Holiday Party & Count It Up! Leaf

The first part of our meeting was decorating holiday cookies.  They had lots of fun decorating and eating!!

All sugared up!

We got to work on our Count It Up Leaf.  Our Cookie Sales season is starting and this will be our first year for us to sell cookies.   Our council is a Super-Six Council with cookies this season - that means we are only selling the top six types of GS cookies.

Cookie Money Worksheet

Our cookies sell for $4 per box, so we worked with the girls to learn to figure out how much multiple boxes cost, and how to make change for their customers.  We helped the girls complete the questions on the back of their Cookie Worksheet to help them understand.  If you would like to modify the worksheet for your own needs, download the Word doc version here.

We then practiced selling cookies by role-playing.  The girls would take turns knocking on a closed door and practice selling cookies to Michelle when she opened it.

Would you like to buy some Girl Scout cookies?

Some of the girls even pretended to be kids at a house who would help their mom choose cookies to buy!

Which cookies are your favorite?

We then decided on a goal for our upcoming cookie sales.  Since we've never sold cookies before, and know that some girls may sell much more than others, we came up with a troop sales goal of 100 boxes.  We used a copy of an example goal chart from a page in the GS Daisy Guide.

The girls then went home with their second financial literacy petal, Count It UP!

Click here to see all the photos from today's meeting.

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Investiture, Rededication & Money Counts

We had our investiture today to officially welcome Sydney to Girl Scouts.  We had a rededication ceremony to reaffirm our returning girls to scouts too.

Each of our girls has a votive candle with their name on it.  We reuse these candles at each of our ceremonies.

I have a copy of an older GS Ceremonies booklet from the Girl Scouts Delaware-Raritan, and pulled from there to create today's ceremony.

After our ceremony, we worked on the Daisy Money Counts leaf.

We followed the the first two activities outlined in the Daisy GS Guide.  We laid out different coins and discussed their value and how they equate to paper denominations.  The girls also received a Money Worksheet, found from Troop 500.

The last activity was assigned as homework for the girls.  The task was to determine how much things cost.

Budget Cards worksheet given as homework.

The girls were given Budget Cards (also found from troop Troop 500) worksheets to take home. Their assignment was to price out the cost of a few activities that we could do as a troop with the cookie money we will be earning. Their parents would assist them with this.

The girls went home with their first leaf petal for the front of their vest!

Click here to see all the photos from today's meeting.

Visit our Photo Gallery to see all the photos from our troop.

Food Drive for our Community

In keeping with the Thanksgiving time of year, and thinking of those in need, our troop went door to door on our neighborhood street to collect food for those in need in our community.

Notices for this collection were distributed to our neighbors last week.  (Click here for a Word doc version).

The girls pulled two wagons up and down our street and collected 77 pounds of food from our neighbors.  That is a few pounds more than our collection last year.

All done!

The food was delivered to Loudoun Interfaith Relief to help those in need here in Loudoun County.

The girls will receive a Food Drive patch for their vest for their work today.

Click here to check out all of the photos from today.  A photo page will open in a new window.

Visit our Photo Gallery to see all of our troop photos from this year.

Juliette Low Bday, Pumpkin Craft

Today's meeting was a Birthday Party celebration in honor ouf Girl Scout Founder, Juliette Gordon Low.  Her birthday is October 31, but our troop will not meet again before her bday, so we celebrated it a little early. ☺

First we had our Easy-Peasy Pumpkin CakeMix Cupcakes.  The girls loved them!

Then we played a Kim's Game of Juliette Gordon Low.  A Kim's game  is where you show several objects to represent a story.  After the story is read, an item is removed from the display, and the girls would have to guess what was missing.  The girls have a great memory because they were good at this game.

We made small stuffed pumpkins today for the fall season and for Juliette's birthday being the same day as Halloween.  A small plate was used as a template to cut circles of orange fabric before the meeting.  During the Kim's game, the moms helped by running some thread around the edge of the fabric circles.  We didn't want any little fingers getting poked by a needle during our activity.

Each girl was given a couple spoons of beans for weight on the bottom of the pumpkin and plenty of fluff they could pick and stuff inside.  We then cinched up the pumpkins a bit and put some glue inside the hole on top and stuck a branch inside.  Then the thread was pulled taught and secured.

Small leaves were cut out of green felt and a raffia bow completed our craft.

Ta-Da!!

To see all of the photos from today's meeting, Click Here.

Visit our Photo Gallery to see all of the photos from our troop.

Girl Scout Camp-Theme Kaper Chart

We started our second year of Girl Scouts!  We welcomed everyone back, and got to work on our new Kaper Chart.  A Kaper in Girl Scouts is a job or task.  To give the girls a little more responsibility in their troop, they each will have a job or kaper assigned to them at each meeting.  The jobs rotate at each meeting.

