Our fashion projects are complete!

I am so excited to announce that my girls have finished their fashion projects! Our last project was for each girl to design her own hat to reflect her personality. I was so pleased with how unique each girl's hat was.

If you'd like to see a little description of each girl's design, please just hold your mouse over their picture as it "falls" in the slide show!

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.

What a great meeting! No-Sew Hats project

I thought we had a great meeting last night. We started our meeting off by a question and answer period about our fall sales, which we started last week. I regret that I forgot to go through the Promise and Law with the girls. I will do better next time!

In the Daisy Journey we read Chapter 3, learning about Amazing Daisy and her cousins from all over the world. It was at this point that I realized I'd forgotten to bring the herb gardens with me to the meeting! I will do better next time! The girls' homework for next time is to draw a picture of what they think our gardens will look like as they grow.

Our Fashion project for this week was our no-sew winter hats. I found the patterns in an amazing book by Judy Ann Sadler called, Making Fleece Crafts.

Most of the girls could not wait to get started on this project, but a few forgot their fleece. I was so proud of my girls! They offered to share extra fabric with each other and EVERYONE got to make a hat. It was so great! I don't have a picture to post yet because we weren't able to make our scarves last night. We will complete the set at our next meeting and get pictures I can post.
If you would like to download my instructions for this project in pdf format, please click here.

Much better!

Our second meeting of the year was so much better than the first! We started out with practicing the Promise and the Law together. The girls are getting pretty good at them, although more than one has problems holding up the 3 fingers.

Next, the F. earned her "Animal Tracks" patch. She told us about her family vacation to North Dakota where they went to the National Fish Hatchery and on nature hikes. With the help of her mom, F. found the tracks of animals like deer. Then the made a circle out of poster board--using paper clips to hold it together, and then mixed plaster of paris. (F.'s mom brought the p.o.p. pre-measured in plastic bags, then added bottled water and mixed it when needed.) We were able to see the tracks of the deer very clearly.

We were able to read Chapters 1 and 2 from our journey books. The girls are assigned to do the workbook pages of those chapters as homework for our next meeting. I think I'll send out an email reminding them about a week before our next meeting. We also planted our herb gardens. I was able to buy 4 herb garden kits at a local store when they were clearanced at the end of summer. The herbs in each garden are Lavender, Oregano and Thyme. The girls worked together to plant the seeds. I will keep the gardens here at my house transporting them to each meeting so the girls can see the plants' progress.

Our craft this week was to finish the pincushion sewing kits we started last week. Last week the girls chose the fabric they wanted to cover the pincushion. We then glued it onto the Styrofoam and then to the lid of the little plastic containers. This week the girls glued a ribbon around the edge of the Styrofoam (pinning it in place until dry) and then I gave them each 2 tiny spools of thread for their kits. Here is a picture of my pincushion sewing kit.


I also handed out the fleece water bottle carrier bags. My daughter and I sewed them at home and then cut the fringe in for each girl. The girls' job now is to tie the fringes to complete the bag. Once they have brought it to show me they have completed it, they will receive a patch with their name and troop number to glue on to their bag. This will be the second of their 5 fashion projects towards earning their fashion patches.