Girls Camp Tradition

The Fish Hook Charm Necklace...

In this area there is tradition of making each girl a "Fish Hook Charm Necklace" their first year of Girls Camp.   Then throughout the years the girls collect charms and add them to their necklaces.  There is usually a camp theme charm, a level charm, and then charms for accomplishments like a getting a bullseye at the archery or rifle range, doing the polar bear swim, caper awards, and not whining about things :)

I love it!

One of the ladies up at camp with me this year had hers from when she was a girl!  It was so neat to see what a lasting and fun tradition these necklaces are.

The great thing is they are super easy and pretty inexpensive to make.

You need 2 packages of Mustad brass snap swivel hooks (ours are size 10) .  These open, kind of like a safety pin, and you just connect them all together (end to end).  Whala! you have a charm necklace.
Since they open like that it is super easy to attach the charms!

Here are some of the charms Susie got her first year at camp:
a Binkie for not whining,
bandaids for certification,
a plate for doing capers,
a peacock for their ward theme,
a beehive for her age group, etc.

Here are a few that we made for this year ...

And then a few of Susie's favorites this year:
a polar bear for the polar bear swim,
a shoe because she finished the hike with a twisted ankle,
a flag because she was a 2 level and they were in charge of all the flag ceremonies.

The options for charms are endless - there are lots and lots of sites selling them and lots of different ideas for making them yourself!

Girls Camp Crafts

When I was first called as a Stake Girls Camp Assistant Director I scoured pinterest and blogs for ideas ... it has been years since I went to girls camp!    I knew then that I wanted to try to post the ideas that worked for us for all the other camp leaders out there!

We had a craft director, so I didn't have to do any of the work on these.   She and her group of YCL's (youth camp leaders) decided on the crafts, bought supplies, prepped them, and taught them to the girls at camp.  They did an awesome job!

Here is our craft shack - where all the crafting at camp took place!

[we even got our bishopric in on a little crafting ;)]

...and here are the crafts!

 [there is a great tutorial for knitting jersey here ]

These three things were very popular, girls were wearing them all week - they caught on to it quickly and made several!  I think I will use this craft at our fall Girl Scout Camp.

These were made out of laminate samples, paper scraps and embellishments (initials, camp logo, flowers, etc.) and stuck together with modpodged 

 [Both of these ideas were originally found here]

Both of these were also very fun.  

I liked that our theme could be incorporated in the necklace using the word aim or creating an arrow.  It took a bit of patience, but lots of the girls were able to make some really cute ones - it was helpful to have lots of examples, and paper for the girls to sketch out their word or design before they started actually bending the wire.

Girl Scout Silver Project

{The Girl Scout Silver Award is the highest award a Girl Scout Cadette can earn—they earn the award by completing a 50 hour project dedicated to improving the community in a lasting way.}

This journey started one year ago with a visit to a place called WIND youth services.  WIND is shelter serving youth experiencing homelessness who need safety from the streets and access to resources to help them move from crisis to healthy functioning and independence.  First, we met with the outreach coordinator, Arlene, to tour the center and brainstorm with her about potential projects that the H and S would be able to do for their Girl Scout Silver Award.  One of the things Arlene suggested was a scrapbook that would enable her to show potential donors in the community what the program was accomplishing, so they could continue to get the funding necessary to keep the shelter open.  Of course we knew we had to do this - we LOVE scrapbooking!  

The next thing the girls did was a write an email to Becky Higgins to ask if she would be willing to donate one of her Project Life Album Kits.  The answer was "YES"!  So exciting!  
After the photos were gathered and printed the girls spend several afternoons compiling 3 years worth of events into the album.  Super simple!  To help the girls tell the story,  someone from WIND came to our house to look at the pictures and tell us about them so that the girls could add some journaling along with the photos.

Organizing the photos

Putting them into the Project Life Album

Some of the pages...

Here S and H are presenting the scrapbook to Fonda the shelter's project manager.

The second part of our project was creating a toddler play area.   Since many of the youth WIND serves have babies of their own, they needed an enclosed space for those children to play while the teens use the shelter's services to shower,  search for jobs, access health care, etc.

The girls raised the money for this through the Mother Daughter Bingo event we put on in December.

After several shopping trips, work days, and some help from their dads -  here is what they were able to create ...

As a mom and a leader I am so proud of all of the hard work these two girls put into this project!  It truly is something that will live on and help many people in our community for years to come!

Night Owl Adventure

Saturday I planned an adventure so that my Girl Scouts could earn the 'Night Owl Badge'.  

Susie has been wanting this ever since she saw the cute badge ;)

First we headed to the Discovery Science Center for a tour and planetarium tour.  I have never been there and it was great.  We had an awesome lady doing the star show and she included a cool video of what life is like on the International Space Station.  You can find it and other cool space stuff here.

Our tag along Sam pretending to be a rocket ship!

Afterwards we went to dinner and then headed back to my house to do some of the other requirements, make some cute owls, play games, eat snacks and hot tub.  

The plan was to have some fun until it was time to head over to Walmart to see what it looks like during the night shift.  To make that a little more fun the girls went on a scavenger hunt, finding things like ... a closed lane sign, a pallet, workers stocking shelves, a wet floor sign, etc.

We all had a very fun day + night!

Reading is Fun!

As a part of the Girl Scout 'Journeys' program our troop has learned the power of one - the power of a team - the power of the community! The final project is a service project that the girls plan that will benefit their community. Our girls decided to collect new and gently used books to donate to a local elementary school so that all kids could have access to their own books. Yesterday the girls had fun painting tote bags to put the books into! What a great experience!