The theme for our kaper chart is camping, because Girl Scout love to camp.  We used part of a trifold foam board that was leftover from a prior school project.   There are sleeping bags on our chart, each with a job on it.  (Click here to download a Word doc of the sleeping bags.)  The bags were taped/laminated onto the board, and a slit cut for an opening in each bag to make it a pocket.

The girls were each given a friend, printed on cardstock, in need of her GS uniform. We had some Daisy uniform pages printed, and the girls cut out the hair and clothes to represent themselves and glued them on to their paper doll.  These little dolls were also laminated for durability and ease of sliding in and out of the sleeping bag pockets.  Each doll friend went into a sleeping bag.

The jobs we have so far are:

• - Snack Assistant
• - Flag Holder 
• - Pledge Leader
• - Friendship Circle Starter
• - Kaper Chart (rotates the jobs at the end of the meeting for next time)

We have a few open sleeping bags on our chart to allow our troop to grow.  As we get new girls in our troop, we will have a new job added to an open bag.  ☺

End of Year Party

We celebrated the end of our first year of Girl Scouts with a party this afternoon.  We had cupcakes and treats to share.  We gave out the 1-year membership pins to recognize their full year of scouting.

The girls topped it off with a dip in the hot tub!

We have completed all ten Daisy petals this first year.  Next year we will work on earning some of the other Daisy awards.  We can also spend time doing Girl Scout fun crafts such as making swaps to trade with other troops.

To see all of the photos from today's meeting.  Click here.

Visit our Photo Gallery to see all of the photos from this Daisy year.

Respect Authority

We took a field trip today to the local Leesburg Fire House, Company 20.

Troop 1138 + a few sibling brothers  :-)

We met with the fire fighters who work at the station.  We hung out in their kitchen and lounge to start.  The fire fighters talked to the kids about fire safety and what to do in an emergency.  We then got a tour of the fire station including the living areas where the fire fighters sleep when they stay overnight.

The kids got to go inside two of fire engines that were at the station.  Firefighter Smoothers demonstrated and explained all of the fire gear they have to put on when they go out to fight fires.

We gave the fire fighters some yummy Girl Scout cookies to say Thank You for giving our troop a talk and tour!

The girls earned their magenta "Respect Authority" petal today.  They took home a Respect Authority Color Page, also got a fun "Fire Station Visit" patch to wear on the back of the vest.

To see all of the photos from today's meeting.  Click here.

Visit our Photo Gallery to see all of the photos from this Daisy year.

Make the World a Better Place

Our Daisy Girl Scouts worked to "Make the World a Better Place" today.  We signed up for our town's  annual beautification campaign to "Keep Leesburg Beautiful".  We even had some sibling brothers come along and help with the clean up!

We chose to clean up the elementary school grounds.  Our town provided the safety vests, gloves, and trash bags for the kids to do their work.

Lots of trash was found along the drainage area.

The kids were amazed at how much trash was found, and what kind of trash was on the ground.

Ta-Da!

It was a warm spring afternoon, and everyone worked hard.  The girls earned their "Make the World a Better Place" rose petal.  We also gave them a Community Service fun patch for the back of their vest.

After  our clean-up, we read a letter to our troop from another Daisy troop in Rogers, Arkansas.  We had made some goodies for them previously as an exchange for "Being a Sister to Every Girl Scout".  We got to learn a little bit about where this troop was from and the area where they live.  Then each girl received a little goodie bag with their name on it from the Arkansas troop.  They were so excited!!

Opening their goodie bags.

To see all of the photos from today's meeting.  Click here.

Visit our Photo Gallery to see all of the photos from this Daisy year.

Tuesday meeting cancelled

Due to illness, our regular meeting on Tuesday April 2 is being cancelled.  We'll meet up next on April 16 for our Make the World a Better Place petal patch.

Use Resources Wisely

Our plan for today's meeting was to do a couple of activities for the girls to earn their clover green petal for using their resources wisely.

Our first activity was to reuse the empty toilet paper rolls to make seedling planters.  The girls came to the meeting with toilet paper rolls and a shoe box to carry their project home.  This activity took longer than expected, so we didn't get to the other activity today.

First cut the paper rolls in half.

Cut four slits in the bottom, and fold like a box.  See  TUTORIAL below...

Fill each with soil.

Label each planter and cover a few seeds with soil in each.

Once the seedlings sprout, the cardboard planter can be planted in the ground whole.

To see all of the photos from today's meeting.  Click here.

Visit our Photo Gallery to see all of the photos from this Daisy year.




TUTORIAL for TOILET PAPER ROLL PLANTERS

1. Start with empty toilet paper rolls.

2.  Cut each roll in half.

3. Cut four slits across from each  other on one side, 

4.  Fold the four slits down, like you are folding a box.

5. Press flat to form bottom of planter.

6. Fill with soil.  Label.

7. Bury a few seeds into each planter.