Friday, November 14, 2008

Late Start

So, my troop has gotten off to a really late start this year—we just had our second meeting last night. It's partly because I've been overwhelmed while starting my business. And partly because I didn't receive my registration forms until late October. Ugh.

What amazes me is that while older girl retention is usually so hard, my girls were anxiously waiting to hear from me about when the meetings would start (and e-mailing and calling me to ask). In fact, we actually had an enthusiastic new girl joining Cadettes. Guess I'm doing something right.

Tonight, we talked about what types of things the girls are interested in doing this year. I've always known I had a creative bunch, and was not all that surprised when they mentioned sewing, cooking (they really enjoyed earning the Creative Cooking IP last year), jewelry-making, and such. But since they're all city kids who've never shown a real interest when I've brought up outdoor sports in the past, I was excited that they have suddenly developed a desire to go canoeing (a personal fave), rock climbing, white-water rafting, and even (gasp) primitive camping. Now, you have to understand that several of these girls had never seen CATERPILLARS before when we went camping a few years ago, so the fact that they're now all gung-ho to do more outdoor stuff is pretty amazing.

I highly recommend trying some of your council's programmed camping weekends, since I'm pretty sure the one we went on last spring is the source of this newfound outdoor interest. The girls really loved having the opportunity to try archery and the low-ropes course, which we couldn't have done without the provided instructors. Also, I think seeing so many enthusiastic high-school and college counselors running the events inspired the girls to reinvest in their Girl Scout experience.

Plus, I have a really awesome group of young ladies!

Thursday, August 28, 2008

The New Girl Scout Leadership Experience

I'm very curious to learn more about the new Girl Scout Leadership Experience, which seems to be a complicated name for "New Age Levels." According to Girl Scouts USA, girls weren't happy with being in a troop with a three-year age range, so they've devised these new levels:

Girl Scout Daisy, Grades K–1
Girl Scout Brownie, Grades 2–3
Girl Scout Junior, Grades 4–5
Girl Scout Cadette, Grades 6–8
Girl Scout Senior, Grades 9–10
Girl Scout Ambassador, Grades 11–12

Now, perhaps my troop is an exception, but for the past two years, we've had a dual-level troop of Juniors and Cadettes without any complaints from the older girls. During the meetings, we participate in group activities as a troop, but separate into age levels for badge-specific activities. The Cadettes definitely like the opportunity to have a little more freedom, but still enjoy interacting with the other girls and acting in a leadership role with them (on occasion). So, while I'm very curious to see how these new age levels work out, in my troop, all it will do is rename my Cadettes as Seniors just as the Juniors are flying up into Cadettes.

And, it will only serve to confuse the non–Girl Scouting public even further, since the only levels they could understand were Brownies and "Girl Scouts" (aka Juniors. You know, "the ones with the green uniforms.") Just wait until we blow their minds with these Ambassadors.

Now, if only my local council will actually give us information about these new age levels, instead of making me glean info from Google searches of other councils' websites. . . .

Thursday, August 21, 2008

The Girls' Guide to Campfire Activities


The Girls' Guide to Campfire Activities just received a nice review from School Library Journal (or, check it out on Barnes & Noble's page, if you have trouble finding it on SLJ's website). Here's an excerpt:

"The songs are silly fun, and the stories will have the campers squealing with frightened delight. An appealing volume that will give readers ideas for good old-fashioned fun."

I also have a couple of interior pages to share with you, so you can see how cute the book turned out.

I can't wait to show the book to my Girl Scouts—we'll be starting up again soon, and I'm eager to see how much they grew up over the summer.