Hello March!

O wind a-blowing all day long,
O wind, that sings so loud a song!

- from "The Wind"
by Robert Lewis Stevenson

Monthly Celebrations
American Red Cross Month
Music in Our Schools Month
National Women's History Month
Foot Health Month
National Peanut Month
Poetry Month
Youth Art Month

Weekly Celebrations
First Full Week: Return Borrowed Books Week
First Full Week: Newspaper Education Week
First Week: Teen Tech Week
Second Week: Girl Scout Week
Third Week: World Fold Tales and Fables Week
Third Week: Spring Break
Fourth Week: National Week of the Ocean

Daily Celebrations
March 01: Peace Corps Day
March 02: Read Across America Day
March 03: I Want You to Be Happy Day
March 04: Call to Action Day (March Forth!)
March 07: Iditarod Begins
March 08: Girl Scout Sunday
March 08: International Women's Day
March 08: Daylight Savings Day
March 09: Holi - Hindu festival of Colors
March 10: Mario Day (MAR10)
March 10: International Day of Awesomeness
March 11: Registered Dietitian and Nutritionist Day
March 12: Girl Scout Birthday
March 12: National Plant a Flower Day
March 13: National Good Samaritan Day
March 14: PI Day
March 15: Ides of March
March 16: Goddard Day - 1926 Robert Goddard launch the 1st success liquid-fueled rocket
March 17: St. Patrick's Day
March 19: Ostara
March 19: Absolutely Incredible Kid Day (Campfire Kids)
March 20: Snowman Burning Day
March 21: Spring Fairy Fun Day
March 22: World Water Day
March 23: World Meteorological Day
March 25: Vaffeldagen (Waffle Day) in Sweden
March 26: Make Up Your Own Holiday
March 28: Earth Hour
March 30: Doctors' Day

Girl Scout Fun Ideas - February Edition

I've worked with Girl Scouts for nearly two decades (it really doesn't feel like that long!) and one of the things I loved most about having a Girl Scout troop was our holiday and seasonal activities. The ideas I share in these monthly posts are from a New Leader Booklet that was shared with me when I started leading Girl Scout troops in the early 2000s. Since our council (and as far as I know any other) no longer shares this information, I want to make it accessible on the internet. Enjoy!

Keep working on Thinking Day activities. Have an imaginary trip around the world and play songs or games or have food from different parts of the world. Make Thinking Day paper chains  to count down to Thinking Day. On each chain, write one good deed or nice thing they should do for someone.

Celebrate Lunar New Year. Do some origami or calligraphy. Sample foods, learn about customs, try chopsticks, etc.

Have a "loud singing" contest - especially good for a rainy day when everyone feels cooped up.

Spend time going over personal safety - calling 911. fires, strangers, how not to get lost (and what to do if it happens), etc. There are patch programs that help with teaching these topics - if your council doesn't have one, check out other councils' owns.

Celebrate Valentine's Day. There are lots of crafts, foods, etc. to try. Have the girls bring Valentines for each other, or have them write positive notes about each girl in the troop to exchange. Or, have a Valentine, cookie, sticker, or other exchange.

Discuss that our founder, Juliette Gordon Lowe, was def. Learn the alphabet in sign language. Learn how to say your name. See if you can have a person visit who knows sign language. Perhaps they could teach you to sign a favorite song or the Girl Scout Promise.

In February, The French people have a lemon festival in the town of Menton. A parade of lemon-filled wagons in the lemon parade travels through streets lined with lemon, orange, grapefruit, and tangerine decorations. Make a lemon meringue pie, lemonade, or a lemon tart to celebrate. To learn more about the festival, you can visit this link.

Hold a coat or blanket drive in your community to benefit a homeless shelter.

Learn how to jump rope. Play Double Dutch.

Attending the Thinking Day event is a must! This a great chance for the girls to participate and know that they are part of a larger organization thank just their own troop.

Celebrate Lincoln's birthday with building log cabins or making old-fashioned vegetable or stone soup. Celebrate Washington's birthday - anything with cherries seems to work. Or, get a copy of the children's book George Washington's Breakfast and make food from the book. Or, talk about the presidents in general. How many have their been? What are the requirements for becoming president? Make silhouettes of the girls' heads by shining a light past their profile and tracing onto a piece of black construction paper. Mount on a circular piece of paper. How do the girls think they would look on a coin?

