April 2014 Newsletter info for Parents & Program Partners

Parents of Girl Scouts – Troop 82044

April Newsletter

Here’s what’s happening in the next month! As always – call or text 419-308-3062 if questions. 

~ S White

Sunday, March 30^th – 5:30pm – 7:00pm

SPECIAL  LOCATION Drop off at Zoellner Arts Center – 420 E. Packer Avenue

Activity – learning songs for the Take the Lead dinner coming up, and participating in a martial arts demonstration. (note: the girls will be seeing a Japanese Drumming group on Monday, March 31 as a part of a school field trip.  This workshop will complement that performance, and count toward the badges)

Sunday, April 5^th – EARLY START TIME - 5:00pm – 7:00pm

Regular Meeting Location – Neville Hall (6A East Packer Avenue) – room 003

Activity – the girls will meet with Mark Atkinson of Bethlehem Parks and Rec to begin to plan their Bronze Award project.

Saturday, April 12 – 8am-11am

Service Project – SouthSide Clean up.

Meet at Lehigh University Campus Square, intersection of New Street and Morton Street. Where jeans and sashes. Bring a broom. Gloves and breakfast will be provided.

Saturday, April 12 – Special Program for Cadettes and 5^th Grade Juniors

Time: 1pm – 4pm

Location: Lehigh University, University Center, Room 308.

The sisters of Kappa Delta Sorority on the campus of Lehigh University and begin your Media Journey! Cadettes look for the ME in media and learn how they can shape media—for themselves, their community and the world. You’ll get to participate in fun hands on activities with college women while exploring the importance of your image in media. MEdia helps girls think about who is responsible for telling all the stories they see around them and how can use their story to help "re-make" the forms of media they see around them.

Sunday, April 13^th – PALM SUNDAY

SPECIAL ADDED ACTIVITY - We will be meeting at the ArtsQuest Center at SteelStacks on Sunday, April 13, from 11am – 1 pm in the Musikfest Café on the 3^rdFloor.  The address is 101 Founders Way, Bethlehem, PA 18015

If you cannot make it, that’s fine. This is the girls chance to rehearse for the Take the Lead Ceremony at the location of the event. Otherwise, …

We will also be meeting in the evening from 5:30-7pm

Regular Meeting Location – Neville Hall (6A East Packer Avenue) – room 003

Activity – the girls will meet with Lehigh University Kappa Delta sorority. They will demonstrate proper table manners for Take the Lead Ceremony.

Sunday, April 20^th – NO MEETING ON EASTER SUNDAY

Sunday, April 27 – 5:30-7pm

Regular Meeting Location – Neville Hall (6A East Packer Avenue) – room 003

Final rehearsal for Take the Lead.

All girls must bring their sashes to be checked before the ceremony

More Bronze Award planning time.

Visit from Beverly Bradley, founder of Lehigh Valley Cops & Kids

Girl Scout Cookie Sale 2014

It's that time of year again.

That time when a leader's life is partially overtaken by:

• inventory pick ups in snowy parking lots,
• towering cases of every flavor in every open space of the house
• anxiety about girls selling enough cookies to meet their goals
• late nights logging sales records for each girls scout
• counting, recounting and recounting again to make sure all funds are present.
• freezing my touchy off at booth sales.

But it's not all misery. There is still plenty of fun with my daughter, and with the other girls in the troop. And these fun moments far outweigh the passing frustration at PDF excel spreadsheets.

At the last two troop meetings, with a little help from the Lehigh University girl scout helpers, the girls designed the tri-fold poster board for the booth sales. Lady B and I finished it today. Here's what it looks like:

Yes, there's actually lights embedded into it. No glitter... yet. Camila just may go rogue on it. If she comes to a booth sale with glitter, she can bomb the poster. I'm sure we'll find more space to add more ideas throughout the sale.

Being a troop leader is a lot of time, but it's well spent when you see the girls grow and take ownership of their learning and goals. Two

weeks ago, Bridget, Nicole and Jackie went to a Cookie Rally organized by some more seasoned leaders and a few college students from Cedar Crest College. The scouts went though 9 stations to teach them skills learned through the cookie sale.  As a volunteer, I was able to see what kind of activities are age appropriate for exploring ideas and turning them into a plan the girls create on their own. Of course, lots of the girls' ideas are taken from these events, but still they are doing it themselves.

The girls I lead TAKE the lead. We'll see how they do with customer service, inventory placement, counting change and helping to cheer each other on.

We've scheduled some Booth Sales to help the girls increase their profit potential; three at Lehigh University, two days at Church, and one at Lowe's in Bethlehem. Tomorrow from 10am-2pm is our first Booth Sale at Lehigh. I hope it goes well enough that I'll need to get more inventory for the second booth sale on Tuesday afternoon.  Crossing fingers.

Bridget's Commercial

A couple of years ago, the National Girl Scout Council created this video:

Sure it's a nicely produced commercial. But my daughter did her own, posted it on my Facebook Page and is already taking orders through the comments under the video. As she starts to see success on her own terms, she'll be able to apply the lessons of planning, determination and patience.

Here's her commercial:

We showed the other girls this video at the troop meeting. I hope that if they have supportive parents with their own Facebook network, they could try this idea, too.

