The Uniform!

Just wanted to share. This is her new Juliette vest! I know it isn't a big deal, but we're so tickled!

We chose the Lightning Troop Crest - it stands for inspiration and creative power.

Connect Key

Tonight we merged sessions 2 & 3 for convenience. We have 2 Service Unit events coming up and I didn't want to split up the badge work in case we don't have time next week.

We started out with the Promise & Law and talked for a few minutes about last week's session and what we learned about ourselves and our family to earn the Discover Key. I gave her a card that I printed up with the Discover Key on it, but I wont iron on any badges until she earns the whole leadership set for the journey - just for neatness sake.

Session 2 has a team building exercise where you either pass a hoola hoop or a ball back and forth down the line to learn how to problem solve, listen to your teammates and work together. We wrote up a team agreement to help each other and listen to each other. We did the ball activity because my oldest daughter and I are so much taller than my 7 year old that it would not have been fun for any of us. Passing the ball using our ankles was hysterical! I wish I'd had a way to get a video of it. We dropped the ball often and laughed for a good 10 minutes, but we finally figured out a technique to pass it successfully enough (though not really gracefully).

(The blue cast is a trick of the light)

Next, there is an activity where we try to find ways for Campbell in the Brownie Quest story to help out at home. Then we talked about ways that my little Brownie can help out at home...

I moved on from there to figure out ways to show family we care by finding a Healthy-Living Family Activity that we can do together. There are some pretty good looking healthy recipes that we are going to try out this week to satisfy this requirement.

From Session 3: We hung up her Family Star from last week and made a circle map showing our connections from "Me" to Family to the Girl Scout Sisterhood, to the Community then to the World. We talked about who is in each group and ways to show how we care. For the letter writing part, we decided to write to the County Road Dept. about the grass growing up waist high at the bus stop. The wasps like that grass and pester the kids while they wait for the school bus in the morning.


So, now we have learned how to connect as a team, with our family, and our community. And there is our Connect Key!

For our upcoming session 4, we have to have a Take Action Project. We have decided to participate in the food drive at the Service Unit's Fall Festival by bringing canned goods to donate. I will also be taking her to donate gently used clothes and toys to a women's shelter.



**Newsflash! The brownie pin
gets to turn right side up! 

My little brownie has completed 

3 good deeds without being asked!



Fun Patches earned this week:
Pumpkin Patch
Corn Maze
Hay Ride

Until Next time!

Finally Getting the Ball Rolling

It seems like the last almost 2 weeks since we made the decision to Juliette (I made this a verb) has been tied up in admin stuff. I've been waiting on books, materials, and badges to come in the mail and looking up activities and crafts to plan out at least the first couple of months of our brownie year.

Today has been an exciting day for us because our Juliette ID strip came in the mail. Happy Dance! This was the biggest pain to find and an even bigger challenge to get ahold of. The Girl Scout Council of Suffolk County had these little gems. You can call them at 631-543-6622 and ask for the shop. They only charged me $1 apiece and that included shipping.


After and exhausting search, I found a picture of the placement of the Juliette ID strip, but it is not mentioned anywhere in any official printed guide that I have read. I think I have scoured at least 40 council guides.

As you can see this is a vest setup from before the Journeys program, but they really haven't altered the placement of that section. I think I'm going to run with it... The nice recruitment lady that I spoke to said that I am attached to Service Unit 617, so I still need to find out if that is the number I use under the crest - which we haven't chosen yet.

**Update from nice lady at our Council: The correct uniform is to leave the numbers off.

So with the arrival of the leaders guide and Journey materials, we finally had our first meeting tonight. Yay!


First Meeting:

We chose Brownie Quest to start out our year. I like it because it introduces the characters and in the story "the Brownies uncover how Low, the founder of the Girl Scout Movement, discovered, connected, and took action as an early-20th-century leader." Sweet! Her birthday is this month, so that is perfect.

I wasn't going to post my incomplete display board, but I thought, what the heck. It will evolve over time. It would have looked better if I had a full roll of decorative duct tape instead of the last 5 inches left over from my last project. We started out with The Promise and The Law, which neither of us remembered from last year. (That was the first thing to go up on the board.) That awesome Brownie Quest map came with the leader's guide. The badges to check off as we go are up there in pink, and a calendar that already has 2 council events that we are registered for this month.

The first activity we did was have my little Brownie fill out the "All About Me" that I found at the Fashionable Moms blog.

Next we bounced a ball to each other and called out our good qualities. My oldest daughter did this with us. She was in Girl Scouts about 10 years ago in high school, so she couldn't resist. This activity was harder than it sounds because nobody really focuses on their own good qualities - so we all just drew a blank when it was our turn - but we managed to muddle through it with lots of laughter. It's a good thing it wasn't supposed to play out like "hot potato"! We went around 4 times and called it good.

We didn't have a group to do the Girl Scout Law search, so I had printed up a word find for her to search for keywords in the Law. I found it here.

Next we moved on to the Brownie Quest Family Star activity where we figured out which law best applied to our family. We settled on Honest and Fair, then talked about why we felt it applied to us for a few minutes. On each point of the star we wrote in a different family member and listed a special quality or skill that they possessed.

So the Leader's guide tells me that we found/earned the Discover Key tonight - cool. Filling out the Star sheet was supposed to be a take home, but we just did it in the session.

The last thing that we did for tonight's session was to read the first chapter of the Brownie Quest Activity book which introduced the characters and the quest that they are on. The story makes a nice ending to the session. I have to say that my daughter wasn't the only one that got something out of the whole thing. She had some nice things to say to me and my oldest daughter, and I got to tell her what I thought her good qualities are - it was a good night.

**Bonus Round** We had a chance to make our first swap of the year! There was a lady on the Juliette Girl Scout leaders Facebook page that has a daughter doing the 50 States Swap badge. My daughter has been so excited that she couldn't decide what to do. I kinda had to talk her down a bit, but we settled on this.

I have to trim the tag - 'cause that's how I roll, lol. She gets to fill out the envelope in the morning because she is doing friendly letters in her Writing Skills class - win/win!

By the way, she asked me to pass it along, so if anyone is interested in the 50 States Swap, I can hook you up, but I've got Arkansas covered.

Until next time, my Juliette sisters...

New Scout Year as a Juliette

We love Girls Scouts. Let me say that again "We LOVE Girl Scouts". I truly believe in the Girl Scout mission. I can't think of any better way to spend my time than with my daughter helping her to develop confidence, good character traits, and succeed in the skill building activities that are the foundations of the journeys. We enjoyed her 2 years as a Daisy. We loved the leaders and girls in the troop and participating in the activities. I even completed the training so that I could better assist and support the leaders. But I felt that there was something missing.


I considered starting a troop in my small community, but there is really not enough interest in my daughter's age group, and there is no way that I want to try to start a multi-level troop. Besides I'm not that person that needs to be in control of a group. I was quite happy to be that person to lift up the leaders and work in the background. But when you want your daughter to have the full & wonderful experience sometimes you just have to do something else. That being said, we decided to strike out on our own this year as her first year in Brownies and see what we can accomplish as a Juliette.

I am starting this blog to document my daughter's journey as a Juliette.