Hurricane Sandy Book Drive

Bowling at Maple Lanes

Despite all the uncertainty with transportation, electricity and gas, we decided to "go for it" and not cancel the bowling event. So glad we did, because we got a great turnout and the girls had an absolute blast.

Thanks to the parents for coming out!

Scouts for a Million Trees

Today our girls joined a huge number of volunteers to plant trees in Floyd Bennett Field. They learned how to carefully pull the trees out of the pots, tease the roots out and how to securely plant them without getting air pockets in the hole. 

This event was wonderfully organized. The volunteers were divided into groups (our girls chose sparkly gold!) and given a "color captain" who demonstrated what to do. Holes were pre-dug with the potted trees dropped into each hole. It made the process amazingly quick, and our troop planted around 200 trees!! Altogether, the volunteers planted over 6,000 trees.

What was really wonderful was how our girls really understood the impact their trees would make. 

Sara said, "When I grow up I want our troop and our kids to go to the place and it will be a forest."

Beach Clean-Up

We had a perfect day for our beach clean-up! Our girls joined a school group to clean up the beach that is just behind Aviator's Sports Complex at Floyd Bennett Field. The event was organized by the American Littoral Society. As they got started we had the happy surprise of seeing one of our former Brownie friends Alyssia. She was taking a class at Aviators and just happened to wander over to the beach with her family.

Our girls and parents got busy picking up garbage. It was pretty amazing how much garbage littered this small stretch of beach. We were asked to log in what we found, which goes towards mapping quantities of trash collected along NY State's coast. We found several car tires, drink bottles, broken glass, building materials and an overwhelming amount of plastic bags. It reinforced the need to bring reusable bags to the grocery store! Let's all talk to our girls about the impact of all these disposable items and how they impact the environment.

We were really proud of our girls! They were so tempted by the water, and sometimes strayed, but ultimately they did an amazing job. We collected many bags of garbage and recyclables.

Besides finding really gross things, we found plenty of beautiful nature as well. There was a flock of brandt geese as well as barnacles and various crab shells.

Change of Plans!

We decided that with the gloomy morning and all of yesterday's rain, we would cancel the picnic. As a back-up we chose going to see Hotel Transylvania at Cobble Hill Cinema. We think we made the right decision as the girls LOVED it. Here they are before the movie with their drinks and individual bags of popcorn.

Hi Parents…
Well we are off and running! It was so great to see the girls again and meet our new recruits. I hope they came home as excited as we are. The meeting was so much fun! Here is our monthly summary…
We started our meeting with a snack and a sparkling cider toast. We had Rice Krispie Treats and Grapes. The girls toasted with there ‘fancy’ cups to a great year with Girl Scouts!
The girls introduced themselves to one another and shared something they did with a girl or woman over the summer. We are trying to have the scouts realize the importance of female bonding and how much they can learn from the girls and women in their lives. (This is a theme from the Brownie Journey we are following, World of Girls!) Some of the highlights were, swimming with my cousins, getting my nails done with my mom, diving from a diving board at the pool & lots of other beach/summer/swim activities with moms, sisters and cousins!

The scouts returning from last year had a re-dedication ceremony! We read The Brownie Story (Binder page 18) and had the newer girls help them recite the poem…“Twist me and turn me and show me the elf, I looked in the water and saw MYSELF!” Brownies are extremely helpful family elves. If you haven’t already, you should read the story, its so cute! At the next meeting we will have an investiture ceremony for all the girls joining this year!

Next we had an ART showing of all the AMAZING work that your daughters did over the summer! We can not express how truly overwhelmed we were with their paintings - so talented! The girls set up their artwork and we all walked around and each took a moment to explain their pieces. It was great to see them so engaged and asking questions about the works. We learned words like medium, collaboration and abstract. Also learned about a technique where you put tape as a resist to create a shape when you paint over it - thanks Aemilia! If you did not work toward the painting badge yet and would like to, there is still time! Please just let us know and we will arrange time at our next meeting. Everyone who participates gets a badge. There is no ‘girl scout police’. As long as your child does something that they are proud of, that’s all that matters to us! We will present girls with their badges at an upcoming trip to an art museum (date TBA). We were so PROUD of Troop 2440. It was such a great experience for us to look at their work and hear them describe the styles, techniques and emotions they used!

Then we played a Story Relay game… it was so fun! It was a good way to get the girls on their feet and using their minds. We had 3 teams and used index cards with random words written on them. Each girl selected 2 cards and worked to arrange them into a logical story/sentence in a relay sequence that kept building. After the scouts had 2 turns each, they took a few minutes to work together as a team fine tuning the story. We then shared the stories with the other teams. This exercise was to help remind the girls that words and reading are FUN. Also to help them find and relate to clues within stories, which is another theme from World of Girls.

This year we will end our meetings with the girls voting on a challenge for us! We think it is so important for the girls to feel empowered and that their voices are heard. Today we talked about fitness and polled them on their favorite ways to get their bodies moving. The scouts then voted on Freeze Dance and our challenge will be to incorporate that into our next meeting. We will come up with a different theme/challenge each month that they can vote on.
Of course we ended with the Friendship Circle! Such a great opportunity for the girls to think of something nice that they or a friend did that day and give their Brownie sisters a squeeze! (Binder page 23)

A few reminders…
Our Welcome Back Picnic is this Saturday 10-1 at Prospect Park! Please let us know if you will be attending. We will email you later in the week with location details (it's the same area as last year). Please bring your own picnic breakfast/lunch and any games you think the girls might enjoy. We will be playing a few organized games as well.

