Oops! Here's the mask-ed picture!

Sorry everyone!  I forgot the attachment!  Here you go:

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Girl Scouts: Fun December Meeting!

Hi everyone!

That was a pretty fun way to close out the year!  Here's what we did, and what we learned:

We started with a Holiday Party--and it was delicious!  Thanks to all the scouts that brought treats--we had an awesome spread.  

The girls had asked to wear holiday face masks (like the invigorating/cleansing/skin care kind) so we got those on and there was a LOT of giggling!  (Picture attached--I think you'l laugh too!)

We followed that up with the girl's plan to play pictionary, and eventually turned that into charades (which the girls seemed to enjoy more too.) We have a pretty good bunch of artists and actors in our group.  To keep things on theme, all the answers were holiday or Girl Scout themed.

Then we got to some of our thinking parts.  We took some time and each girl shared a challenge or two from their journal that they worked on in the last month.  We talked about how we felt, before, during, and after we did our challenge.  The girls were very open about how trying new things made them feel, but also noticed that everyone felt very good and proud after they achieved their challenges.  The girls agreed to keep holding onto their challenge journals and adding challenges as they discover them, and to keep trying to challenge themselves even if they are scared, shy, uncertain or embarrassed.

We also practiced the craft we'll be teaching at CraftCon 2020 (Feb 14th, save that evening!)  Clove-Orange Air Fresheners.  For the girls that hadn't done this craft with the troop before, we talked about the history of clove-oranges, and why they work (natural preservatives in the cloves willl seep through the oranges and cause it to dry out without molding or rotting--that's why you can find dried 200 year old clove-oranges at Old World Wisconsin!)  

Finally, we worked on one more activity from our MEdia journey guide--"Playlist Partners!"   Each girl found a partner and made a playlist of 5 songs they thought would fit that girl.  Then they showed each other their playlist creations and talked about how accurate they were.  The challenge here was to think about how other people see you, and about how you see other people.  What you THINK other people might like, might not be how they actually feel inside.  The girls all brought the playlists their partners created for them home in case there were song titles they didn't know, they could listen to them on YouTube or some other streaming source, and see if their partner picked a good one.

One note before wrapping up:  The Annual Greendale Cookie Kick Off Party is January 8th.  Here's a sign up for the girls to help and attend.  Troops from all over Greendale will be there, so this is a great chance to be a leader and have fun at the same time!

https://www.signupgenius.com/go/10C0A4FA5AD22A13-cookie6

Other than that:  Happy Holidays!  Stay warm and keep Scouting!

Aleks Skibicki

Girl Scouts: Reminder--meeting Wednesday 3:00-5:00

Hi everyone,

Just a quick reminder not to take the bus home tomorrow!  Pickup is at 5:00 since this is an "action meeting" to do all the stuff the girls came up with last week.

See you there!

Aleks

Girl Scouts: Meeting Recap, Announcements, and Homework!

Hi everyone!  (Sorry this is long, but we kind of did a lot yesterday!)

You can tell we're getting close to winter break--the energy was jumping yesterday at the meeting,and with a nearly-full house, it was a little chaotic at moments.  Nevertheless, we still managed to get through a lot of planning and prep, so here's the breakdown/recap:

We started by introducing ourselves to our troop's two new friends:  Eirlan and Eloise.  Welcome to the party!

Then we took a few minutes to warm up our brains and bodies with some holiday themed fun--we had a blind-drawing challenge (we have some pretty good blind-artists!) and a candy-cane relay race.  Since we used up SOOOO much energy in the relay race, we just HAD to have a snack so we decorated some ugly sweater cookies for a treat, and then got down to work.  

1)  The first job we had to take care of was to pick a craft for our troop to teach/run at Girl Scout CraftCon 2020!  That's a new event for the Girl Scouts in Greendale/Greenfield/Hales Corners where troops from all around will each have space and supplies to teach other troops a craft they had fun making/doing.   After some discussion (and distraction from our cookie-decorating snack) we decided to share the clove-orange historical air freshener craft we made when we were Daisies/Brownies.  It should be a ton of fun, and we all agreed that any age scouts will be able to do the craft and have fun with it.  The event is February 14th, 2020, 6:00-8:00 at GMS, so save the date if you can!  It'll be a great opportunity to both teach others, and to learn a ton of new crafts too!

2)  The second job we had was to figure out a way to make sure all the girls remembered to do and bring their "Challenge Journals" from last month to the meeting next week.  For the new girls and for the girls who missed last meeting Quinn did a very nice recap:  

Every girl got a little journal, and wrote 10 challenges for themselves for next month, and then will complete as many of those challenges as they can and write down how they feel before, during, and after they complete that challenge.  Examples:  dance in public, make art that they are proud of, share art with classmates, clean their room, make up with someone they're having a conflict with, etc.  

We gave our new friends journal notebooks, so we're all ready for next week!  We kept it simple, and will just send a reminder out to everyone during the next week.  One girl suggested using the girls' email addresses, and she'll try that too!  They also thought that girls would be more likely to do the challenge journals if there were prizes, so I'll bring prizes next week for any girls that have worked on their challenge journals and bring them back!  (It would be great to have finished all the challenges, but doing at least half would be a good goal for now!)

