Girl Scouts May Meeting

Well, I survived my first year as troop leader! Whew! I feel like I almost know what I'm doing now...and it only took me a year to figure it out. :)

This was our final meeting for this school year so I had a LOT planned.

First, we had spring registration also known as Early Bird Registration. That should make things a little easier in the fall. It will also allow me to start buying new uniforms in plenty of time for our fall bridging ceremony. These Brownies will be bridging to Juniors next year!

The girls worked on their Early Bird patch designs to be entered for the drawing.



Next we read letters from a neighboring Brownie troop about 20minutes from us. My friend and fellow troop leader, Holly, decided to have our girls write letters to each other. So her troop was first and I read the letters to my girls. Next year we will write letters back describing ourselves and our favorite things. Kind of like Brownie pen pals!
Letters we read:

Since summer vacation is almost here, I wanted to make something really fun that they can enjoy this summer. And decorating flip flops were at the front of my mind. At first I thought about decorating them using water balloons tied around the straps. But I tried it out and decided that it was not easy enough for them to do on their own. Water balloons are too tiny for young hands to be able to tie a knot so I needed to try something easier and quicker. So I saw this idea for bandana flip flops. Click here for the link.

I ordered a bunch of different color and patterns of bandanas from Hobby Lobby at $.99 each. I bought a pair of flip flops for each girl also at $.99 each. So this is an easy $2 project! Unless you have sensitive skin like me and prefer fabric over plastic flip flops. But you could decorate ANY pair your heart desires! They have some very fun and festive red white and blue ones at Dollar Tree that I might decorate just for vacation!

Here is the pair I decorated at home before the meeting. I used a multicolored fat quarter single from Walmart ($.97) and only needed half of it.

So as soon as Mr Fed Ex man delivered my bandanas, I set to work tearing them into strips. 5 inches works best. The width can be anywhere from 1-2 inches. You can get about 80 strips of fabric from 1 bandanna, which is the perfect amount needed for a pair of flip flops.

Then I dumped all the fabric on the table and let them go crazy! They LOVED it! A few of them chose 2 colors and alternated them. But most of them just used all colors and patterns and they turned out cute!

 

I told them to bring nail polish in case we had extra time to paint toes!

Here is Emma's pair; she went for the red, white, blue look:

Another pair:

Finally, I gave out goody bags which contained their well-deserved cookie patches and prizes, their Magic House patches from our recent overnight camp-in, and a copy of our troop picture from the camp-in.

Wishing everyone a great summer!!!