Make Your Vision Real!

Hello everyone!

So we created this new blog for our Girl Scout Senior Journey, GirlTopia. It is about promoting leadership and equality. Here is the link! Make Your Vision Real (click here)

~Troop 60435

Farewell

So, as we say farewell, we hope that our now completed Silver Award will have a lasting impact on you, our global community. We will continue to go on with Girl Scouts, and who knows, we might even earn the Gold Award. We will definitely let you know when we earn our Gold Awards. The only downside to the Gold Award is that we can't work as a group. So we will earn three individual Gold Awards. So, with this lasting memory of a project, we say goodbye (for now).Thank you so much for following our journey through the Silver Award.
~Jillian, Margaret, and Alison

Celebrate!

Hooray! This meeting we found out that we got our silver award! Next week we will officially recieve it and bridge to Seniors. All of that hard work finally paid off!
~Troop 60435

Podcasts

We are filming!

This meeting, we worked on podcasts. Filming, that is. Last meeting, our homework was to write scripts for some podacsts. They are really cool! To see them click on the Podcasts tab or on this link: http://justkiddingjusthurts.blogspot.com/p/our-podcasts.html That is all for now!

~Troop 60435

Paperwork

Today's meeting was completely devoted to finishing up official Silver Award paperwork.  We all finished writing around eight responses discussing what we did for our project, and how we felt we made a difference.  We answered questions such as "How did you reach outside the Girl Scout community?"  To that particular question, we answered... you guys!  All you readers out there, you are the ones who we reached out to outside the Girl Scout community!  We also presented our pro-peace workshop to kids at a local library, further getting our project out to those not in the Girl Scout community.  We are having our leaders sign off on our forms today, and then we are sending them in.  It's all really coming together; once we get our forms in, the next step is: Silver Award!  We're almost there, guys, and we're really excited!




~Troop 60435

Second Presentation

We presented to a group of Daisy Girl Scouts today, and it went very well! Just like at the library, all of the children seemed to really enjoy our presentation. We actually had to stop one activity because the kids were having too much fun and made too much noise! We also sang a lot of Girl Scout songs, seeing as the girls were Daisies, the first level of Girl Scouts. We heard a lot of great vocal chords out there. We reall enjoyed presenting, and hope the kids had as much fun as we did!


~Troop 60435

Presentation Success, and Wrapping up!

So we apologize sincerely about not posting last week; we were on April vacation!  However, we would like to share that our first presentation of our pro-peace workshop was a monumental success!  All of the kids we presented to were engaged in the activities, and seemed to enjoy the games we played.  Hopefully, they were able to take away lessons about how to use and promote peace and kindness in their everyday lives.  With one presentation down, we have one to go!  Next week, we'll present to a younger Girl Scout troop.  At this week's meeting, we started on our Silver Award Final Report forms, writing essay responses about what we did to complete the Silver Award, and what we learned.  We'll keep you posted on next week's presentation results!  Stay tuned!





~Troop 60435

Rehearsal

Today was our last rehearsal before our presentation this Thursday.  We ran through our total presentation twice, and divided up all of the duties that go with our kit, such as who says what when.  We are getting very excited, and rather nervous as well.  We think that we're pretty well set for our presentation, and that we're going to nail it; the only thing that could use some work is the volume of our voices. Some of us need to remember to speak up!  But overall, we're well prepared, and ready to go!  Silver Award, here we come!



~Troop 60435

Advertising

So we spent almost the entire meeting today designing posters to advertise our upcoming presentations in different places.  We wrote in huge bubble print so that all the little kids would be able to read all about our project, and get excited about it.  We are made it very colorful, too.  We finished assembling the kits today, as well.  You know what they say: "What's gonna work?  Teamwork!"  Whenever our girl scout troop works together, great things are accomplished.

~Troop 60435

Shifting towards Presentations

We finally heard back from someone else, and have set up an official presentation date!  We've been working very hard on our kits, but now we're going to shift our focus to getting our presentations ready.  Jillian is working on another podcast, which we hope to share with you all soon.  It seems like we're finally going to start this project rolling!  We're going to be presenting to a group of Daisy Girl Scouts, and we can't wait to teach them all about peace.  Hopefully they will take what they learn and use it in their everyday lives.

~Troop 60435

All The Pieces Are Finally Coming Together!

So we got our first gig lined up today.  That's right folks, our pro-peace workshop is officially heading out on the road!  We are, as you can probably tell, EXTREMELY excited!  It's so great to finally see all of the pieces of the puzzle, which we've been working so long and hard to assemble, start to come together!  We bought all of the materials needed for our physical kits throughout the past week or so, so now we're really ready to roll!  Silver Award, here we come!

~Troop 60435

Getting Gigs

Wow, it seems like so long since we've met!  We took a week off last week... we all need a fiesta once in a while!  This week's entire meeting was spent trying to line up possible places to present our project.  We called two people within the hour-and-a-half meeting to try to schedule times to meet and discuss our program.  We struck out in both areas, though; we got voicemails both times, and dialed a wrong number once.  No gigs lined up yet, but we'll keep on trying!  We also changed our blog look once again this meeting.  We got a couple of constructive criticism comments, telling us that our new background wasn't as memorable as our last one.  We agreed, so we reverted back to our old style... hope you all approve!

~Troop 60435

New Blog Theme

As you probably noticed when you visited our blog, we changed our background!  We felt it was time for a change; we are always mixing things up, trying to keep you on your toes!  We find the blue very fun.  The orange got tiring after a while.  We also changed some of our fonts around, which you wouldn't have noticed unless you looked very closely. So we hope you enjoy our updated blog!  We hope the change of color brightens your day, and makes you feel peaceful.



Our new look!

~Troop 60435

Always Busy!

Wow, are we busy-bodies!  We are always working on new and different things.  Today alone our troop tried to nail down two different presenting opportunities.  That means two emails, lots of planning, and lots of writing scripts.  But that's just us... always running around, working on something!

~ Troop 60435

Our Podcast

Here is our podcast! After Jillian's script and 4 or 5 test runs, it came to this finished project! Enjoy!
~ Troop 60435

Step 6: Develop Your Project

The sixth step in the Silver Award Pyramid is "Develop Your Project." With the development of this blog, we have fulfilled this step.  As we have traveled on this journey, we have developed all three of our projects: the blog, the podcast, and the presentation.  This step included lots of brainstorming... our troop never just does something, we plan it!  This step was the last in our Silver Award, and we're not completely finished with it yet.  We haven't finished the presentation or the podcast, but we will soon!  As this is our last week of posting the Pyramid steps, next week you'll be in for a surprise when you see what we post!

~Troop 60435

Step 5: Pick Your Take Action Project

The fifth step on the Silver Award Pyramid is "Pick your take action project."  Well, you're looking at ours!  This step probably took us the most time out of all our steps.  For the longest time, we couldn't figure out how to verbalize all of our ideas into a simple project that people could relate to.  We actually thought of three different projects: a blog, a podcast, and a pro-peace presentation.  We started out with the blog, but then we thought that we should do all we could to spread our message: so now, we are actively working on all three projects.  The blog is almost done, and we hope that all those who see our presentation will check out our activities and posts, as well!
~Troop 60435

Our ideas!

Updated Pyramid

Breaking news!  Recently, the Girl Scout Silver Award pyramid has been modified.  Remember our first post, about the Pyramid?  We had eight steps in our post.  Well, now the Pyramid only has six steps!  The last two steps, "Make a plan and put it into motion," and "Reflect and celebrate," have gotten the cut.  The first six steps, though, are exactly the same, fortunately!  So, to refresh your memory, the Pyramid now looks like this:

1. Go on a journey.
2. Identify issues you care about.
3. Build your team.
4. Identify issues in your community.
5. Pick your take-action project.
6. Develop your project.

Fewer steps is alright with us!  Although... now we have only two weeks of posting our steps left!
~ Troop 60435

Stop 4: Explore Your Community

The idea behind this step is for each member of your Silver Award team to list the communities they are part of, and what the needs of those communities are.  "Communities are groups of people who have something in common."  By this definition, a community can be almost anything!  Your math class is a community, your family is a community, and your friends group is a community.  For this step, we got started by brainstorming three communities that we are part of.  Alison is part of: Girl Scouts, North Andover Middle School, and her family.  Jillian is part of: synchronized swimming, Girl Scouts, and North Andover Middle School, and Margaret is part of Windrush farm, Girl Scouts, and St. Michael School.  This step is actually a good activity for everyone to do; even if you aren't working on a Silver Award, considering the needs of your community is valuable.  Once you know what your community needs, you can even volunteer to help out!  After all, everyone appreciates a helping hand!

Our Communities!

~Troop 60435

Step 3: Build Your Team

The third step in the Silver Award was "build your team." You can work on your Silver Award in a group of three or four people, or you can work alone. Our troop chose to work as a group. We had all done our bronze award individually, so we wanted to work together this time. So far, it has been an exciting experience!
~Troop 60435