Oops, I guess I sort of forgot to blog about the rest of our Alaska trip. Darn it. I really love writing about our trips so I can read them later! I will have to go back and then back date them. Someday.
So, Girl Scouts! Yes, another year! My girl still is so happy and proud that I’m one of the leaders of the troop. Makes me scratch my head a little but okay, we can keep going! I am committed to the end of Juniors as we want to go to San Francisco and bridge! We shall see after that. My outlook on Girl Scouts is keeping the group we have together while having a lot of fun. And doing the easiest possible thing. Yes, I’m lazy. Sue me.
Since I went to Florida to have an awesome time with my besties in the 2nd week of September, I asked my co-leaders if they wanted to have the first meeting without me and they looked at me… Right then! We will start the 4th Thursday!
So we did! The girls were SO EXCITED. It makes me happy that they love spending time together. They were very outraged when we told them the parents had a meeting and we wouldn’t be meeting every other Thursday. We did have a parent meeting and we did decide on doing Sunday meetings about once a month…
However one of the girl’s parents said Sunday was not great for them. And I hate hate hate to not include one of the girls. Then I heard feedback about the girls being upset we were only doing it once a month. So we ended up doing a schedule of 3 or 4 Thursday’s during the year and 6 or 7 Sunday’s. It ended up being every 3 weeks. While missing the super busy Thanksgiving/Holiday weeks and Spring break. I hope that will be enough that most of the girls can hit most of the meetings. We are making the Sunday meetings longer and adding in some swim parties at the end too. Why not!? The girls are always CRAZY right after school anyway and it’s hard to get anything done.
So! Back to our first meeting. I figured it would be a short after school one and we could get some of our ‘Girl Scout Way’ badge completed.
- Match Song to an Occasion
- Read the Original Girl Scout Story
- Spread Friendship of Girl Scouts / Celebrate Sisterhood
- Leave a Place Cleaner than you Found it
- Learn a Tradition
I’m going to tell you that the best resource is this post on earning the Junior Girl Scout badge. It’s pretty fabulous.
I actually used this source for the most part.
The songs and story is pretty easy. We love songs! So is leaving a place cleaner than you found it. We did that at the end, and tried to reinforce it. I’m so sick of trying to figure out whose turn it is for flag salute and snack, even with a kaper chart. So we started on the traditions of running a meeting! It’s, you know, pretty traditional?
So the girls split up into three groups. We timed them. They obviously had a problem with it but when I finally told them they had 10 more seconds or we were doing it, they changed from their 4 groups of 3 girls and one of the groups reluctantly decided to split up. My girl was part of this group, so yay her!
Then they decided on a name. We had two groups of Sparkly Unicorns named slightly different… but whatever. This was also timed.
Then, they choose a leader.
Both of the second options they had different ways of doing this. One group played Ro Sham Bo which impressed me. Another group talked it over and chose one fairly quickly. The third group argued for a bit and then did Ro Sham Bo.
I asked the leaders to get together and decide who was doing what for this meeting and the next two. I don’t think they did that, I think they just choose who was doing what for this meeting… and they all were not very happy about that decision… but it got done.
NOTE: I should have had something for everyone else to do.
I think the process will get better though. After two meetings we will force the groups to change, pick a new leader, and they can organize what they want to do.
The first patrol did Flag Salute.
I passed out the ‘What Juniors Do’ page from the book (rather, the second patrol group did) and they circled what badges they were most interested. Then we flipped it over and had them write down what types of service projects and fun things they wanted to do over the years.
I am trying to organize a ‘feeding the homeless’ meeting in December and was thinking of going to a Senior center for Valentine’s Day (a recommendation from a parent) but when I said that I immediately got feedback. They really love working with animals. They want to go out and find every injured animal on the street and help them, fix them, take them to an animal hospital.
Argh. Okay then. This is a Girl Led group. That’s what we gotta do!
To celebrate sisterhood, we got another paper and they traced their hand on it. In each finger they wrote down qualities that they could contribute to the troop or community. We talked this over a lot and we threw out a lot of ideas. I had them star their favorite one. Once they did, we went around the circle sharing. They are all awesome girls and I was proud they were sharing their good qualities.
At this point we were hearing a lot of feedback about wanting snack. Snack is usually a 30 minute affair and drives me batty. Since we were meeting early this meeting, I was hoping to do it at the end. No can do! So we skipped our next sisterhood theme and had the Snack Patrol pass out snack.
We then went to a tradition of playing a game. I brought out some cards and we played Werewolf. The girls loved it and we didn’t get to play a second time. Meeting was over!
We will earn the rest of our badge by celebrating Juliette Low’s birthday in October.
Our next Sunday meeting is less than two weeks. We will be earning the Detective and Independence badge. Should be fun!
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