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...