A busy month!

We've had a busy month selling Girl Scout cookies, but thankfully I will be turning in the money and reports tomorrow and we'll be officially done. The girls sold very well, exceeding my goals by far.

We celebrated World Thinking Day on February 22nd. I decided to head up the event to help our Event Coordinator. We decided to learn about Fiji, Australia, Mexico, India and Hong Kong. We chose the countries from the list of 145 countries in the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts. We made leis for Fiji, paper fans for Hong Kong, Gods Eyes for Mexico, ate Pavlovas for Australia and decorated the girls' hands with "henna" tattoos for India.

We were able to send our pen pal troop in Wisconsin a letter with some SWAPs and a map about South Dakota to help them learn about us. I am excited to read their letter to my troop this week, and to hand out the SWAPs they sent. We also completed our flip-flop slippers, one of the last steps to finishing our Fashion patches. You can see the directions at the FamilyFun website here.

This week I would like to take a break from our journey book and have a review of the Girl Scout Law. We have been having some behavior issues at meetings and events and I would like to remind the girls of how they need to apply the Law to their everyday lives -- that it is not just something we say at the beginning of every meeting. I plan to play a game with the girls, reading situations to them and asking what parts of the Girl Scout Law were broken in each one. There is usually more than one answer and I think the girls will have an easy time figuring it out. For each correct answer I will put a marble into a jar and I will tell the girls if they can finish the game as a team with the jar full to a certain point, they will get a special treat. I will have a treat like cookies on hand to give them before they go home. The real treat will be the patches I have on order from MakingFriends:

To see the situations and answers for the GS Law Quiz, you can download a .pdf file here.

It's SWAP time!

I am so excited about SWAPs this year! We were not able to have a council sponsored cookie rally this year, so the leaders decided to have our own rally and combine it with our SWAP. The theme of the SWAP is cookies. My girls made Cookie Monster!

I was fortunate enough to have my co-leader, Katie, cut out the little discs of brown cardstock on her new Cricut machine. Then using a hole punch, I made "bite" marks in each cookie (600 of them!) I found the blue pompoms on eBay, although I had to buy in quantity and we will definitely be using them in our crafts for some time.

We are also doing Leader SWAPs, and they don't have to be cookie themed. I decided to make a pin with Juliette Gordon Lowe's portrait on it.

My co-leader, Becke, just had a baby 2 months ago so I knew she wouldn't have time to make her own, so I found this adorable idea online, it's Clippy Longstocking!

And my other co-leader, Katie, works full time so I decided to help her out too. I made these simple Daisy Insignia Tabs in no time at all.

This week I finished sewing the girls' SWAP sashes as well as the 3 leaders' sashes. The girls will be carrying their SWAPs in their fleece water bottle bags. I think we're ready, now we just have to wait for the day of the SWAPs to get here!

Month #7 -- Earning our Violet Petals

To earn our violet petals, my girls made a pen pal kit to send to our sister daisy troop in Kentucky. You may remember from previous blog entries that I met another beginning troop leader on Facebook who is from Kentucky -- the same town I lived in for 4 years before coming to South Dakota. We gathered a few things and sent them off to Kentucky to show our sister scouts what South Dakota is like. Our first item was a letter from myself to their troop. Here is the text:
Dear Troop 730,

Hi! My name is Sarah, I am the troop leader for Daisy Troop 50382 in Watertown, South Dakota. There are 9 girls in our troop, they are all in kindergarten. We are learning many new things in Girl Scouts this year. We have participated in a SWAP, we made cookies for “Love Our Community” Day and we just visited the fire station to earn our Red Petals.
We are excited to learn about Kentucky. Most of the girls in our troop have never been to Kentucky but my daughter S was born there! My family lived in Danville for 4 and ½ years. My husband worked at a local manufacturing company, I worked at a local veterinary hospital and we went to church at Centenary United Methodist.
We are enclosing a few things to help you learn about our town and our state. Watertown has some really great ways to keep kids busy. We have a zoo, a big library, a water park and an opera house that gets educational displays like dinosaur fossils. We also thought you might like some of our SWAPs!
Thank you so much for being our Sister-Troop and for helping us to learn how to be a sister to every Girl Scout!

The next item included in the pen pal pack was a picture drawn by each of my scouts of their favorite thing to do here in Watertown. Everyone drew swimming! I think it was a hint that the girls were sick of winter. Each girl signed the Pen Pal letter as well. We included enough of our SWAPs for each girl in their troop and a map/tourist information on Watertown. We are excitedly waiting their letter!

SWAPing good time!

Today was our SWAP and I must say, I had a ton of fun. 7 of my 8 girls showed up and they were not shy about trading with the older girls. We played some fun games, and I think it went really well. I enjoyed helping the girls find SWAPping partners during the games, you wouldn't think it would be too hard to find another October birthday in a room full of girls, but it was. The kids liked the games like hook tag, we'll have to meet up with one of the other Daisy troops to play, since they only have 3 girls. I think I see a chance for a sister-troop playdate!
Sis had a little harder time. She felt like one of the older girls wasn't nice to her, but she has a hard time when she is in a new situation. She has a hard time jumping into anything new, and today EVERYTHING was new to her. To top it off it was so loud that she got a headache. So she had some quality time with the moms and then after the meeting I made sure to talk to her about not letting people get to you. The biggest thing to remember is that even if someone else is having a bad day, you don't have to let them ruin your day. This has been a great mantra for me in my working life. It makes it easy to overlook a crabby coworker and its a good life lesson for the troop. I promised them we would practice the friendship circle at the meetings, they liked it but it can be confusing at first!! Overall, Janet's troop hosted an A+ SWAP!!

SWAP Meet this weekend!

I am getting very excited for our first SWAP (Share With a Friend) Meet. The idea is to make something unique to our troop and trade it with girls from other troops. Since we are Daisies, we needed to make something very simple not too hard for little hands. The solution is bag SWAPs. I looked on line at sites like these for ideas:
www.gsswaps.net
www.makingfriends.com/swaps
www.scoutingweb.com/scoutingweb/program/craftswaps.htm
We (Sis and I) tossed around ideas like rainbow seeds or friend seeds, and went to the store to see what was available. Sis saw some cute little white puffballs with silver tinsel sticking out of them and asked if we could please use those. But what to call them?? I thought about it for about a week and it occured to me that we could make our SWAPs into a wish for a silver lining when a friend feels down. Here is our finished SWAP.

The girls seemed to get the idea of wishing for a silver lining on a sad day and they were so fast at putting them together. I prepared for the meeting by counting out what each girl would need to make 20 SWAPs and seperating them into bags for each girl. They finished during the meeting so they didn't have to take any work home. There was also enough supplies to make SWAPs to send to our Sister-Troop in Danville, Kentucky.
I know the girls will have a great time meeting new girls and getting new SWAPs.