the same time. We will be adding a 1st year daisy troop as well as Juniors to the mix. My questions are; do you have one troop number or multiple numbers? Do you have one checking account or multiple? Do they all sell cookies together or stay in age groups?
