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!!!

Girl Scouts April Meeting

My Best Self



That was the theme and the name of the badge that we earned this month.

First we colored and described ourselves, using the elf picture provided in the My Best Self Brownie Guide.

Then I asked them each to draw a picture or write about something that makes them happy. Then told them that whenever they feel upset, sad, or discouraged, they should remember what makes them happy and to do it. Whether it is a pet, a favorite TV show, or a sport, doing that activity will help their mood.

Next we talked about bandaids. I brought different sizes and kinds of bandaids and talked about which kinds are for which purpose. Oh I did have several volunteer stories of all their past injuries and scars. LOL :) Since I had brought a box of different colored bright neon bandaids, I let everyone choose 2 colors to take home.

Finally, I told them why it is important to drink water and I challenged each of them to drink water (no soda or juice) for 1 week. To start them off, I sent them home with a small bottle of water as a reminder!

The final requirement for the badge was to meet a "health helper", which we did at our February meeting when our friend, Laura, came to our meeting to talk about her work at a hospital helping mothers and babies in the maternity ward.

This is our badge we earned:

Extra activities this month:

First we went on our first overnight trip as a troop! We went to the St Louis Magic House! We had 3 hours of free time including a scavenger hunt, then stayed in one of the exhibits. We were assigned to the Congress exhibit! We slept in a replica of the Legislative Branch, where most of the girls sprawled out across the stage and along the edge on the side. Adults stayed on the carpeted area at the back of the room. :) Not sure it was much softer, but it was only 1 night. :)

 

 

 

We also have a trip to the Treehouse Wildlife Center at the end of the month.
Looking forward to it!

Girl Scouts March meeting

Cookies Cookies Cookies!!!

Whew! We are finished with all that cookie busines...til next year anyway!

This was my car after picking up 56 cases of cookies from the individual girl sales:

Set up in family room:

So cookies were our theme for the past few months! As soon as we delivered our cookies from our individual girl sales, it was time to plan for our cookie booth weekend. And since it was our first ever booth, we spent our meeting talking cookie business.


We talked about customer service, financial responsibility, making change, goal setting, even the importance of knowing your product, so we reviewed each type of cookie and how to help a customer choose a type if they are unsure.

Then we decorated some posterboard to hang on our booth.

We had originally scheduled our cookie booth day for Sun, Mar 24, which happened to be the day we were dumped, blessed with 16 inches of snow! So we rescheduled for 2 weeks later, and ended up having beautiful weather! At first we were prepared to wear winter coats and survive the cold, but you can see that we ended up wearing shorts! What a change in 2 weeks! That's Illinois for ya!

The girls made up songs, danced, and just really had a good time. We made enough profit to save for some fun things next fall. We even had one VERY nice woman (a stranger to us, but a fellow former girl scout) give us a very generous donation, which amounted to more than we made at our booth the entire day! So the girls learned about how important it is to make friends and be courteous with everyone they meet. Sure wish I could go back and thank her again and tell her how much it means to us!

Thank you to everyone who bought girl scout cookies, and remember to always Pay It Forward!

Girl Scouts February Meeting

This month we covered World Thinking Day. It is a scout tradition where we think about issues that affect girls and women from other countries. This year's themes are "Together we can save children’s lives” and “Every mother’s life and health is precious." I found some free printable coloring pages of girl scouts around the world that I brought for the girls to color until meeting time started.  Click HERE for the link if your troop is interested.

Our friend, Laura (who was this troop's leader last year!), who is also a surgical assistant and works in obstetrics at a local hospital came in to talk to us about what it is like to work on the maternity floor. We talked about why it is important to take good care of babies and everything she does to make sure that babies are safe and healthy when they are born. The girls asked LOTS of questions, but the "big" question never came up! Lol. She even brought some gowns, masks, hair nets, and even foot protectors (not sure if there is a technical term for those?) for the girls to try on. So much fun for them! Thank you so much Laura!!

Next we played a game called The Link Game. I started the game off by telling the girls something about myself, such as, "I have 2 cats at home." If any of the girls has a cat, they must race to me and link arms with me. If there is more than one person, then the first person to get to you links arms and the other girl will have to wait for another opportunity. The girl who has linked arms with you now says something about herself, such as, "my favorite color is yellow." Any girl with yellow then tried to link arms with her. The game continues until everyone has linked arms to form a chain. Tell the girls that this shows how you all are linked together now by common interests. They like it so much we played it twice!

Upcoming Events:

Since these Brownies will be "bridging" to Juniors this Spring, we have a couple things that we need to do in order to earn our "Junior wings". one of them is attending a local Daisy meeting to talk to them about what it's like to be a Brownie, and to share ideas between the troops. So we will be doing that later this month. We are also planning a meeting with a Junior troop to share the same kinds of ideas.

We also just turned in our cookie order forms and will be delivering them soon. We are also planning our cookie booth weekend. Since this will be our first ever cookie booth, I think our March meeting will be focused on that. So cookie business is keeping us busy outside of our meetings.

And some very good news to share is that the girls earned enough cookie money to earn a trip to the St Louis Magic House overnight camp-in! They are VERY excited about this!!

Girl Scouts January Meeting

After a long winter break, we are back in school, and this week we are back to scouting.
Our January meeting was fun!

First I passed out badges, pins, and sashes to our newest members. Then we talked about our plans for this year...what we'll be doing at the meetings, outings we might attend, and cookie sales.

