First Troop Meeting Recap

The girls were pretty jazzed up today for our first meeting. Hopefully they came home excited and energized for the upcoming year. He's a concise (believe it or not!) recap:

We learned about Kaper charts where each girl has a chore to do for the meeting. They were fantastic helpers! 

We also introduced our (very ugly...sorry Great Grandma) quilt that will serve as our meeting place for Friendship circles, the business part of our meeting, and singing songs. 

The girls who went to camp quickly caught everyone else up on camp songs. I will apologize in advance if your daughter comes home singing about mullets, scrubbing toilets, and trying to squeeze you like an orange! 

Finally, the girls laid the foundation for our upcoming year. They had several votes and discussions about what they hope to do. Here are the results:

1. They preferred to work on badges as a group and individually rather than follow one of the Girl Scout workbooks
2. They agreed we should celebrate every earned badge with a short ceremony. The scout who earns the badge will give us a short presentation explaining how they earned it before we shower her with songs and hugs. (The Mullet song continues to be the popular choice!) Sarah agreed to give us an overview of her Philanthropist Badge today and did a great job!  
3. We talked about how to manage their money in the upcoming year. Surprisingly enough, they are quite frugal. They wanted to save the bulk of their money to do bigger outings in the months ahead. 
4. They brainstormed for service project ideas and voted on them. The top two were:

• Baking cookies in December and distributing them to nursing home patients.
• Helping to stuff gift bags for an upcoming fund raiser organized by Lily S's parents (more on that very soon!). 
• We talked about adopting a park/planting trees and making blankets for children at the Children's Hospital. They agreed we might be able to work this into our troop meetings rather than plan extra time for them. 

    5. We discussed possible upcoming troop outings. They agreed the Badge O Rama sounded like the best         option. They have the option of earning up to four badges in one day at the Science Center in Cedar             Rapids. Information can be found below or at http://girlscoutstoday.org/event/brownie-badge-o-rama.           This event is $27 per girl which would significantly cut into their troop money. Heather and I are going           to explore options. 

Finally, they brainstormed for other troop specific ideas throughout the school year. They were enthusiastic about all of them but realize we will eventually have to decide on just a couple. Here is their list: 

1. Secret Sister - each scout gets a "secret sister" for the school year. She can leave her girl scout sister little notes, small treasures, or other fun things to let her know someone is thinking about her. They'd find out who their secret sister is at the end of the year.
2. Pizza Night - The Fellers have offered to host!
3. Movie Night - at the Greve's house
4. Sleep over - we could combine with a movie or pizza night
5. Flag Ceremony - through the VFW as part of a troop meeting
6. CPR/First Aid class - could be done as part of a troop meeting
7. Backyard camping
8. An outing to the Putman Museum in the Quad Cities - they frequently have GS outings
9. Saturday morning movie in the winter at Coral Ridge
10. Possible a bigger GS trip (they have several amazing things planned in Chicago like an overnight at the Field Museum where you can sleep by the dinosaurs.

October Meeting Information

Our next meeting will be at Wilson's. As of now, we have enough adults for the trip but we are happy to have anyone else who'd like to join us. The girls can bring a change of clothes if they'd like. We will leave Regina as close to 3:20 as possible and are scheduled to arrive at Wilson's at 3:45. 

Our trip will include apple education, a tractor ride, and apple tasting. If your daughter would like to bring money from home to buy an apple tart, slushie, or doughnut, she may bring up to $5 to spend.  The tour is expected to last one hour and we will likely leave Wilson's around 5pm. We will be back to Regina around 5:15-5:30 and will meet in the FRONT parking lot. I am happy to wait a little longer for parents who normally have their kids in the PM program until 5:30. 

Finally, Heather and I tried (honestly!) to get some good photos today. Our subjects moved FAR too fast for our cameras. :) 

No idea what this was about. We were attempting a group photo. 

Teaching those ever-popular camp songs. Clearly it didn't take long for everyone to get up to full speed!

Finally, snacks! We'll try for healthy ones in the coming months. For this meeting, eating brownies seemed like a good idea. The girls thought it was hilarious when our plastic knife broke. :)