Brownies, year 1, meeting 3

I love that my scouts want to try and so everything.  I'm the same way, I wish I could do and try everything, but with limited amounts of time and resources, we have to pace ourselves.  During our end of the year planning meeting last year, I felt like the girls wanted to try and do two years worth of programming in a year!

Last week we worked on the My Best Self and Snacks badge, which lead us right into the start of week's badge, My Great Day.  Before we did our sit down activity, we played a little game.  I call it the human blob.  The girls stand in a tight circle, shoulder to shoulder, and put their arms around each other.  Without letting go or breaking the circle, they have to work together to walk across a predetermined patch.  It sounds simple and easy, but it's really quite complicated!  The whole point of the exercise it to teach them about good communication skills and basic leadership concepts. Yes, in scouting we are teaching our girls to be the leaders of tomorrow.  Therefore, this exercise, in essence, allows them to hone in on specific leadership and communication skills.  It took them a while to get the hang of it, but eventually they seemed to get it.  I know we'll do this exercise again in the future as it's such a great learning tool!

After our little game, we sat and asked, what's your routine like?  I used my daily schedule as an example- get up with my daughter, get her on the bus, accomplish a slew of things around the house, errands, filling orders for my Etsy shop (if I had any that day), get my daughter off the bus, help her with homework, then some rest time (hahaa!), cook dinner, clean up from dinner, get my daughter in bed, and then, maybe, some TV or a book before bed.  We all have some sort of a routine, so the girls were asked to put it onto paper.  Even at school they have a routine.  Putting it on paper gave them all a chance to realize that they do have some form of a routine and how important it is in their daily lives.

We're going to be finishing up this badge later on, but to end the meeting, we gave the girls some materials to take home (thank you back to school clearance and coupons that stocked up our troop for pennies!).  Each girl was given two, large pieces of construction paper and a box of crayons.  We explained to them what a family tree was.  They were asked to make a family tree and go at least as far back as their great grandparents.  They will then have to bring this back for our next meeting when we will then work on the badge My Family Story.