Then we played a really fun game called "I went to the store." The first girl starts by saying "I went to the store and I bought."..and she names something that starts with letter A. The next girl does the same thing with letter B and must also remember what the girl before her bought. And it continues with more and more "items" to remember. We only have 11 girls so we went around our circle twice.These silly girls were stuck on animals for some reason, so we should've called the game "I went to the zoo!"

Then for our craft, I taught them paper weaving. We used recycled magazine pages and construction paper.

First we cut the magazine pages into strips.



Then we cut our construction paper. You can do straight lines, zigzags, wide or narrow, whatever you want. On this paper, I did zigzag:




*Tip of the Day: Cut your magazine strips the same direction that you cut your construction paper. If you cut your paper width-wise, cut your strips the same directions. If you cut your paper horizontal, cut your strips the same. If you cut your paper horizontal but your strips vertical, they will be too short to weave! At the ends, you will need a drop of glue to hold the strips in place.

Then we started weaving! Over, under, over, under, over, under...I didn't even have to explain this part, they figured it out from looking at the example that I brought with me.

A few of our creations:

 

 

This is a great project because it is a good environmental example (recycling!), it is great for hand-eye coordination practice, and it is a craft that could be used in other ways like with ribbon, yarn, different colored papers/patterns, etc!

Girl Scouts December meeting

At last month's girl scout meeting, I made a mental note that we need to dive into the girl scout law and the character virtues behind it. So this month we did that. We opened with the Girl Scout promise. Then we talked about the Girl Scout Law and what each part means. I asked them to share examples of when they used those characteristics, or noticed someone else using them (or NOT using them!). They even took it a step further and started acting out examples!

So we covered:
helpful,
friendly,
considerate,
caring,
honest,
fair, etc.

For our activity, we made coffee filter snowflakes. Just like each of the girls, each snowflake is different. They colored with markers and cut out all different shapes and designs. Each girl made 2-3 snowflakes.

We took the snowflakes to a local nursing home where we went caroling this weekend. The residents were thrilled to see children visit and sing to them! And now their doors are a little more festive too!

 

I was really happy that everyone was able to make it to this meeting! We even had another "visitor brownie"who might be joining soon! In the wake of the Newtown, CT school shooting, I look at every child different now. Every little life is so precious and should be cherished and lived to the fullest. I just read that 8 of the 12 girls who lost their lives were Daisy Scouts. I am so thankful for each and every one of these girls!

We are looking forward to more songs, games, crafts, activities, and outings in 2013. And of course COOKIE SALES start in January!! So if you know a girl scout, be ready to place your order!

Girl Scouts November Meeting

Wow! 1 hour just doesn't seem to be long enough for these meetings.

We had 3 new girls this month! Exciting! So we are up to 11 Brownies now.

We opened with the Promise.

Then we moved on to our activity, which was ironing on our new Patches onto our sashes. Each girl received the flag, the council patch, and the troop numbers. Now that they know how to do it, they can iron the rest of their patches at home (with adult supervision of course!) With a couple girls not present, and the new girls needing sashes, we only had 5 sashes to do, but with 2 irons and 2 parents helping the girls, it took most of our time.

So they learned a new skill, which is one of the things that girl scouting is all about, right? And they have something to wear for their outing this weekend!

We barely had time for our closing. We sang Make New Friends, and did our Friendship squeeze. And since I like to do atleast one thing new each time, I asked each girl to compliment the girl whose hand she was squeezing. Most of the compliments were about hair, shirts, and shoes. So we will dive into the Girl Scout Law and talk more about character virtues some more so that they can think of something a little "deeper" next time.

We are excited for our outing this Saturday at the local Children's Museum!

Girl Scouting

Several days ago I held my first girl scout brownie troop meeting. Our troop has about 8 girls (including Emma) and most of them were Daisies together. This is my first year as their troop leader. For our opening, I started out by asking the girls to sit in a circle while I passed out the registration forms to the parents and collected fees. I also passed out a sign up sheet for snacks and drinks. We meet once a month, so each family gets about one turn for snacks.

Then we reviewed the girl scout promise. Most of them remembered it...with just a little prompting!

Then, since it was the first meeting of the year and we had a couple new members, we went around the circle and I asked each girl to share things about herself. Her name, age, school, and her favorite girl scout outing from last year. Then we talked about ideas for outings for this year. I looked through the guide book and made notes on activities in our area, and asked them which of those sounded like fun to them. This will help me plan activities throughout the year.

After  chatting a little and "getting to know you", we moved to the tables for crafttime. This one was simple. I had them color pictures for the girl scout holiday card contest. They had to draw something holiday-ish while incorporating girl scouting into the theme. The winner's design will be used for our council's holiday card, and each age group has one design chosen to be featured on the website.

Here are their creations...good luck Brownies!

After crafting was snacktime, nom nom. I brought, of course, BROWNIES for my BROWNIES! I didn't get a picture of them all elaborately decorated with powdered sugar, but believe me they were devoured!

For our closing, I read the "Brownie Story" and gave each girl an action part. The story is about 2 brownie girls, their father, their granny, and a wise old owl. Click HERE for a link to the story if you would like to read it to your troop. They could hardly finish the story they got so giggly! Then we formed our friendship circle, sang the "Make New Friends" song, and dismissed.

Looking forward to a great year! Go Brownies!!