First real older girl meeting

Wow! I'm so excited - I have 11 older girls! 7 Cadettes, 3 Seniors, and 1 Ambassador - woohoo!

When I originally got into Girl Scouts, 9 years ago, I wanted to be a Cadette leader. I was a Cadette as a girl, and that's my favorite age group.

I've had older girls for a couple of years now, and we've had some great times. But I don't think I've ever had more than 4 girls.

And now - 11. Fundraisers are going to be so much easier. We could do a car wash. We can make fried apple pies, and we won't have to kill ourselves. Maybe we really can do a spaghetti dinner, or a pancake breakfast. Maybe we really can raise enough money for a trip to New York, or even Europe.

We really didn't do anything last night - just spent some time getting to know each other, and each girls interests, so we can narrow down what badges we'd like to work on. Talked about the journeys we are going to do, and hopefully encouraged them to go for the Silver and Gold awards.

We also managed to help 2 girls finish their bridging to Cadettes Award. With the new requirements, it was almost too easy. Of course, having all age levels built into one troop does make things like Bridging a lot easier.

It occurred to me that very few of these girls had any say in the choice of a trip to Atlanta, GA. So next meeting, we'll talk about traveling, why it's a good choice, and why they might want to go someplace else. My Ambassador has been there, and loved the trip when she went, so I'm going to make her talk to the girls about why we should go there. And then, it's up to them. If they pick someplace different, and come up with a plan for that place, I have no problems at all taking a different trip. Whatever they decide, they need to be excited about where we are going. Otherwise, why will they bother trying to raise money? Perhaps I can work part of the traveller badge into it - although my older girls have already earned it...

We originally picked Atlanta because it's in our region, and therefore the Juniors can go. And they are very excited about Atlanta.

Camp Care 5K

I almost forgot to mention the 5K walk/run on Saturday! We ended up with 16 people attending, and we all had great fun. About half of the people did a 3K walkathon, and the rest did the full 5K. And then they fed us lots of great food. 3 of our girls won door prizes ($10 gift cards to Target) and since we don't have a Target in out home town, we stopped at one on the way home so the girls could squander their money.

All in all, a very fun day.

Walking/Running for fitness

Last night was an easy meeting. It was a Daisy, Brownie, Junior meeting, with no older girls. We are planning to participate in a 5K walk this weekend, so we decided to invite a parent who is a runner to come and work with the girls on warming up, stretching, cooling down, and why exercise is important. She did a wonderful job! She even brought water for all of them, and then gave out water bottles as prizes. I think the girls really enjoyed it, despite complaints about having to move...

So this Saturday, we will be participating in the Camp Care 5K event. It should be a lot of fun!

Limitations of an email post

Well, it let me email a picture from my iphone, but it lost the words that went along with it. No biggie - just good to know.

Anyway, the pictures are obviously from the crafts we did - a friendship bracelet and the button note cards.

Notecards

Friendship bracelet

One down, 40 some to go...

We had a good first meeting, and we now have 17 girls registered. I estimate about 10 more registration forms will be turned in next week. So that's actually a little bit smaller group than we've had the last few years. But they all seem excited about Scouting, and ready for a fun year, so that's great!

The girls made friendship bracelets, note cards, and played charades while the parents filled out forms, went over the handbook and covered the fall fundraiser. It's always so crazy at the beginning of the year, so I was thrilled that we received the nut/magazine sale information early. That way I could cover it while I already had the parents there, and I don't have to worry about another meeting with them.

A neighboring troop has disbanded, and about 4 of the girls will be joining our troop. They are in 6th grade, which is great, because our Cadette group was getting pretty small - I'm looking forward to the new blood. I'm going to be working a lot more with them this year, and focusing on a Journey. That way, when and if they decide to go for the Silver, they will be ready.

Since my Daisies and older girls will only be meeting twice a month on opposite weeks, next week will be a Daisy meeting. My oldest Girl Scout (12th grade) and my newest assistant leader, will be handling that group. Right now we have 6 or 7 Daisies. So I have the week off! LOL!

Even though Janet, my co-leader, will be working with the Juniors, she will still be heavily involved with planning for the Brownies. And planning for the Juniors will be a joint effort between Janet, me, Ginger, and Loretta. There are so many Juniors now, we're splitting them into 2 groups by grade. That way, we won't have to worry about the older group repeating badges. And they can all work together on totally new stuff...