3)  Third, we talked briefly about next month's annual "Cookie Kickoff Party" that'll be January 8th 6-8:00PM (after our meeting.)  The girls talked about how much fun they had helping in the past, and are excited to run stations again this year!  So save that date too!  (If anyone wants to just stick around between the meeting and the Cookie Party, we'll order a few pizzas so they can have dinner in the down time.)

4)  Fourth, the Girls came up with the plan for next week, and here's where it gets a little complicated.  We'll split the meeting between a holiday party and Girl Scout Journey work.  

For the holiday party, the girls decided they wanted to:

1)  Do holiday face masks (like the skin-toning kind, not the halloween kind) and play games like holiday pictionary/charades

2)  Have a holiday snack contest :

Their plan was to ask everyone to bring in something they made themselves with enough for 12 small portions--one for each girl--and then they'd all try each other's treats.  They pointed out that the servings would have to be small, because even 12 small things can get filling!  They also wanted to remind everyone that snacks don't have to be sweets--that some healthy items are nice too!

For the Girl Scout Journey Activities (MEdia) they picked:

1)  Playlist Partners!  The girls will split up into partners and will create a music playlist based on what they think their partner would like.  Then they'll share their playlists with each other and see A)  How other people see them, and B) How well they know other people.

2)  Logo Evolution:  The girls will look at how some companies logos have changed over time, and then design their own modern logos for either companies or themselves and explain their creations.

5)  Finally, we took some time and discussed our choice of a movie topic for our Scout "Take Action" project.  (The plan is to make a movie related to an issue in our community, and host a showing of the movie somewhere with community members invited; we're thinking the Ferch's theater!)

Let me take a moment to talk about how much I appreciate the girls that worked on pro/con points online for this week.  I can tell that a lot of time and effort was put in by the girls that did work online, and even if the topic they were promoting didn't get picked, their work was amazing and well done.  While there weren't names attached, there were some clues about who might have filled in info (K-pop references!), and I'll have patches or something special for those girls.  (I can't tell who filled in info about the vaping topic though so if someone can let me know who that was, that would be great!)  

The girls were very thoughtful in their discussion, and after reading through all the pro/con points from online, they came up with some very good additional points and thoughts.  It's pretty great to see the complexity of the girls' thinking  as they grow up.  I can guarantee I've been in adult meetings with a less coherent/nuanced/thoughtful discussion of ideas--have any of you been to a Village Board meeting lately? :)

The girls ended up deciding on making the subject of the movie pedestrian safety in Greendale.  One big thing that seemed to be important to the girls was the connection to the Greendale Memorial for the little girl that was hit by a car, and also the connection to their classmates that walk to school and sometimes almost get hit by traffic dropping kids off.  

Which brings us to HOMEWORK:  (Yuck?  No--it's the fun kind!)

The girls' job in the next week/month is to think up movie segments/ideas that could be used to make a compelling movie about pedestrian safety and driver responsibilities in Greendale.  We watched a couple short documentaries last month, so they can get ideas from those (If you want to rewatch them with the girls, they were very good, and inspirational, especially for girls.  They're available on Netflix, and probably from the library on DVD:  Ladies First about a girl born to incredible poverty in India who became the world's number 1 woman archer, and Period.  End of Sentence about a group of women in India who are working to end the stigma about women's periods in Indian culture and also promote women's financial and social independence.)

Some ideas so far:

Find the family of the girl in the memorial and see if they would be willing to be interviewed

Interview police officers about traffic rules

Get data on how often people don't stop at stop signs

What other ideas can the girls come up with?  

That's about all for now!  See you next week!  (Next week is an action week, so meeting from 3:00-5:00!)

Aleks

Girl Scouts: Reminder--Wednesday Planning Meeting!

Hi everyone!

Just one last reminder that it's a planning meeting day Wednesday.  I'll bring the snacks, the girls will bring the ideas!

We'll meet from 3:00-4:30 in Mrs. Perry's room in the 8th grade lower area.  

See you there!

Aleks

Girl Scouts: Reminder--Planning meeting NEXT WEDNESDAY 12/11

Hi everyone!

Just a quick reminder that our planning meeting is next Wednesday (action meeting the following Wednesday).  On the menu:  pick and plan a couple more activities and activity leaders from our MEdia Journey, and go through the options for our movie subjects.  Remember, the page to list your pro's and cons for different topics is here:  https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1FfsMU-2KQhGWHyNOcidTxejFsrKPsmxJpoobXF_66e0/edit?usp=sharing

Also, the Greendale Girl Scout Cookie Party is coming up soon-ish (Current plan is the evening of 1/8, pending room approval.)  So if we have time, we might get into that too, though that's mostly done since we've been doing it so long.  We'll see if the girls have any new ideas or things to either add or remove.

Finally, our original December activity plan was to do a sleepover at the Museum BUT, it turns out that's limited to age 12 and under so that eliminates most of the girls.  So we'll see about coming up with something new on the quick.

Note:  Since it's a planning meeting, we'll wrap at 4:30.  The following week, as an action meeting, we go until 5:00.

See you next week!

Aleks