Girl Scouts Hike The Madeira School

Our Girl Scouts had a great time hiking the Madeira campus on Sunday, July 17th. The weather in the morning was delightful. The girls were excited to see old friends and meet new friends as well.

Every girl there earn her hiking patch. They observed animals, leaves, feathers, daddy-long-legs, a monster catapillar, tad poles, spider webs and a very unique tree growing back into the earth. I did not see one girl being carried despite some BIG hills. Well done Girl Scouts!

A great big "thank you" to all who participated, especially Kim Newsome and Ann Miller at Madeira who so graciously gave of their time to make this event a reality. We will be making this an annual event for the entire service unit so we will hope to see everyone again next spring.

Birthdays, Cards & Cranes

Once again troop 2182 continues to amaze. We accomplished so much yesterday. #1 on the list was having fun just being together.

We celebrated the Girl Scout Birthday which is 99 years old this month. We celebrated by everyone bring in a "birthday gift" for the Troop. The theme for the gifts was our Troop First Aid Kit. Thank you Tricia for going to First Aid/CPR training for our troop and all the families for wrapping and supplying the items. We will be prepared for our hike on May 15th! Special thanks go to Mrs. Robin Joss for making birthday cupcakes from scratch from the Big Red Kitchen (and special treats for our egg sensitive girls :-).

We wanted to spend some activity time making thank you cards for our #1 Cookie Manager, Hassen Khraibani. Without his participation the Troop would not have been able to sell cookies this year. He gave generously of his time going to meetings, picking up cookies, collecting funds, and keeping everything organized. Many, many thanks.

Lastly, in support of our Girl Scout Sisters in Japan we made paper cranes as a show of friendship and support. The Girl Scouts in Japan made thousands of cranes and sent them to the US Girl Scouts right after 9-11. We, likewise, want to let our sister Girl Scouts know they are not alone. This effort is being managed by the Girl Scout of the Nation's Capital and many Girl Scout organizations nationwide. We will mail all our cranes as soon as possible.

PARENTS, I NEED YOUR ACTIVE PARTICIPATION. I would like to include a picture of our Troop to send with the cranes but I need you to sign a permission slip. A link is posted on this blog under FORMS. Please sign and email or put in the yellow folder for me to pick up. Please do not delay as I would like to mail the cranes as soon as possible. The picture will also go to our Association for possible inclusion in the GS newsletter.

Action: You can iron/sew on the violet petal, Be A Sister to Every Girl Scout.

One last note about the cranes, many girls wanted to keep a crane but we did not have enough time to make two. If you follow this link you will find easy instructions to make the crane. It is an easy and fun project to do together!

You can click here to go to the you tube video.

Again, many thanks. Each and every girl is a treasure. What a privilege to share such joyous times with these girls!!!

Respect

The theme for this meeting was "respect myself, respect others, respect authority". We all had a great time learning specifically what this means by playing charades. Each girl drew a ticket then acted it out for all the other girls to guess. They easily guessed "brush my teeth and hair", "wash my face", "get ready for bed on time", "get ready for school on time". Some more challenging examples were "follow the rules", "play outdoors and have fun", "include others", and "listening to my parents and teachers". We had some natural actresses begging for the spotlight and others begging not to have to go. Of course we didn't force anyone. We loved to see, when we suggested the girls pair up and act out some new themes ("sharing toys", letting others go first"), we had more girls joining in the fun.

The girls then drew pictures of themselves showing respect either to themselves or others. They came up with even more great examples like "feeding my dog", "helping someone who has fallen down", and the like.

Lastly we played, "Troop Leader May I?" (our version of "Mother May I?"). The girls learned to listen and follow the rules going from one side of the room to the other by having to take giant steps forward, baby steps backwards, squawking like a chicken, doing ballerina twirls, hopping on one foot - of course, laughing all the way.

These girls are a joy and a a delight! They earned TWO PETALS with all our effort this week. Action: You may iron on or sew on the purple and magenta petals. A big thank you to Sat, Komal's mom, for bringing snack and for Diana Khraibani, Alianna's mom, for joining in the fun. As always, a huge thanks goes to our permanent parent volunteers and co-leaders, Tricia Dean & Helen Yi.


Until next time....

Girls Scouts Hike Madeira

Save the date for May 15, 2011. From 11:00 -1:00PM Daisy and Brownie Troops from SU 51-5 will have a hike at The Madeira School Campus. The campus is situated on 376 acres along the Potomac River. For many of our girls this will be their first hike and we are priviledged to have it in so beautiful a spot.

Permission forms will be sent home with the girls in April and will be due by April 25th.

Please contact Carolyn Pennington with any questions.

Words Matter

The orange daisy petal stands for "responsible for what I say and do". We all were given a piece of shiny, new tin foil then crumbled it into a ball, then smoothed it out. The effect was that there were permanent marks on the foil that would not come out. Likewise, our words are very powerful and we have to be aware of what and how we say things. We talked about some tools like counting to 5 before blurting out something potentially negative, or just walking away. For arts and crafts we made paper dolls from "crumbled" material then had to put positive words on our dolls. Each girl got to pick her own meaningful and positive words and then we shared our dolls and words with the troop. It was great fun.

The girls were given a Reston patch for the back of their vests. ACTION: please sew or iron on the Reston Patch on the back and the orange daisy petal on the front.

A big "thank you" to Monica for helping out and Qing for bringing snack.

Let's Get Fired Up!

Who knew that being courageous and strong could be so fun? Not me! Troop 2182 had a great time yesterday. The girls come rushing out of class to our meeting area literally jumping with joy to be together again. We had snack, had our flag ceremony, shared in our circle time, played our left-right game and best of all... learned some cheers as part of our theme for the day. Mrs. Yi's daughter, Taylor, was gracious to come and teach our girls how to do some cheers. The Most popular was, "Let's get fired up, 2,1,8,2!" We stomped and jumped and cheered so loud. What a blast. (The girls were marching around Mrs. Weathers' class room doing the cheer when I dropped Hannah off this morning :-)

Action: Please iron the red petal on (mine keep falling off so I have to sew)...

Thank you Moms for coming! We can always use the help to keep the girls focused :-)

Again, if you cannot see the pictures on the general blog site, open the page individually from the right hand side of the page. Enjoy!

Considerate and Caring

Wow, did we have fun yesterday! Our troop was so excited to get together again and have a good time. Our theme was considerate and caring and we had much discussion about what it means to be considerate and caring. To emphasize the lesson we made cards with colorful construction paper, clip art, glitter glue, foam stickers for a family member/ friend and for a child at Reston Hospital (I will deliver once I hear back from their coodinator). ACTION: Please iron on the light green Daisy petal.

During our share time the girls shared about their dogs, vacations and other travel adventures. Summer plans were discussed a number of times. Is it just wishful thinking that summer is really that close? In any event, there are exciting adventures ahead for a number of our girls.

The theme for next meeting is courageous and strong. If you have any ideas please let me know. Start the discussion with your girls about what it means to have courage and the many ways we can show strength. Likewise if you have any ideas for off site get togethrs please let me know. I am thinking along the lines of meeting at a pizza restuarant for a Pizza Party Patch :-)

Moms, you are always encouraged to attend our meetings. Its chaos and crazy but fun and priceless all at the same time.

Enjoy some picutres from our meeting: