Girl Scouts: Meeting Recap and Next Week Volunteer Time!

Hi everyone!

What a fun meeting!  The girls are really good at planning these.

Since several of the girls had to go to Lego League for the beginning of the meeting, we started a bit short--but the girls handled it very well.  After dividing up leadership roles, the girls took a few minutes to get themselves set, and then we got right into their action plan.

We started with a Quinn-led game of telephone to get us warmed up.  The girls quickly saw how fast messages could get confused and mixed up, and noticed how similar that could be to real life when rumors get spread, or when one person decides to repeat something they may have overheard in the halls or somewhere else at school.

Kendra led us in our second activity--challenging ourselves.  Each girl got a little notebook, and wrote out 10 ways they want to challenge themselves to break out of their comfort zone before the next meeting.  They decided they would even take notes when they finished their challenges noting how they felt before, during, and after they made their challenge attempts.  We'll see how the girls do next meeting when they decided they will check in and hold each other responsible.

After that, we moved over to Teagan and Eva's activity--comparing the various sorts of media to a 7-layer dip.  Like the dip, all the various kinds of media blend into each other and interact with each other so it's not always easy to separate them.  Plus the dip was delicious!

Finally, Carrie led us in considering how we would change a popular TV show to make it more accurate, appropriate and positive.  The hardest part was finding a TV show everyone had seen!  It finally turned out that "Jesse" from Disney was a show all the girls were familiar with.  They came up with a lot of really good thoughts, including avoiding stereotypes and stereotyping characters, to making relationships more realistic, and even considering the role of consequences for kids actions.  

We wrapped up by watching the movie "Period.  End of Sentence" as I mentioned before.  We didn't get a lot of time after to discuss it, so if you get a chance, please talk about the movie with the girls and discuss what messages and themes they took away from it.  (Notably, how the women of that village took something that they were extremely embarrassed about, and used it to empower themselves, earn a living, and help pursue their dreams--but only because they were brave and determined enough to challenge themselves to overcome the embarrassment.)  The girls also took some notes about movie making techniques that they thought worked well in a documentary.

NEXT WEEK:  VOLUNTEERING AT TRICKLE BEE

The plan would be to meet up at our house at 10:30 if your scout needs a ride, and expect them to be back at our house around 2:30.  If you want to bring your scout there directly, that's OK too, and you can go straight there anytime in the 11:00-2:00 window.  The address is:

4424 W North Ave. Milwaukee, WI

Happy Wednesday and Keep Scouting!

Aleks