Scout Tuesday: Use Resources Wisely

My Daisies met last night to earn their “Use Resources Wisely” petal. Last time we met, we had a tour of our local police facility (for the “Respect Authority” petal), which is right down the street from a recycling drop-off. So after the police visit, we strolled down to the recycling center and talked about why we recycle.

Then last night we made the cutest little Egg Carton Ladybugs. This one was my sample:

We used markers instead of paint. The girls made all different color ladybugs. Then we tried out some other creatures. The same concept worked for a turtle (color egg carton green and use a green pompom). The girls also suggested that it could be a mouse (shape the pipe cleaner antennae into semi-circles), caterpillar (add a few more egg cartons, or leave one row attached) or butterfly (pipecleaner wings, maybe?)

Fun, cute, cheap craft. I think the total cost was $10, but if I’d had a well-stocked craft box, I should have had all of these things in it. Because any well-stocked craft box has pipecleaners (I mean, chenille stems), pompoms and googly eyes. At least. I’ll think on that and be back with the full list.

Scout Tuesday…

Last night our Brownies worked on the Art to Wear Try-It. We didn’t do the same t-shirt project as the Daisies did a few weeks ago and it didn’t turn out as well. I printed a design and inserted in each shirt. Then the girls traced that design with puffy paints. It was hard for them to figure out how hard to squeeze. So we had some mishaps and the paint didn’t dry well. Oh, well.

The other project we did last night was a mask. I found a really cute mask made from handprints. We made tracing their hands our opening activity. They cut them out and then we moved to the t-shirts.

Once those were done, we moved back to the hands. I cut out eyeholes and stapled them together to make a mask. The girls folded some paper to make handles. They were adorable. Plus, they made use of my paper scrapbooking supplies, which I’m thrilled to not have just sitting around now that I prefer digiscrapping.

Scout Tuesday…on Thursday…

We didn’t have much going on this week, hence the lack of scout post. My Brownie troop worked on the Senses Try-It, which was fun for everyone. We didn’t go off book or do anything especially creative except for our cookie taste test.

We blindfolded the girls and handed them one of the cookies we’re selling to see if they could guess it by name or flavor/description. First we verified that no one had any allergies – one girl thought she might and her mom wasn’t there to verify, so we erred on the side of caution and gave her the allergen-free cookies – the only one I knew for sure was Trefoils, so that’s what she got.

I gave the new girls what I hoped were easy ones – Thin Mints and Tagalongs. If they didn’t know the names, the flavors were at least strong enough that they could say what kind of cookie it was.

We had fun and hopefully the girls will remember the cookies as we get our sale in full swing. Can’t wait! I love being cookie mom – it’s a load of work, but the fun kind. If that makes any sense at all.

Scout Tuesday

I’m all over Scouting this year. I’m my 5 year old DD’s Daisy leader, my 7 year old DD’s co-leader/cookie mom and my 9 year old son’s assistant (to DH) den leader and pack treasurer. Since I spend every Monday and Tuesday coming up with projects for some type of scout or another, I thought I’d share one of my projects each week. Coincidentally, our meetings are also every Monday and Tuesday (the girls alternate Mondays, the boy is every week). I don’t think I could do it if I couldn’t procrastinate.

This week is our service unit’s cookie kickoff – which means it’s Cookie Time! Girls from all over our county will be at a party to start the cookie selling season. I thought it would be nice for my Daisies to have a troop shirt to wear to the party. The Brownies might actually do a version of this shirt later.

This project can easily be transformed for any use. My 7 year old's preschool did a similar project for Earth Day - they took white shirts and drew circles to represent the Earth in the middle and gave the kids blue and green paint.

Preparation:

I bought a pack of t-shirts in a size I thought would fit all my girls (all three of them). It actually is probably a little small for one of them, but as her mom pointed out, the next size up would be enormous. I picked out plain, old acrylic paints from my craft stash in each of the colors of the Daisy petals. I had to buy a few to fill in, but I had most of them from a project my older DD’s troop did as Daisies.

I also grabbed some old t-shirts for smocks to keep their clothes clean. I used a combo of paper plates and old plastic lids for paint palettes.

Step one: The Design

I printed out the Daisy petals from ScoutingWeb (scroll down a bit). Then I cut out the petals (I figured out that if you only cut out half, you could flip it to do the rest – saved my hands from cutting so many tiny petals – yay for the lazy way!). If my printer wouldn’t freaking jam every time I try to print on cardstock, I would have done this on nice heavy paper.

Then I went into Word and played around with WordArt to get a curve and found a font that was nice and thick, but still fun. I cut out the letters the first time and destroyed the outside. You can certainly trace around each letter, but then you have line them up and I’m lazy. So I reprinted and cut out the insides and made sure the surrounding paper stayed intact. It was much easier to trace the inside of the paper.

Step Two: Preparing the Shirts

I took a sheet of cardstock and put it inside each shirt, so my Sharpie wouldn’t bleed through. I left it there when I was done tracing so it would be ready for the girls to paint later.

Step Three: The Meeting

At our meeting I set up drop cloth on the tables we use. We have a very nice church that allows us to meet, so I don’t want to mess up their space. I put out one color for the first girl, she filled in the right petal (actually some were wrong, but that’s because I got my book out to check if I had all the colors I needed and left it on my table – I’m good like that) and passed her paint on to the next girl. We continued until they were all painted in. Then I let them fill in our troop number with whatever colors they wanted.

This is my DD’s. I think it’s adorable. The messy petals and letters give it a charm that can only be achieved by little fingers.

Final Cost:

I only have three girls, but this is still an inexpensive project – or at any rate, much less than having troop shirts printed somewhere.

I bought:

• A pack of 5 undershirts - $6.67.
• Four packs of 4 sponge brushes - $4.00
• Dropcloth - $3.50
• Paints - $3.00 (I had the rest on hand or mixed them at the meeting – this could cost more if you don’t own any paints)

So for under $20, we had troop t-shirts. And the cost wouldn’t have gone up if we’d had two more girls. So $4/girl. A little more than I like to spend on a regular meeting, but for troop t-shirts, a fair price.