Much of the world celebrates Shrove Tuesday or Carnival, or Fat Tuesday. In South America, there are parades, tricks and revelry, masks and games, and feasting. Cut mask shapes out of fun foam and decorate, make parade floats out of shoe boxes, share Mardi Gras beads, and feast on Cajun food or a king's cake.

First Aid - work on your First Aid badge (each age level has their own) - teach some simple First Aid skills such as what to do for a nose bleed or a knocked out tooth. 

Sew dunk bags. These could be made out of open weave dish rags or have duty lace curtain material or any kind of heavy (not tulle) netting material you can find. Sew two pieces of fabric together around three sides. Sew a casing around the top, and insert a drawstring. Practice proper dish washing techniques for camping.

Play the feelings game. Start the discussion by relating an incident where someone's feelings were hurt because of something someone said. Ask the girls to name some feelings. As they name them, write them down on strips of paper (e.g. happy, sad, scared, proud, mad.) Have the girls take turns taking a strip and acting it out without words or sounds. Discuss how you can tell how a person feels by looking at her.

Hello February!

The February sunshine steeps your boughs,
And tints the buds and swells the leaves within.

- from "Twenty Second of February"
by William Cullen Bryant

Monthly Celebrations
African American History Month
American Heart Month
National Children's Dental Health Month
Love the Bus Month
Library Lovers Month
Youth Leadership Month

Weekly Celebrations
First Week: National New Idea Week
Third Week: Random Acts of Kindness Week

Daily Celebrations
February 01: World Read Aloud Day
February 01: Imbolc
February 02: Groundhog Day
February 02: Candlemas
February 03: Elmo's Birthday
February 04: Charles Lindberg - 1902
February 04: Homemade Soup Day
February 04: Thank a Mailman Day
February 05: National Girls and Women in Sports Day
February 05: National Weatherman's Day
February 06: Ronald Reagan - 1911
February 06: Waitangi Day - New Zealand made part of the British Empire 1840
February 07: Laura Ingalls Wilder -1867
February 07: Charles Dickens - 1812
February 08: Boy Scout Anniversary
February 08: Jules Verne - 1828
February 09: Tu B'Shevat (Jewish festival celebrating New Year for trees)
February 09: National Weather Bureau Established 1870
February 10: Umbrella Day
February 11: Make a Friend Day
February 11: Inventor's Day
February 11: Thomas Edison 1847
February 12: Abraham Lincoln 1809
February 13: Library Lover's Day
February 14: Ferris Wheel Day - 1859
February 14: Read to Your Child Day
February 14: Valentine's Day
February 15: Galileo Galilei - 1564
February 15: National Gumdrop Day
February 17: President's Day
February 17: Random Acts of Kindness Day
February 19: Nicolaus Copernicus - 1473
February 20: Love Your Pet Day
February 22: George Washington - 1732
February 22: World Thinking Day
February 24: Wilheim Carl Grimm - 1786
February 25: Mardi Gras
February 25: International Pancake Day
February 25: Pierre Auguste Renior - 1841
February 26: Tell a Fairy Tale Day
February 27: International Polar Bear Day
February 27: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - 1807
February 28: National Tooth Fairy Day
February 29: Leap Day

Martin Luther King Jr Day of Service

We enjoyed an all day program at the Club this week for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. I love all day program days because I feel like it really gives us a chance to bring in some cool extras that we don't get to provide for the everyday after school program.

This year we celebrated with having Miss Huckleberry read with the kids to emphasize the importance of learning and education and to also share her experience of becoming Miss Huckleberry (a local contest that is a step toward Miss Oklahoma).

Adam from the Cherokee Area Council of Boy Scouts visited (side note: if your Club isn't having visits your local Scouting groups, you're missing a great opportunity) and taught our kids about American symbols, flag etiquette, and basic citizenship. I have to give a shout out to Adam - he always has come and provided great programming for our long days and he's a true Boy Scout - he always leaves our place better than he found it.

I wanted to be sure that we also talked about the famous I Have a Dream speech made by Dr. King and what it actually meant. We started out by learning who Dr. King was and I pulled in one of my favorite video presenters - Kid President.

We then watched a short video of the actual speech and we talked about what our dreams are - our dreams for our own lives, our community, and our world. We prepared the space for this discussion by cutting out three large clouds from butcher paper and labeling each one My Life, My Community, and My World. I had the kids each write at least one dream for each category on sticky notes and then put their sticky notes on the appropriate cloud. Then we shared some of the dreams we all had.

After the I Have a Dream activity, there was a bit of time left in the rotation period so we played the Human Knot game as a lesson in cooperation. The kids loved it!

