MERRY CHRISTMAS

 

AND

 

HAPPY NEW YEAR

 

FROM

 

OUR TROOP

 

TO YOURS!!!

FOOD DRIVE

 

Our troop held a food drive on Saturday to collect food for Girl Scout Families in need.

 

I was so proud of my girls, they stood for 4 hours in front of our local market asking for donations. Our community is AWESOME! We had probably 10 carts full of stuff in just 4 hours. Awesome!!

 

A local church allowed us to set up and Sunday Girl Scout families will come fill their cupboards with groceries.

 

 

Happy Birthday

Happy Birthday

Juliette Gordon Low

 

GIRL SCOUT DANCE

Tonight was our Annual Girl Scout Dance.

This year Bringing Back the 80's

It was a great time the girls

really enjoyed it.

I enjoyed seeing all the girls dressed up. it is funny how 80% of them all dressed like my girls below.

 

 

One of the ladies made a photo booth with the neatest props ever. My girls had a lot of fun in the booth.

 

Of course we would choose the crude line :)

 

My girl is the one in the middle with the unibrow!

 



 Very clever centerpieces

 

 

Even celebrities showed up!

JK this is one of the Dad's dressed up like Slash

Our dances used to be Father/Daughter but that has changed to include all.

 

The boom box was one of the photo booth props. My Coco really wanted to bring it home but it was promised to the makers daughter. Funny how they want something that looks so old.

I actually had one that looked like this.

 

Glad it was a fun night.

I am working on some "fun" things to keep the girls interest. We may have to move things around with our meeting times etc to accommodate the girls personal lives.

 

 

 

 



Meeting #4

Our 4th meeting was a continuation of the our 3rd meeting where my cookie mom started the Cadette Budgeting badge. I work for a large bank and pulled some material from there on earning money, savings accounts and how they work. I was very surprised at how little these 12 year olds know about money and banking. Maybe I expected to much as one of the moms commented that she didn't learn this until high school. I tried talking to them about ways to earn money and how to save it. I had sample savings deposit slips and withdrawal slips. This was very difficult for them, even with the basic instructions on the slips. Hopefully when they see it again they will have learned something.

I am having a really hard time with the troop this year. I had one quit last week. My daughter is ready to quit. There is way to much drama at our meetings. I could go on and on. When I talked to the mom of the girl that quit, the reason she quit is that it is no longer fun and seems like it is work work work. I had to agree it has not been fun for me either. They are in school all day learning and studying. I don't want them to come to a meeting to sit there and listen to a lecture again.  I have to blame some of that on the journeys and the new badges. I am not a fan of the journeys. My goal for the future is to give them opportunities to experience things they would otherwise not be able to. This will include some "studying and listening" but more hands on experiences. They also requested more crafts and cooking. We may just have to go the old fashioned way of GS. Do things like home keeping, sewing, hospitality, outdoors events, etc.

 

I hope we don't lose anymore but they are at the age that GS is not so cool. I have to find a way to make it cool and make them proud to be a GS in today's society.



Service Project

 

I have chosen Operation Christmas Child supported by Samaritans Purse as our October Service Project. You can go here for more information. There are collection sites all over the country.

 

My family has done this every year for several years now. I love choosing items and thinking about the little girls or boys that will receive them. I have tried to promote it in our troop but usually just 2 or 3 participate. This year I will be giving each girl one item and she will have to get 8 of that item. We will fill 8 boxes, one for each girl in the troop. The troop will purchase the fillers.

Here is a list of items that we will put in our boxes.

Bar soap

toothbrush and toothpaste

washcloth

shampoo

crayons, coloring book, pencils, notepad

hard candy

doll, ball, jumprope

hair brush, hair tyes

 

I will add little things I can pick up at the dollar spot or dollar store. We will use the plastic shoe boxes from Walmart that are .97 cents each. That way they have a sturdy box to keep. We will also include a letter and photo in each box.

 

It will be a fun meeting filling boxes and discussing how we are doing a good turn!!



OUR NEXT MEETING PLAN

It has been a slow start and chaotic this year. Between finding days that all girls can meet, the school football schedule and my work schedule we haven't had as many meetings as I would like. So our next meeting in a couple of weeks, we will have alot to cover.

First up will be a short parent meeting to complete the health forms, contact info, dues requirements, etc.
I will also have everyone read and sign the code of conduct, adults and girls!

We will be choosing and explaining troop government. I did this last year with half the girls so the other half will have the opportunity to have a position this year.

We will also vote on badges, service projects and trips for 2012. To keep it simple we will plan for 2013 in December or January.

My plan is to do a service project, badge work, crafts and a trip each month.

October:
Service project: collect and distribute personal hygiene items for the VA Hospital here or prepare Operation Shoeboxes to send in November.