The Beach Clean-up event is on for 10/13, 10am at Plum Beach, Brooklyn. Please let us know if you will attend and if you can car pool. The beach is located off the Belt Parkway East between exits 9 and 11. You will need to bring lunch, clothes appropriate for cleaning beach and marsh areas and work gloves.

Save the date October 27^th, Plant a tree event (Scouts for a million trees NYC), Floyd Bennett Field, Brooklyn… more details to follow!

Newly added Bowling Event and the girls gave a huge cheer when we announced this! @ Maple Lanes 1570 60^th St., Saturday November 13^th 1-4. Please RSVP as soon as possible, it is $15 for each girl paid that day and for scouts only. Price includes two games, fun patch and food.

We are in the process of going through all the paperwork and checks now. We will contact you if anything is missing. Girl Scouts requires a lot of us right now but once this boring stuff is out of the way, we promise we’ll be nothing but FUN!

Our next meeting is Tuesday, October 30^th 3-5. We asked the girls to re-read Shali’s story in their books on page 6 (WORLD side) and complete page 17 at the end of that story. Also to complete pages 12 and 13 (GIRLS side).
As always we look forward to hearing your feedback, thoughts and/or suggestions, so please let us know what you think! 




That’s all for now!
Best,
Michelle & Martha

NY Liberty Game

On Saturday we went to Fan Appreciation/Girl Scout Day at the New York Liberty game! They are currently playing at The Prudential Center in Newark and are our local WNBA team. It was so great… the girls (and the parents) had such a good time watching professional women athletes rock the court! The event was really well done with lots of funny dance acts and t-shirt give aways! Martha had a spectacular catch and won a fan day t-shirt… think the girls (and I) were really impressed! We look forward to doing so much more with the girls this year… it’s so fun to see them out and having so much fun together as ‘GS Sisters’!

June 2012 meeting

Hope everyone’s summer is off to a great start!

We just wanted to send a quick recap of our last meeting and an end of year summary, so here it is…

Our last meeting was so much fun, hope the girls told you all about it!  In case they didn’t here are the highlights.  

We broke into groups to discuss our Brownie homework. We were very impressed with girl’s character ideas and how in depth our discussions got!  All the girls earned their first journey award and we couldn’t have been any prouder of Troop 2440. We have such smart and talented girls to work with, lucky us!  

Secondly we did a character project, where the girls wrote down the name of a girl character on one side of a card and a personality trait describing that character on the other side. They then placed them trait side up on the floor. The girls looked at all the different traits and stood next to the card they felt best described them.  It was so fun to see their surprise when we flipped the cards over and they realized what character was underneath such as Judy Moody!  It also gave them some ideas of books they might want to read over the summer.

Finally we discussed earning badges and Alyssa shared the work that she did towards a painting badge.  (She already did the work because she didn’t realize we would do it as a group over the summer, so it worked out great to have a visual to show the girls.)  The girls were very impressed with her paintings!

We also gave out a star pin (represents one year of girl scouts completed) and a 100-year pin (we joined in 2012, the 100th anniversary of the Girl Scouts of America).  So to be clear your girls should have brought home a star pin, 100 year pin and a badge, if you are missing anything just let us know!  

Also since our last meeting we had the Brooklyn Cyclones game and sleepover. It was such a unique, special activity and the girls had a blast! I’m sure the girls will be happy to tell you all about the fireworks, running around the outfield, watching a movie and sleeping in a tent at Coney Island! Their tents looked like a bouncy house as they played with flashlights and glow sticks. There were some challenges during the sleepover portion of the event - bright stadium lights, and lots of ambient noise. The girls showed resourcefulness (tying a sheet to the outside of their tent to block some light) and spunk, which made us really proud of them. Good Brownie traits! We had breakfast the next morning at a local diner, which was a nice way to end the event. You can tell from all the smiles that the girls had a blast.

We’re looking forward to planning many more great events for next year. 

Speaking of next year we would like to confirm that we would be continuing with Brownie Troop 2440.  We will have our meetings on the last Tuesday of the month and change the end time to 5:00pm. We had considered having 2 meetings a month, but think that we would like to stick to 1 meeting/month. We will supplement these meetings with lots of fun “extra-curricular” activities such as outings and picnics.

Please shoot us an email ASAP to confirm that your child is going to participate next year. Word of all the fun our girls are having has spread, and we have a sizeable waiting list for this troop! We do hope everyone will continue on with us in 3rd grade.

As we mentioned in the meeting recap, we assigned the girls a summer project… the painting badge!  All you need to know about earning this badge is in the Brownie Binder, in the Badge section.  We would love for the girls to work on badges together as a group, so they can feel a sense of accomplishment not only for themselves but be proud of their brownie sisters as well!  If you have any questions please email or call us but it seems that you can make this as much and little as your family may have time for!  

Stay in touch and we look forward to hearing all about the girls adventures over the summer as they have more time to explore their ‘World of Girls’!  

Hope your summer is filled with lots of fun in the sun with the appropriate amount of sunscreen of course! 

Happy summer,

Michelle and Martha 

Father Daughter Day

The girls and the fathers got the first glimpse of Camp Kauffman. The girls loved exploring the grounds, rowing in the boats, eating s'mores (no surprise!) and exploring the overnight cabins.

Here are some photos from the day.