Real Beauty Sketches

We ran across this and thought it was really powerful. Let's go easier on ourselves! We lead our daughters by example.

February Meeting

Hi Parents,

Tuesday was another fun meeting!

We started off with the Girl Scout Promise and talked about how they earned their "change a story" award for the great work they did on the book drive. Our "new" girls got their "hear a story" badge as well. Check their backpacks for these badges. Here's a photo of how their sashes should look at this point. Only returning girls will have the gold and green star. We had a few questions about the patches, and just to clarify, the front of their sash is for their "earned" badges like painting and the story badges. The back of their sash is for their "fun" patches like Wicked. Eventually the story badges will all fit together like what you see below.

During our opening, we played a variation of the game Bingo with the girls. Each girl had the same sheet of paper with 25 squares. Each square had something like: has curly hair, likes to sing in the shower, is wearing sneakers. The girls had to go around and "interview' each other to see who's name they could put in each box. Ava was the first to shout Bingo, but we kept going to see if they could fill out all the boxes. Some boxes were hard to fill out like - who doesn't like pizza!

Next we had snack and introduced the next badge the girls will work on. BUGS!! Their snack bags of goldfish and grapes were pinched together with clothespins to look like butterflies. 

During snack, we showed the girls how to make the craft project that is step 2 of the bug badge. The girls were excited to paint their clothespins and cut paper to make dragonflies. After that they made tissue paper flowers for their dragonfly to live on. Some of the girls had made tissue paper flowers before and were great helpers for the girls who hadn't.

We then had a discussion with the girls about advertising, which will eventually lead us into their "tell a story" badge. We spoke about how most ads are trying to sell us something by telling us a story. We showed a bunch of different ads and the girls took turns telling what they thought the story was. We had everything from spring fresh cleaners, to yummy looking dog food. We had a lot of fun with that and had to convince the girls that we didn't *really* think the dog food looked delicious!!

After that we talked about ads that aren't trying to sell a product and are actually trying to raise awareness for a good cause - PSAs. We showed a couple of examples of ads in magazines and then we showed a couple of videos from the site www.values.com. They loved these videos, so you might want to share some more with them at home.

We closed the meeting with our friendship circle. Thank you Jen (Ava's mom) for volunteering at this meeting!

There is some Brownie "fun work" for the next meeting. We would like the girls to complete step 1 of their Bug Badge. This is in their big brown binder. Step 1 is to make a poster of a bug of their choice (insects and spiders are considered bugs for this badge) and answer the questions about their bug. We would love to have a mini science fair at the end of our next meeting and invite the parents.

Best wishes and looking forward to our MoMA trip this weekend.

Michelle and Martha

January Meeting 2013

We started our meeting with the Girl Scout Promise, seems the girls have this down now!  Then we did a stretching exercise as an opening ceremony.  The girls were asked to stretch so they were as tall as possible, and think of something they were good at.  We then took turns sharing our thoughts.  Seems our troop is very talented, filled with girls good at singing, dancing, swimming, reading and much more!  It was great to see them thinking of things that make them proud!  

Our snack was a tie in to their 3rd grade study of Asia and "Dancing with Chosita" story.  We had a bento lunch snack which included a cheese sandwich, clementines, ham/carrot roll up, blueberries, pomegranates and seaweed.  The girls were so excited about the presentation and the mini fork that was included!  

During snack we discussed cookie sales, money earnings and ideas for spending our troop rebate.  Ava also presented her artwork for her painting badge. We are so proud of all the girls for selling 2,660 boxes of cookies!  Our top seller was Lindsay with 400 boxes!  All the scouts should be so proud of themselves and each other. I know we are!  We would like to split the Cooke rebate 3 ways... One big celebration (camping trip, broadway show), a smaller party (day event like movie day or skating) and a charitable contribution! We reminded the girls that we do like to vote on stuff within our troop and that's how we will handle the rebate.  They all seemed very excited about a weekend at Camp Kauffman, more information to follow!  Also they had the idea of a trip to Washington, D.C., which we explained could be something we work towards next year! 

Next we broke up into groups to work on our Change a Story project.  This was a role playing exercise about resolving differences. We gave them "saying how it feels" scenarios and the girls worked out solutions to problems.  Such as when two friends want to do different things and how you can still be friends with someone even when you don't agree on everything.  These themes seem to be very fresh on their minds and it was good for them to have an outlet to talk it out!  

We discussed the Change a Story project and how we accomplished this with our Hurricane Sandy Book Drive for P.S. 52.  We will revisit what an amazing job the troop did, raising 4,500 books, at our next meeting and they will officially earn their Change a Story Award.  This is a very important message for the scouts to learn - find a clue (something that needs a change), do something to make a difference and achieve a positive change.  We hope to do this again and again as a troop and individually as well!  We also worked on pages 10-11 on the Girls side of their books, please make sure they complete those pages.

Then we wrapped up our meeting with a dance party! Did a round of Freeze Dance... congrats to Ella, last scout standing!  These girls really know how to move! 

In addition to our meeting, we handed out bowling fun patches to the girls who came to our bowling event. Please attach those to the back of their sashes. 

CPR and First Aid Training

This past Saturday, troop leaders Martha and Michelle took a 7-hour course at our Girl Scout Council in CPR and First Aid.


We are now trained to chaperone overnight camping adventures with confidence. The training certifies us for two years.

Scout Discount at Butternut Ski Resort

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!