Our Brownie Blog 2007 - 2008 (First Year)
Click on a link below to read about what've been doing, and what's ahead.
| June 14,
2008 This week was our final meeting. What a fun one it was!  We
went swimming at Claude Moore Park Recreation Center
where the girls enjoyed the leisure pool with fountains,
whirlpools, lazy river and huge tube slide. We swam and
swam, then munched on pizza and home-made blueberry muffins for
dinner. We did our final Brownie Buck Shop and Court of
Awards. The girls received their final two Try-It patches for the
year, along with the incentives from the cookies sale, plus a
certificate of recognition from the Town of Leesburg for their
participation in the Keep Leesburg Beautiful campaign. Our
Troop was recognized as an
Honor Troop again this
year, and the girls received their 2007-2008 Honor bar to add to
their vest. We
didn't take any photos of the girls while they were in the pool,
since we were in their with them, but we did get a few snaps
after pizza.
Click here or on the photo to take a peek.We're off for the summer so enjoy the break!! One request for the summer is to please purchase a scrapbook for your daughter. It can be any style, from plain to fancy, but should be a 12x12 size. We have so many photos of the girls this year, and we want the girls to remember their time in Girl Scouts with fond memories. We will devote a couple of meetings next year to building pages for their scrapbooks. |
May 20, 2008 We
completed our Movers Try-It today by going on a Field
Trip to the
National Air & Space Museum in Dulles, Virginia. We
went there to learn more about how we use wind to move through
the air, and how we can use wind as energy. Kalie's
experience as a teacher was a great help in explaining
some of the features in airplane and rocket design that take
advantage of wind. The girls were very interested as we
went around the museum.
Click here or
on the group photo to see the pictures from our trip.As a little activity during the ride to and from the museum, the girls got to play with ropes and practice their knotting skills - something we didn't get a chance to complete at our campout last weekend. The girls also enjoyed our camping-recipe trail mix as their snack. Next meeting in June will have our final Court of Awards ceremony for the year. We will have our year-end celebration and swim party. Check your email for details. |
May 18, 2008 We
did our first Back Yard camping this weekend. We all had a
blast! We grilled hotdogs for dinner, and toasted
marshmallows over the grill for s'mores as dessert.
We sang camping songs, and played games. We spent time trying our hand at the Girl Scout tradition of using Rex-lace craft. After burning off energy playing flashlight-tag and hide & side at dark, it was too cloudy for star gazing, so the girls got settled into our tent. We had more fun and games inside the tent before settling down for the night. The rain poured down during the night, but the girls slept through it all and stayed cozy and dry. I  t
was an experience we will look back on with fond memories of our
first campout. Plenty of photos to see in our
Photo Gallery. The girls received their Backyard Camping patch for participating in the campout. This patch was tucked in with their camping handouts. The patch is a sew-on version, so let Sylvia know if you need this patch sewed on for you. |
| May 6, 2008 The girls really seemed to enjoy this week’s meeting. We made paper copters and wind socks as part of our “Movers” Try-it. We did our meeting on the back porch as it was a great day to be outside. The girls also finished their Mother's Day gift, so check their back packs if they haven't pulled their gift bag out already.  Our
next activity is Backyard Camping! The girls are very excited
about this. This will complete our Outdoor Adventurer Try-It. Check your email for details. Coming up soon is our field trip to the National Air & Space Museum in Dulles. This trip will complete our Mover’s Try-It. We will pick up the girls at school and drive the girls home again. Our last activity of the year will be a swimming party. This event was one of the rewards the girls voted on for selling Girl Scout cookies. We can pick up the girls at school and bring them back too. We will do our final Court of Awards and Brownie Buck Shop at this meeting. Let us know if you plan on joining us for a dip in the pool or just being at the final Court of Awards. It's hard to believe our year is coming to a quick ending. Everyone is returning for our troop next year! We would appreciate hearing your thoughts and any feedback or suggestions for our troop for next year . A real camping trip can be an option for us next year too as we will have three camp-trained adults. |
