Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Session 2b

Okay, after this week I have decided that I think my expectations are getting in the way of the girls :(  -- Only a couple of girls did their homework, which I knew would happen as it was Easter Weekend.  So I had reserved some books from the library brought them for the girls to read, and we spent the better part of our meeting of the girls reading and filling out the worksheets, the ones that had already done one, did another but they enjoyed reading another book!  If anything from this Journey they are going to learn about different girls in different countries or cultures through books and all the reading! :) 

 After going through what each girl read and the clues they found we did some jump roping, actually we did LOTS of jump roping and the girls LOVED it!  I think they jumped for about 20 minutes we did single jumping, and then we tried our hardest to try to get 3 or more girls jumping in unison-- it was not as easy as we thought it would be, but they sure had fun!  Something to keep in my bag for next time- Jump Ropes!  They sang a bunch of Jump Rope Rhymes too!

When they were all jumped out, we sat down, and each of the girls picked their favorite character from a book or movie and wrote it on a note card, on the other side they wrote down a character trait of that person, instead of walking around and picking what trait we were like or see in ourselves, we talked about how we knew this character was those things, and what kinds of "clues" told us about them. 

We will pick up with Shali's story for our next session and the awarding of their first badge "Hear a Story".  I am in need of how to keep them on task and to make this more hands on, and I want to find a really cool way to award them, I was thinking a story about them and "clues" to finding their badges?  We will see what this week brings!

Session 2

We started off our meeting with the Promise and Law- I gave the girls the choice to say the Promise and Law either separately (like we have all year) or in a circle with linked arms and I had an almost even divide so each girl was able to do it they way she wanted too.
The first part of the meeting we talked about our budget and trip plans as Cookie Sales are done so we needed to figure out what we were going to do!  So the girls decided that it was Water Park for Jump Start Registration and Zoo Snooze for our End of Year Trip.
After getting all that "Business" out of the way we moved on to the Journey part of the meeting!  We discussed our last week's meeting with being connected with girls around the world, and if anyone had read the assigned homework (which they didn't) so we decided to read it together and the girls wanted to sit outside, we all took our books and headed for outside.  We found a nice place in the sun sat down and took turns reading, some of the girls read and some chose not to, but by the end of the story all of the girls had taken at least 2 turns reading!  When we were done we discussed some of the questions about the story, but I seen that it is very hard for them to comprehend and retain what is being read when we switch readers so often, I am going to try to come up with something else to help with this, I thought about having girls read the story and the ones that did could try to act it out?  We will see!
After discussing the story we drew circles on the sidewalk with chalk and talked about different worlds they belonged in and one that we all share together is our Brownie Girl Scout Troop!  By the time we were done it was time to head in and have a quick snack before parents were there!  The girls sang Hermie the Worm on the way inside and we all tried our Hummus snack- honestly, I don't think any of them liked it!  But they loved the Pita Chips!   The all left with the assignment to read a book and fill out the Hear a Story Find a Clue worksheet! (we will see how this week's homework goes?)

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

It's Your Story- Tell It!

So begins another Girl Scout Brownie Journey--
    I have begun last week with my 2nd and 3rd graders our 2nd Journey Book!  YAY!!

So we started off discussing traveling and passports and how we were going to "journal" our Journey together?  We decided we wanted to do something together and on our own, so the girls will be making a Journey Scrapbook along with their own Passport Journals.  I found at Crafts Direct these small notebooks that snap shut and had a pen included with a small notebook inside, I was looking for something fun for the girls, and as I went by these and saw their cute decorating ideas- I thought they would work perfectly.  And the girls LOVED them! :)  so it was a great choice.  Last week we did 1/2 of Session 1, and a piece of Session 2 as the girls couldn't wait to decorate their passports!  We talked about some of the games we played, played the two new ones in the facilitator guide, and the girls enjoyed doing both, wishing we could have had more of an obstacle course for the second one though.  The girls decided that they would try to read Shali's Story on their own, and if they didn't that was okay we could read it together at our next meeting.

