We took the first week of July off because it was the week before our community day camp, and the scout house was undergoing some much needed repairs. We met the second week, but we still only had two girls, so we sat, we had a snack, and we reviewed the Girl Scout law a little bit and talked about how all the lines really do seem to work together, and we talked a little bit about the new Journey we were about to start, “Between the Earth and Sky,” and I gave them their books before letting them play outside.
The third week we ended up taking off as well because we knew one of our girls was going to be out of town, and when you only have three, that’s a pretty big deal. We met last week, though, with all three girls.
We aren’t taking the time to read the journey together because I’m trying to fit this journey in before school starts, so I made sure our third girl got her book and that they all understood they need to read it it at home. Then I explained that this journey was about plants, but it was also about people, so we will be learning about how plants work together, but also how people work together.
We started by talking about the parts of a plant. I started with page 9 of the journey book, the picture of the Amazing Daisy the girls are supposed to label. I had the girls name as many parts as they could and explain what they were for, what they did. Together, the girls did a pretty good job, and I just explained with a little more detail. (My daughter had a lot of the answers from one episode of The Magic School Bus, love that show.)
Then we talked about the parts of plants we eat. I had meant to bring a snack tray with the various parts represented, but, already condensing a previously condensed journey plan, I skipped that and we just named as many as we could think of for each. They really got a kick out of that.
For the people part of the lesson, we talked about feelings. We talked about how we can tell what another person might be feeling, what we can or should do if we think they’re upset, and what we should do if we ever get sad or angry.
Finally, we made “feelings monsters.” We decided that if you don’t talk about your feelings and try to ignore them, they can get harder and harder to control and become little monsters that take over, so we should always try to talk about how we feel and why with the person who upset us, if we can, and if they don’t care (or if they’re a bully who wants us to be upset), we should find a parent or a family member or a friend to talk to.
(I got the idea from the blog eighteen25)
To make the little monsters, I gathered:
multiple yarn options
colorful pipe cleaners (or chenille stems if you prefer)
colorful beads
googly eyes
empty wooden spools
a hot glue gun
I left my small cardboard pieces at home, and I recommend you do not forget
cardboard pieces approximately 4” x 2”
The girls picked out two different colors of yarn and, since I didn’t have my cardboard pieces, I had them wrap it around their drinking cups until it was nice and thick. I didn’t have a set length of yarn to wrap, just kind of eyeballed it.
Then I clipped the yarn off, slid it from the cup, slipped a piece of yarn through the middle and tied it off so I had a nice loop of yarn, then clipped the opposite side of the loop from the tie off. After that, I kind of shook it out a bit, trying to make the tie-off a sort of horizontal bar across the middle, with the top flopping over it evenly. Then I hot glued that to a wooden spool and flipped it over so the bottom was the new top and shook it out, setting it down with the spool as a base.
Then the girls choose a pipe cleaner and took their second color and wrapped it around a smaller cup, and we did the whole thing again, only this time we laid the pipe cleaner on the yarn so it got tied into the bundle. This bundle was then glued on top of the other.
Then the girls chose two beads which were curled securely on the ends of the piper cleaners before they shaped the pipe cleaners how they wanted them.
I had intended to put the googly eyes in the yarn, with the spool only being a stand to make the monster sit upright on its own, but all three girls wanted the eyes put on the spool itself so that all the yarn looks like crazy hair. They got to choose between one and five (because one of the girls needed a limit before she would say how many she wanted) and I glued them on.
This craft was a big hit.
my daughter’s finished product
We don’t have the patches in yet, but this lesson earned them the blue bucket award in “Between the Earth and Sky.”
Scouting Out Adventure 