| April 22, 2008 We spent some time today talking about Earth Day. We talked about our last meeting where we cleaned up our neighborhood to keep it beautiful. We spent most of our time working on our Mother's Day craft. No photos to ruin the surprise! :-) We will finish this project at our next meeting.  We held our third Court of Awards today and awarded the girls with the latest Try-Its they have earned, Animals and Earth is Our Home. See a few photos in our Photo Gallery. If you take a look at our Try-It progress tracking chart, you can see how much work the girls have accomplished this year. During our meetings, the girls will put stickers under their name for each activity they've completed for a Try-It. I recommend this visual to other GS Leaders as it is a great tool for the girls to see , understand, remember and appreciate the work that they've done for their Try-Its. We are very proud of our girls for the work they do - with enthusiasm too! |
| April 14, 2008 Our troop has been busy this spring. In March we celebrated Girl Scout's birthday, and continued working on our Earth is Our Home Try-It by making natural cleaning products. The girls loved making a mess so they could test out their concoctions. We bought the girls' favorite cereals to donate to the local food bank with some of our cookie money. We also had a fun trip to Chuck E. Cheese since the girls had voted on this as one of the activities they would like to do with some of their cookie money. Our first meeting in April was an Animal and Pet Care meeting to complete our Animals Try-It.  To complete our Earth is Our Home Try-It, we participated in the Keep Leesburg Beautiful clean-up effort. We cleaned the common areas of our neighborhood (pool, tennis courts, creek, soccer field) and filled our bags with litter. The girls worked hard and should be very proud of their efforts to keep our area beautiful. |
| February 26, 2008 We started work on our Animals Try-it by taking a field trip this week to Old Mill Veterinary Hospital and Pet Care facility.  We were able to see both the boarding area and the hospital sides of the facility. There are lots of photos of the tour in our Photo Gallery so take a peek. We met Miss Shannon who led the first part of the tour. The girls were able to view the grooming salon, tour the boarding kennel and meet a few furry friends. We then went over to the hospital side and met with Dr. Bardsley. She gave our troop a great tour of the vet hospital and spent time to answer every question that was asked. The girls all agreed that they loved this field trip! During the business part of our Brownie meeting, the girls colored and decorated a poster that we will use for our upcoming cookie booth. It looked great! The troop also voted on two fun activities we will do with part of the cookie money that our troop has earned. The winners were an outing to Chuck E. Cheese, and a trip to a local swim park. We will donate a portion of our cookie money to a local food bank. The girls told us their favorite breakfast cereal, and we will buy those cereal boxes with our donation money so that our girls can visually see how much their donations will help local families in need. |
| February 12, 2008 We recognized Girl Scout Thinking Day by making a goodie bag gift for our friends in local Brownie Troop 5179. Troop 5179 was also making goodie bags for our girls as well. We finished our work on our Colors and Shapes Try-It as part of this activity by weaving colorful cards for their gifts. The girls made little sparkle critters and teddy-bear lollipop holders to go in their goodie bag, along with some candy treats.  We held our second Court of Awards ceremony. The girls received a gift bag containing the Try-Its they earned (Colors & Shapes and Cookies Count), along with some Valentine goodies to enjoy. We had a "Star Performer" patch to award to Sarah for selling over 150 boxes of cookies! The girls also got to shop at our Brownie Buck Shop to spend their hard-earned Brownie Bucks. Click on the image to see the photos from this meeting in our Photo Gallery. We will start work on our Animals Try-It next by having a field trip to a local vet hospital at our next meeting on Feb. 26th. |
January 24,
2008 At
our first meeting of the new year, the girls helped conserve
energy in our homes by making draft stoppers. Many of the
girls added two buttons eyes and a mouth to the stopper to make
a face. The fleece material was so soft and cuddly, they
may become pillows when not working as a draft stopper. :-) This
activity was for our Earth is our Home Try-It. We then did
an activity for our Colors and Shapes Try-It by doing a yarn
craft and making God's Eyes. To cap off our meeting and celebrate this winter weather, we had a Dress for the Weather relay race. This was also for our Outdoor Adventurer Try-It. It was a fun meeting and the girls really enjoyed making their crafts. See the Photo Gallery. Cookie sale order forms are due in to Jan on Saturday, Jan 26th. Next meeting, we will be working on a Valentine/Thinking Day activity, as well as hold a Court of Awards ceremony along with a Brownie Bucks shop. |
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January 9, 2008 We completed a lot of activities in December, and the photos are now in our photo gallery. The month started with our Holiday meeting. The girls decorated teddy bear-shaped holiday cookies and gobbled them up for snack. 
The girls decorated their dough Christmas ornaments they created
at the last meeting. We created, stamped and decorated
holiday cards for recovering soldiers. We put the items we
collected into Christmas stockings for the Holiday Coalition.
