Welcome Back Brownies!

Here we are already starting our second year of Brownies! Wow! It's hard to believe we are going into our 4th year of scouting!

We started our first meeting of the year by staring a new Brownie Journey-A World of Girls.  For our first meeting we had fun together playing some games from around the world.  

First up was a game called Banyoka.  It's a game from Africa and it means "snake."  The girls had to be in two teams.  They had to sit with legs out and arms on shoulders and slither to reach a destination.  They had fun doing this and did pretty good at it too.

After that, we played a game called Rescue Mission.  It's not from another country but they had to use teamwork to make it work.  The parachute that they are on is their boat.  Well they had to pretend that a big wave came and knocked all the animals overboard. They had to stay o their "boat" and rescue all the animals.  They couldn't touch the floor or they fell in the water too.  It took lots of teamwork to save those animals but they did it!

Next, we moved outside to play Escargot, which is a French version of hopscotch.  The girls hopped around the numbers as you would in a normal hopscotch game. But after one round, three girls picked a number and then when they went around again, they couldn't hop on that number or they were out.  We played until it was impossible to hop anymore.

The last game we played was called Cencio Mollo, a game from Italy.  The girls stand in a circle and you are supposed to use a scare but we used a stuffed animal.  You had to go up to girls and try to make them laugh out loud.  If you did, they were out. If you couldn't make someone laugh, you moved on to another girl until you got someone to laugh.

It was a fun meeting and we even gained a new Brownie this year....meet Kaylynn!

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!