Celebrating Juliette Gordon Low's Birthday

Juliette Gordon Low, the founder of the Girl Scouts of the USA, was born on Halloween.  Our troop is working on our Girl Scout Way badge and one of the requirements is to celebrate Juliette Low's birthday. 

To celebrate we made cake mix cookies, and shared them with the Daisies, Cadettes and Seniors who meet at the same time we do in nearby rooms.  While we were waiting for the cookies to bake, we  learned about Juliette by going through this story.  I also read from the Girls' Guide to Girl Scouting and showed them some pictures.  

The cake mix cookies were good, and I think it is a good recipe for young kids because it can easily be made without a mixer (no worries about little fingers!).

Cake Mix Cookies:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

Ingredients:

1/2 cup vegetable oil

1 box cake mix, any flavor

2 eggs

1 cup mix-ins (chocolate chips, M&Ms, raisins, nuts, etc.

Mix together the eggs and the oil.  Add cake mix, and mix until blended.  Add mix-ins.  Form into 24 balls, place on two cookie sheets.  Bake 9-12 minutes.  

If you are following along, at this time, we have finished three requirements for our Snacks Badge:  we made smoothies, savory snacks and now a sweet snack.  We still have to make an energy snack and we need to talk about the research we did on food additives.  We have also fulfilled three requirements for Girl Scout Way:  We celebrated Juliette Low's birthday, we learned three Girl Scout songs, and we left a place better than we found it (picked up trash on the playground/parking lot).  I'm going to have moms who were Girl Scouts come and talk to the troop about "the good old days" and we are going to do skits about the Girl Scout Law.

At our next meeting, we are going to start our Dancer badge; a dance instructor will be visiting.  We'll get back to the earlier badges when we get time.  I would like to get them finished before Christmas!  We are going to have to push some of them out a little more though because the weather was horrible last night and I only had about half my girls.  

Girl Scout Ways and Snacks

Used with Permission

The first two badges our troop is going to earn are the Brownie Girl Scout Ways badge and the Snacks badge.  The Snacks badge requires making four differnent snacks, so we will spread it out over four different meetings. While not necessarily part of the badge requirements, I'm going to teach the girls to read a recipe and measure ingredients as well as the meaning of some common cooking terms.  Our first activity was to make smoothies.  Here is the recipe we used:

1 ripe bannana
1 cup plain or vanilla yogurt
2 cups frozen strawberries
1/2 cup orange juice
1 teaspoon of honey

Place all ingredients in a blender and blend until frothy

I arranged for us to have one blender per four or five girls, and I put two blenders on a table with a leader supervising both groups at once.

Here is the outline of our meeting:
Coloring sheet with Girl Scout Promise
Opening flag ceremony with Girl Scout Promise and Girl Scout Law
Learn two songs as part of Girl Scout Ways badge:  Make New Friends and Brownie Smile
Girl Scout Ways:  Leave a place better than you found it.  We went outside and picked up trash.  I gave each girl a plastic grocery bag to use as a glove and I held one for the trash they picked up.
Wash up; use restroom if necessary
Make Smoothies and talk about how we could change the recipe.  Drink them.
Closing with friendship circle.

This meeting met one requirement for the Snacks badge and two for Girl Scout Ways.