So a brief summary of last week's meeting, was--
     1) we said our promise and law differently, we went in the circle and linked arms and said it, the girls thought it was weird but I think they enjoyed doing something different.
     2)we played the new games from different countries
     3)we talked about passports and why you need them, then brought out the craft supplies and let them decorate, this was about 30-40 min of our meeting
     4) we talked about the story and about "moving libraries" and how many of them have library cards or use the public libraries during the summer months and during the school year.
     5)delegated me to contact the Mobile Library from another city to see if it would be interested in visiting the girls--
     6) I brought a globe ( a small one that lights up) and we talked about being "connected" to different countries and finding places to see how far away we were... one of the best comments from some of the girls were WOW MN sure is a small part of the world! -- I will continue to bring the globe as a reminder of that statement :)
     7) decided that at our next meeting (tonight) we will make some homemade hummus and the girls can try it.  Unfortunately I couldn't find all the ingredients so we will be trying the store bought kind with Pita chips and bagel crisps and celery.

Went through the closing ceremony and talked about meeting an extra time so we can get through the journey before the end of the school year!


So as I plan for the meeting tonight- I have good news for the girls- the Mobile Library contacted me back and they will be in a town about 12 miles away in two weeks and said they could stay there extra long so the girls could come and visit-- so FIELD TRIP! :)  We will be playing the game/activity World of Girls outside with chalk I believe, as long as no rain, trying hummus, going through the story of Shali and discussing our next meeting :)  I hope they are as excited as I am!

Stay tuned more to come!

Fell off the Blog :(

So as our Journey continued, I forgot to enter it into the blog-- and I kinda forgot about my page until I was looking through some resources :(

We did get our Journey done, the girls decided to do a planter, we unfortunately didn't get to put it up as the city was doing some street renovations, so we had to accommodate and change it up. 

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Session 3/4 Plan

We met today and our task for the day----Take Action Project prepping/planning/brainstorming--- . the girls were so excited the first thing they wanted to do was play outside, but me wanting to get work done then play.. made them a promise-- When our work is done -- we will go outside for free time-- everyone stay on task and we could have lots of free time.

I feel there is something that I am missing, my girls are not coming up with these great ideas??  I mean the best I could get from them is picking up garbage outside??  so I tried to get their brains going, we have done community service projects before, but maybe I haven't been telling them that is what they are--- I know they are--so why wouldn't they?? So I listed on the board-- Community Service Projects-- and then we went back through the last couple of years of what we have done that qualifies at Community Service Projects; after that they got it!! They finally knew what it was that they needed to do!!  So we started to name things off-- our barrier we have girls that come from two different schools/communities that are not all that familiar with both areas.  So I named a few places-- and we decided that we would go to the park close to the church/school that we meet at next week because our troop is combined 2x a month with Daisies so we are going to go and find some things that we can do to make the park better be it (clean up garbage, look at equipment, plants/trees??).  So after all of that they felt happy with what we decided. I felt good about what we did, we went outside and played, after about 25 minutes of burning off some much needed energy :)  We came back and did a simple ceremony -- Friendship Circle received our Connect Keys and talked about what we would do next week.  I will have to type up a permission slip to hand out to the girls for their parents to sign.  Let's pray for no rain!! :) :) :)  2 more meetings and we will be done!! I can't wait to see what they come up with next week with their younger friends!

Sunday, May 1, 2011

wanting to share my experience

After searching the web for ideas on bringing the GS Journeys to Leaders for the upcoming year, I fell onto another leader's blog that she wrote over a year ago.  This inspired me to try to do the same-- I am passionate about Girl Scouts, my daughter who will be 18 in June is in her 13th year of Girl Scouting, we have had many fun experiences-- but I don't feel that she learned to be a Leader from doing try-its, badges and IPP's or planning events, I feel she has been inspired to be a leader because that is what her mom has done, and we had fun and that is what she wants.  I am lucky -- I have a second chance at "really growing" a leader from the Girl Scout Program-- my 7 year old daughter- has had the opportunity of doing the Daisy Flower Garden Journey and now the Brownie Quest Journey that we are about half way through..... needless to say-- She Gets It!!  She was born a leader-- or at least that is how I think...but she gets the "experience" she embraces it and enjoys it!!

Now to get all those other Leaders, Parents and Girls out there in the same mind frame :)