The girls in our troop have set a pretty high goal. They want to go outdoor camping. These girls have never build a campfire. Most of them have never roasted a marshmallow on a stick. Peps, yes. S'mores... nope. We have a lot of work to earn funds to cover expenses. We also have a few overnights to get ready to live in the wild.

The Girls of Troop 82044

Never under estimate the power of a group of girls who are given a little bit of support and encouragement. Their energy, compassion and ideas will astound you.

(taken October 18, 2013 - along the Greenway in South Bethlehem)

November 2013 Troop Update - Girl Scout Way

We've been meeting "unofficially" for a couple of weeks. We were waiting for the Journey books and materials to start the "Agent of Change" journey badge work. While we were waiting, we chose to work on the requirements for the Girl Scout Way badge for both Juniors and Seniors.

Even though this is a funded troop, these girls have great enthusiasm for learning and for trying new things. While going through the Girl Scout Way badge requirements, they learned a lot about girl scout traditions, and even a new song (from waaaaaayyy back in the 1970s!). Last week, we celebrated Juliette "Daisy" Gordon Low's birthday - ok, it was a day late. We also started an exciting new connection with some Lehigh University students who were former girl scouts before they came to college. They met with the troop to talk about their favorite parts of Girl Scouting - which of course, gave the troop some more ideas! On one meeting, it was a really nice day outside. Since we meeting in the church basement, the kids needed to walk out some of their energy so they wouldn't disturb the parishoners praying. We only needed to walk for a block to find a community garden that we decided to work on this year with the school's 8th grade teacher. Finally, they learned about a Girl Scout tradition called a "swap." We started to make loom bracelets to give to each other or to the Lehigh University students as a gift for coming to our meetings and maybe helping us out this year.

We won't be meeting this Friday, November 8th, because our troop leader is in Harrisburg. But she went to Girl Scout cookie training and had lots of information to share with us when we get closer to the cookie sale time.

We meet next on Friday, November 15th when we can get started on the Journey badge!

Badge Exploration Planning

Preamble: Junior badge requirements are not generally available. One can do an online search for badge requirements, but they would find that badges have evolved over the years. And rightly so. The roles of women have changed over the 100+ years of Girl Scouts.  Many of the things I learned in Girl Scouts informed the things I do today. But the opportunities for girl and women are so much greater today than they were when we were kids. The good thing here, is that we adults can explore with the girls.

 This version (to the right) is what my Girl Scout handbook looked like. If you squint, you can see the bell bottom jeans and braces on my teeth, too. My copy was well read, the corners rippled and perhaps some dirt in the binding from all the camp sites. Girls scout badges covered First Aid, cooking, sewing, campfires, .. mostly domestic skills. Many of the things I learned from girl scouts informed the things I do as a mother today - mostly to save money, but also to reconnect with previous generations. So many domestic skills are a mark of one's culture. When I think of family traditions; it's usually from the kitchen. But of course, there's other traditions worth passing to the next generation. At the same time we want to celebrate those traditions, we also want to empower our girls to reach beyond traditional gender roles - to break barriers that previously kept girls from learning about new things. This is why I'm happy to be a leader, and grateful for the opportunity my daughter has to explore the 21st century world.

The Girl Scouts of today have a lot to balance (as do we parents). We don't want to overwhelm them with keeping all of the past while piling on new skills. Heaven's our girls would end up in therapy! But if we want our girls to achieve some recognition as well as try new things, we must keep up with the changes in the Girl Scout program as best as we can. Any good organization who's mission is simple, "Girl Scouting builds girls of courage, confidence, and character, who make the world a better place." will evolve as the needs of their clients change. Our girls want and need to be exposed to many things.

In order to get the most up to date information on available and current badges, we had to buy the Junior Girl's Guide to Girl Scouting book ($22.50). I did find some guidelines on the internet, but they were out of date, and many of those badges are out of circulation. The guide included requirements for seven legacy badges (Drawing, Practice with Purpose, Inside Government, Simple Meals, Junior First Aid, Junior Girl Scout Way and Flowers.)

There are five other categories of badges: three skill building badge groups that complement the Journey badges, and two categories that support Cookie sale and financial literacy.

All the juniors who attended the Banana Factory art classes as part of the Holy Infancy program earned the legacy "Artist" badge. It made sense to recognize the quality art program already covered the requirements of the badge. To earn the Cookie CEO badge, I went through the requirements as a part of the troop meetings, and as part of the cookie sale program for the older girls. Some girls also earned the "Simple Meals" badge. I shared the badge requirements with the troop. Badges can be earned independently, and on the honor system.

Bridget and I have been reading through the requirements for many badges. As we read through more of the requirements, we saw that many of them happen in dance classes, music lessons, family trips and summer camps. This summer, we'll explore some of the badges and invite a few friends over for badge "play dates." They're not official troop meetings; but they're a way to stay connected over the summer and to have a little fun learning together.

We don't have the requirements for all of the possible Junior badges (yet), and I also have to prepare the Cadette badges for launch in the fall. It would make the most sense to combine start with legacy badges, and with the badges that complement the Journey we'll start with in the fall. If we are able to make it through the first journey before the cookie sale, we may be able to start a second journey before the end of the school year.

I'm setting high goals for this year. Stay tuned for badge earning documentation. I'm hoping this blog helps other parents explore the badge activities with their girls over the summer.