Badge: Budgeting/Money and NO BULLIES

Trip: Dance and Girls Fun Run

Crafts: decorate small clipboards and  tile necklaces. These I already have in our craft stock.

November:
Service Project: Food Drive for local pantry. This is a all service unit event.

Badges: Cooking (at the girls request MORE COOKING)

Trip: Camp Noark Work Day

Craft: I will have to come up with something for Thanksgiving and cooking

December:

Service project: Random Acts of Kindness- This will be something done individually, I will give them the tools and encouragement and they can roll with it.

Badges: Girls Choice or First Aide

Trip: Possibly a Christmas drive to look at lights / Girls Pick

Craft: Gifts for family, thinking salt scrub

Now if we can just pull it off!! :)

FUN MEETINGS

Our last meeting we made duct tape wallets. I found this idea from the Michaels.com


Ours didn't turn out quite like this. The girls decided they were more of a Clutch.

I took 1 sheet of felt and covered it with duck tape overlapping each side.
Turn it over and fold up half way
duck tape each side closed
cut the top to form a V
tape all edges
folder over the top
add velcro closure to top and bottom

when open you will have a felt covered pocket for money or whatever.
Some of the girls did patterns with different tapes and they also did the tops different.

They love the crafts.

Next meeting will be a parent meeting planning and preparing for the next few months.

Planning our year

It is that time of year again.

I have started thinking about our GS year.

Our troop usually begins in August rather than waiting until October. I just can't fit in everything i want to do from October -May. We also just meet everyother week, thinking about moving to every week. As Cadettes we are going to be working on our Silver awards, journeys, badges and I want to incorporate as much homemaking skills in this year.

My girls are mostly 12 year olds with a couple that will have turned 13 soon.

Do you miss the old fashioned scouts where they learned skills like sewing and cooking and cleaning, etc?

I know I do. Even our schools have taken out the HomeEc classes that I had in high school.

Some of the skills I want to incorporate into are year are:

Laundry/washing/ironing

housekeeping/cleaning

cross stitching- found some first time samplers on sale at Hobby Lobby

Manners/etiquette

Computer etiquette

These are just a few I hope to work into the year.

Do you plan out your whole year in the summer or do you play it by ear?

I would love to know your tips and tricks to a successful year.

Until next time

Your fearless Leader



Juliette Gordon Low

I found this article today. For the celebration of our 100th Birthday Madame Toussads will be making a wax figure of Mrs. Low. See the article here.

I hope to someday see this.

Faithful Leader
Pam

GIRL SCOUTS 100TH BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION

Friday afternoon me and my co-leaders checked out our troop from school at 2pm. We took a road trip to Little Rock for the 100th Birthday celebration of Girl Scouts.

They were happy just to get out of school an  hour early.

The event was held at the Clinton Presidential Library.

Year of the Girl 2012

Saturday morning we got there at 7:30 am waiting for the events to begin.

Old train bridge converted into the trail system.

Morning Flag Ceremony

Girl Scouts Diamonds of Arkansas, Oklahoma and Texas

Girl Scout History Exhibit at the Presidential Library

Touring the Library

Bridge walk into the next century of Girl Scouts

Team Building activity

We even had a special Juliette Gordon Low look alike to lead us into the next century.

We had a break in the afternoon so we took a trolley into Little Rock to see the Duck March at the Peabody Hotel

These ducks march into the fountain at 11am each day and march out at 5pm each day. Girl Scouts were the honorary Duck Masters for the weekend.  This was so cool to see.

We walked back to the Library because our trolley stops at 5:45 each evening. The celebration continued that night until 10:30 with crafts, food, dancing, games and movies.

We stayed until about 8pm. I was so exhausted, I wish I had worn a pedometer to see just how many steps we took. We really walked all the live long day. We got back to the hotel and the girls played truth or dare and mash. They enjoy just hanging out together more than anything.

Sunday activities were supposed to be at the nature center for a service project but the forecast was 80% chance of rain. Instead they made Sunday a girls only program of showing a movie about Going Green. Our girls did their Bronze Award project on recycling so they voted to sleep in and come home early. We stopped at Taco Bell for lunch at got home at 3:15pm.

MEETING

Tomorrow is our 1st meeting of March. Same time same place.

We have several events coming up this month.

March 3 - Scouting U

March 4- Cookie Booth Lowes

March 9-11- 100th Birthday Celebration in Little Rock

March 12th - Girl Scout Week - I have big plans for the girls this week.

March 17 - Cookie Booth Lowes

March 19-23 - Spring Break

A very busy month indeed. I look forward to spending the time with the troop making memories and making the world a better place!!!

Welcome Girl Scouts

Hi and Welcome to Troop 5780.
this will be a place for our troop to connect and share what we are doing.
More to come as we develop our blog.