Of course, the day would not be complete without a service project or two. We had some great volunteers from our local Junior College come in and work on creating hundreds of boxes for our annual Love the Club chocolate covered strawberry fundraiser. Some of our kids couldn't resist jumping in and helping with the boxes too!

Another great project we did was a Valentine for a Vet. We made valentine cards to send to a very special vet (but I'll post about that later this week). Each one of our kiddos made a valentine card to share.

All in all, it was a great day - full of community building, service, and learning disguised as fun (my favorite kind!).

Girl Scout Fun Ideas - January Edition

I've worked with Girl Scouts for nearly two decades (it really doesn't feel like that long!) and one of the things I loved most about having a Girl Scout troop was our holiday and seasonal activities. The ideas I share in these monthly posts are from a New Leader Booklet that was shared with me when I started leading Girl Scout troops in the early 2000s. Since our council (and as far as I know any other) no longer shares this information, I want to make it accessible on the internet. Enjoy!

Start thinking about Thinking Day. Check out the GSUSA Thinking Day page to learn more about the special Thinking Day Award your girls can earn. Find out about your association's event and if your troop will be representing a country it's best to pick this as early as possible. You can often take several meetings really concentrating on your special country.

In the early days of Girl Scout cookie sales, troops make their own cookies to sell. Imagine how much work it would be if we not only had to sell cookies, but bake them too! Try the recipe for the original Girl Scout cookie.

Celebrate the New Year with noisemakers. You can usually find inexpensive party "kits" at dollar stores. You can also make your own noisemakers very inexpensively. Here's a short video to give you some ideas.

Paper-Bag Dramatics: Split the troop into groups and provide each group with a paper bag of props to use in a play. Items might include: a flashlight, a spoon, gloves, a cowboy hat, a vegetable peeler, etc. Give groups a chance to plan before performing for the rest of the troop OR perform puppet shows or drama plays with their own ideas, or provide some well-known children's stories to get them started. 

Make puppets for a puppet show. There are oodles of ideas on Pintrest to spark your imagination. If you would like some great printable choices that your girls can color and assemble, one of my favorite sites is Red Ted Art where she has a variety of different puppets.

Commemorate Martin Luther King Day. Talk about drams, hopes, and wishes. Talk about having convictions. You might want to complete a council's own patch program. You can find a Civil Rights History patch from Southern Alabama Council or the requirements for an older Council's Own from Girl Scouts of the Colonial Coast (this patch does not seem to be available on their website - you can purchase substitute patches from Advantage Emblem).

Spa Night. Who says Girl Scouts has to be all about roughing it? Pamper yourself with an evening of beauty treatments. Make homemade bath salts, do facials, and mani/pedis. 

Hello January!

Ring out the old, ring in the new,

ring, happy bells, across the snow;

The year is going, let him go;

Ring out the false, ring in the true.
- from "In Memoriam"
by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Monthly Celebrations
National Hobby Month
Read a New Book Month
National Blood Donors Month
National Soup Month

Weekly Celebrations
First Week: Spontaneous Celebrations Week
Second Week: Letter Writing Week
Last Week: International Forgiveness Week

Daily Celebrations
January 01: New Year's Day
January 01: Paul Revere (1735)
January 01: Betsy Ross (1752)
January 01: Emancipation Proclamation Anniversary
January 02: Good Luck Day
January 03: J.R.R. Tolkien Day
January 04: Trivia Day
January 04: Jacob Grimm (1785)
January 05: George Washington Carver (d.1943)
January 05: National Bird Day
January 06: Epiphany Day
January 07: International Programmer's Day
January 10: Peculiar People Day
January 11: Amelia Earhart is the first female pilot to cross the Pacific Ocean
January 12: Jack London (1876)
January 15: Martin Luther King Jr (1929)
January 16: Appreciate a Dragon Day
January 17: Benjamin Franklin (1706)
January 17: Kid Inventors Day
January 18: Peter Mark Roget (1779) - Thesaurus Day
January 18: A.A. Milne (1882) - Winnie the Pooh Day
January 19: Edgar Allen Poe (1809)
January 20: Penguin Awareness Day
January 21: Squirrel Appreciation Day
January 22: School Nurse Day
January 23: John Hancock (1737) - National Handwriting Day
January 24: National Complement Day
January 25: Chinese New Year
January 25: Opposite Day
January 26: Australia Day
January 27: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756)
January 27: Lewis Carroll
January 28: Data Privacy Day