Last Brownie Meeting of the Year!

Last week was our last Brownie meeting of the year! How have we been in Brownies for one year already? This time next year we will already be bridging to Juniors!

Anyways, we ended our year by having a little friendship feast.  Every girl brought in something that could be mixed together like a trail mix.  It was yummy!

The girls had fun munching it and enjoyed sharing some of their favorite Brownie memories.  

Addie even brought in homemade cinnamon rolls that she made with her grandma as part of her "My Family Story" patch!  They were yummy!

Next we had the girls make some friendship flip flops.  We bought all kinds of colors and the girls tried them on first to make sure they fit.

Picking out the color of flip flops is very important you know.

Next we showed the girls how to tie balloons on them to decorate them up a bit.  

They got pretty into it.  But we stopped once the girls started blowing up the balloons instead of using them to decorate their shoes.

We wanted to make friendship bracelets too but were quickly running out of time so we made these beach balls instead. We sat in a circle and everyone kept passing it around and everyone had to sign it.  That way when we are playing with them this summer, we will remember all our special Brownie friends cuz like the like the song says "a circle is round, it has no end, that's how long I want to be your friend."

Our final picture of the year is everyone modeling their fabulous flip flops.  

Way to to Troop 686!  We had a great year of Brownies!  Can't wait for the adventures that our second year will hold!

Bugs!

At our last Brownie meetings, things got a little creep crawly....

that's because we learned about bugs!

To earn our Bug patch, each girl did a quick research project on a different bug and filled out some information in their entomologist booklet. 

From beetles, to spiders, to grasshoppers to ladybugs, we learned it all!

The girls learned a lot during their research and had fun sharing their facts!

After that, it was time for a craft!  We painted rocks to look like ladybugs!

And in the process, decorated baby food jars like ladybugs as well to become our bug boxes!

WE glued eyes on the rocks!

There were holes cut in the top of the jars so that the bugs could breathe and we even had extra to give the jars that extra look by adding antennae.  

Even Jackie the birthday girl had fun!

The girls were pretty excited about the bug jars and couldn't wait to head outside to find some!

We got busy looking in the grass, mud, under rocks, wherever we thought there might be some bugs!

Kaelin found a worm!

The girls got dirty and didn't mind. Most of them found something!

Painting Patch!

A couple of weeks ago, our Brownie troop decided to get a little messy and work on our painting patch!

We invited our art teacher, Miss Rapp in so she could talk to us about  different kinds of art and show us different paintings by different artists.

Then it was time to get down  to business.  We took paper bags, crumpled them up, and used our fingers to paint like the cavemen did.  They didn't have paintbrushes back then so we couldn't use them either!

We had to get creative and come up with symbols that we might leave on the wall of our cave for our moms!

After that, we did break out the paint and brushes and worked on painting a landscape portrait on a  light switch.  Since it was close to Earth Day, we could put it up as a reminder to turn off the lights when we were done in that room!

These turned out very beautiful (and upside down).

Then it was time for some abstract art. Each girl got a canvas with tape on it.  We painted them to give it the "stained glass" appeal. We let them dry before we peeled off the tape.

Then we had to work on some still life paintings.  This time we used watercolors and we had to paint a classroom object.  This was harder to do than we thought!  We learned that some of the very most popular paintings are still life paintings.

After all that, it was time to work on a group mural to hang at school.  We still have yet to finish it because we ran out of time but it will look awesome when it's done!