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....