At the end of this meeting, we held our first Court of Award ceremony and
Brownie Bucks Shop.Our other meeting in December was our Cookie Training meeting at Haley's house with sister Brownie Troop #17. The girls rotated among stations to learn the different aspects of selling cookies, money management, and plans for the funds that are raised. Cookies sales have started this month. Remember that an adult must accompany your Brownie daughter when she sells and delivers cookies. We're looking forward to allowing the girls to vote on how to use the monies earned from cookie sales! Our next meeting is January 22nd. |
| November 27,
2007 We did our food drive today.  The
girls took the wagons out and walked around the block collecting
food from neighbor's front porches. When we were done,
they had collected over 70 pounds
of food! Congrats to the girls for helping feed those in
need this season, and "Thank You" to the neighbors who donated
the food. When we got back to our meeting, the girls got
started on the Colors and Shapes Try-It by making dough shapes.
They cut the dough into ornament shapes for the holiday season.
We set them aside to dry and harden, and will be decorating them
at our next meeting. See photos from today's event in our
Photo Gallery.Our next meeting will be December 11th. We will start our next meeting with our holiday party. We will have holiday cookies for the girls to decorate and eat at snack time! Besides finishing our dough ornaments, the girls will be making holiday cards for recovering soldiers. This work will be part of our Colors and Shapes Try-It too as they will make their own stamps to decorate the cards. We are filling stockings for the Holiday Coalition and we're asking parents not to spend more than $5 to $10 on stocking stuffers. The girls should bring their items to the meeting, if they haven't dropped them off before then. We will end our next meeting with our first Court of Awards ceremony. Parents are encouraged to attend. Don't forget to return the SHARE envelopes too! We have a special meeting date in December. Since our normal meeting would fall on Christmas Day, we will meet the week before, on December 18th. This meeting will be at Haley's home, and will run from 3:15 PM to 5 PM. This special meeting will be with a sister-brownie troop and the girls will complete the requirements for their Cookies Count Try-It. More details will come via email. |
| November 13,
2007 We were so thankful that the weather held out for us today as we were able to do our outdoor nature hike as planned.  The
girls had fun getting their hands in the good clean dirt as we
explored nature and collected items to build our
terrariums. We used our senses of touch, sight, smell and
hearing to take in the surroundings and used magnifying glasses
and binoculars to explore in more detail. The girls
collected moss, rocks, dry leaves, live grasses. After the
hike, we put sand and dirt in glass mason jars and added our
hike items to complete our mini-world. Instead of the
hiking patch (which was a sew-on version), the girls each got a
bandana with a girl scout design and their initials. We
wore the bandanas on the hike to keep bugs off our heads,
branches from poking our hair and damp leaves for getting us
wet.Our next meeting this month will be our Food Drive effort, and we will begin work on our Colors and Shapes Try-It. This holiday season, we will also be filling four Christmas stockings for the Community Holiday Coalition. We are to fill the stocking with items appropriate for children ages 5 to 8. More information will be provided. The SHARE (Share Her Annual Real Expenses) campaign has started. This is our local Girl Scout Council's (GSCNC) annual fund raiser. We will provide the information envelopes at the next meeting, which will be on November 27th. |
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October 25, 2007 We had a busy meeting this week! We started our meeting by talking about Juliette Low, the founder of Girl Scouts. We played the Juliette Low Kim game which the girls loved. We then worked on our last two activities for the Try-It of Girl Scout Ways. The first was to learn the Girl Scout motto, "Be Prepared".  We started by putting together our troop's
first-aid kit, and doing some work with
McGruff the safety dog and how to call 911 to get help. The
second activity was reviewing the Girl Scout Law. We made
a troop's Girl Scout Law book, and each girl got a part of the
law to illustrate.
The girls received their First Aid fun patch today. They will receive the Girl Scout Ways Try-It badge at our
first Court of Awards ceremony which will be held at a later
date. The last part of our meeting was an Investiture and Rededication
ceremony. We lit our troop candle, and invested Emma and
Caroline into Girl Scouts by lighting their own candle and doing
the "twist-me, turn-me" charm to each. The girls who were
Daisies last year were then rededicated into Girl Scouts by
lighting their candles and being twisted and turned too.
The girls received an award and investiture or rededication
patch for participating in the ceremony.The Girl Scout Calendar sales have begun. Participation by the girls in our troop is on a volunteer basis. Any girl who participates has the opportunity to earn her calendar-sales patch. The funds raised will go toward the troop's activities this year. Our next meeting with be on Tuesday, November 13th at Emma's home. We will start our work on the Outdoor Adventurer and Earth is Our Home Try-Its. We will go for a hike and collect items to make our "mini-world" terrarium. |
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October 9, 2007 Our girls jumped right into their kaper jobs today, and seemed to enjoy having some responsibility for the troop. They were all ravenous after school today, and very eager to enjoy their snack and the delicious chocolate chip muffins that Kalie baked. The girls began earning Brownie Bucks today. They can't wait to spend their money at our Brownie shop.  Today's focus was continuing on learning about the
Girl Scout ways and traditions. Our activity was
making sit-upons. We used two large
sheets of foam, with REX-lace to stitch the sides closed. The
girls sewed, stuffed, and closed up their sit-upons,then decorated the
outside with foamy stickers. The stitching was a little
tricky for the girls to do, and it took most of our time today
to complete the project. Each girl finished their sit-upon
and they all did a fantastic job as you can see by their
results!The girls took the sit-upons home to show family and friends their masterpiece. SAVE THE SIT-UPONS. We will be using them during our future meetings so please bring them back sometime before we meet again. Our next meeting is Tuesday, October 23. It will be a busy meeting. We will be creating our troop's first-aid kit, and our troop's Girl Scout Law book. We will also be playing a game to celebrate the Girl Scout's founder, Juliette Low's, birthday. We will hold our investiture and rededication ceremony near the end of our meeting. We welcome you to attend this special ceremony to welcome Caroline and Emma into girl scouts, and rededicate the rest of our troop back for another year of fun with girl scouts. Please let us know if you plan on attending - we will begin our ceremony at 4PM. Calendar sales start at the end of the month, and we hope to have sample calendars to show you at our next meeting. |
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September 25, 2007 We celebrated Emma's and Caroline's birthdays for September with special tableware and the birthday song just for them. :-) We reviewed the Girl Scout Promise and Law and talked about the new things we'll be doing this year with kapers, Brownie Bucks, Buddies, talking stick and other props to help our meeting. They LOVED having buddies so we hope that will work well for our meetings. The "talking stick" is basically a way to allow the girls to have one person speak at a time and the other girls to listen to whomever is talking. When we are in the Brownie circle, they should only speak when they have the talking stick. Our talking stick is an American Idol microphone, so the girls couldn't wait to get the mic today. :-) We started working on our first Try It which is Girl Scout Ways. It is for the girls to learn the traditions and history that make up girl scouting. We had fun with the Girl Scout hand shake, GS sign, quiet sign, our friendship circle and squeeze. The girls should have gone home with a two-sided paper that describes these traditions.  We created our troop's Kaper chart. "Kapers" is the Girls Scout
term for jobs. We have eight kapers assigned during our
meeting, and each girl is responsible for one. If you haven't
seen our Kaper chart yet, take a look at it the next time you're
in. It is a camping theme with each kaper labeled on a sleeping
bag. Today, each girl made a Brownie paper doll to represent
herself on the Kaper chart. The Brownie who is in the sleeping
bag has that kaper for the meeting. We have the following kaper
roles:- Snack Assistant - Flag Holder (for opening ceremony) - Pledge Leader (for GS Promise & Law) - Attendance Taker - Activity Assistant (helps set up the activity or assists the leaders with the activity for the meeting) - Kaper Chart (rotates kaper duties for next meeting) - Buddy Board (rotates buddies for next meeting) - Brownie Ring (leads group for closing ceremony) Our next meeting will be on Wednesday, October 9. We will continue to work on the Girl Scout Ways Try-It. We'll be making sit-upons which the girls will use at meetings, outdoor activities and for camping. We'll also be creating a troop book about the Girl Scout Law. For our last meeting in October (on the 23rd), we plan on creating our troop's First Aid kit. We'll need this before we go on our outdoor hike in November. We've asked that each girl donate one item for our kit. You should have picked up a letter today with the item you are to bring. Whatever the item is, please get a small package or container of it - we won't need a large-quantity or size item. Since the girls may not be allowed to carry certain first-aid supplies in their back pack at school, we're asking that you bring your daughter's item at pick-up on the 9th. That way we'll have it for our meeting on the 23rd. If there are any problems, questions, or concerns, please don't hesitate to contact us! I have a container on my front porch for Girl Scout items drop-offs. Please feel free to use it if you want to drop-off anything including forms and permission slips. We truly enjoyed the girls today and hope they all had fun too. |