Happy New Year!
Make the new year memorable and fun by adding a
few of the below activities to your troop meeting! Hereıs wishing you and
your girls a great new year of Girl Scout adventures!
Auld Lang
Syne* - Adaptation
*Meaning: Good Old Times
Words: Carol Lee Spages
Let not Girl Scouting be forgot
Or the days of auld lang syne
Hold true the Promise and the Law
And let the trefoil shine.
For auld lang syne, my friends
Girl Scouts and auld lang syne
We'll take a hand in friendship yet
For the sake of auld lang syne.
New Year
Traditions
".
. . The Romans named the first month of the year after Janus, the god of
beginnings and the guardian of doors and entrances. He was always depicted with
two faces, one on the front of his head and one on the back. . . At midnight on
December 31, the Romans imagined Janus looking back at the old year and forward
to the new." Read more about the history of New Years and offer your
girls a few of the various cultural
traditions to bring good luck!
You can s-t-r-e-t-c-h this theme out by Ringing
in the New Year
with cultures who use a different calendar than our own. For example, the Islamic New Year
1429H starts Jan 10; the Chinese Year of the
Rat begins on Feb 7; the Hindu
New Year starts on Apr 6; and the celebration of Rosh Hashana on Sep
29-Oct1, 2008 begins the Jewish Year 5769.
A variety of activities, songs, crafts, and games
to celebrate the new year are listed at: New
Yearıs Fun Guide, New Yearıs Crafts,
and New Year Color Pages.
More ideas are provided below. . .
Time
Capsules
"Time
capsules are a fun way to celebrate the New Year... The first time capsules
were found in temples in Egypt and Babylon. Those ancient time capsules were
filed with small statues and scrolls as was their custom." Ask your girls if theyıd like to make a
time
capsule or write their memories of the year in a time
capsule book. The
International Time Capsule Society estimates that there are over 10,000
time capsules in the world. They offer some tips
on making your own.
Another
idea is to explore history through a reverse
time capsule. Go back in time and find out what was happening on a
particular day in history. Girls could also enter their birth date to check
their Age Gauge.
Some
Girl Scout program links that may be used with this activity include: All in
the Family
try-it, Local Lore
badge, Heritage Hunt IPA or It's About Time IPA.
New Years
Resolution Week
Ready for a Better You? The
focus of New Yearıs
Resolution Week, Jan 1-7, ³is for people to begin the New Year with clearly
defined goals and plans for their accomplishment. The best way to predict your
future is to create it. . ." Girls could complete their own Resolution Week Contract,
print out New Bear
Resolutions, or do the crystal ball
worksheet as they plan for the future. GSUSA suggests that you list Try
Volunteering as a Family as one of your resoluntions this year. Refer to How to Make New Years' Resolutions
and Powerful Written
Goals in 7 Easy Steps.
"Just
as fun as making New Year's resolutions, is seeing how close you came to
keeping them the year before. The Edgerley family of Granville, Illinois has a
simple trick for keeping track of those all-important plans. They pen them on
holiday stationery on New Year's Eve, then tuck them into their Christmas
stockings before they're packed away. When the stockings come out of storage
the next year, the kids pluck out the lists and put them aside until New Year's
Eve, when they are shared out loud and replaced with new ones."
(Family Fun magazine)
Girls
might like to make a Resolution Magnet.
³The whole family can add their resolutions to this reminder pouch and stick it
on the refrigerator where everyone will see it.²
Girl
Scouts Looking Into the Future
Many
Girl Scout programs encourage girls to establish
goals (internet archives) and reach
for their dreams. The steps are similar whether it's choosing a short-term
goal for cookie sales, deciding on how to earn STUDIO 2B awards, or setting
long-range goals for a troop trip. Some of the awards that address goal setting
are:
Review the Leader
to Leader goal setting ideas compiled by GSUSA, as well as the online
booklet entitled, Five Steps to
Goal Setting, provided by GS Mountain Prairie Council in Colorado. Below
are a few additional techniques to help your girls establish goals:
³In
The Wizard of Oz
Dorothy wishes she was somewhere over the rainbow where dreams that you
dream really do come true. Have you ever wanted that? Well, Dorothy gets her wish. And
you can work to make your wishes come trueif you turn them into goals. At the
beginning of any new school or calendar year you think about whatıs ahead. What
goals can you set for yourself in school, lessons, activities, friendships,
family, or your community, for example? Do you want to make five soccer goals
next season? How much money do you need to save to go to your favorite theme
park? What kinds of community service will you do?² Crayola.com explains how .
. .
On a large piece of heavy white paper (posterboard works well), draw a chart with Crayola Rainbow Twistables. Use a straight edge if you like. Watch how the colors change from one to another as you draw. Along the left side of the page, list the areas of your life you want to improve. This part of the chart stays the same during the year. With Crayola Erasable Twistables fill in your goals for each area in the remaining space. As you achieve these goals, you can easily erase them and set higher goals for yourself! Decorate your chart with a rainbow or any really colorful motif. Post your chart in a spot where youıll see it every day. Good luck as you go for YOUR goals!
Making a chart to show their accomplishments as
they work towards long-range goals is a useful visual aid and great
organizational tool as Stevi in Arizona shares:
Something I did and would encourage other leaders to do is to make charts. We did the Bronze as a pilot test. When the girls started the Silver I got poster board and drew a long wide strip for each girl, then divided it into a zillion squares (this is the hardest part). I labeled them so there was space for each section of each IP, the Challenge sections, the Leadership Award, etc. Then I got silver stars, and each time we did something in the troop I'd mark it.
If you do this from the beginning of Cadettes, by
the end of the first year you're probably half way to the Silver. And, for some
reason, looking at that chart helped my girls. Someone was always asking me,
³Why does Kim & Lauren have more stars in the Challenge section than I do?²
And I'd say, ³Oh, they filled out that form about their family that I sent
home.² or ³You missed the last meeting and we did a part of that.² And then some of them would ask me how
to make that up. Now, also be prepared for some not to care at all and some
parents to see this and start asking questions, ³Why doesn't Suzann have a star
here?²
Life Dreams
³LifeDreams
inspired by the award-winning bestseller Dream explores and
celebrates living a life, and the hopes and dreams we have for ourselves and
our world.² As your girls plan for the future, choose some of the LifeDream activities
such as making origami stars, climbing a mountain, or your dream chest.
"It
may not be scientifically proven, but the tastiest method of fortune-telling we
know involves a big bowl of M&M's. Grab a small handful and interpret them
according to the list below. The more of each color, the greater that
particular influence in your life. If you don't like your fortune, eat up and
try again!² (Family Fun magazine)
Girls
can gaze into this Wiggy,
Jiggly Crystal Ball to predict their futures before eating it all up for
their meeting snack and learn how to make Chinese Fortune Cookies.
Making
Paper Fortune Tellers is another fun activity the girls will enjoy. Print out a
ready-made version or
have the girls make
their own.
Older
girls may enjoy building 3-d paper
cut-outs from the Far East designed to bring good luck.
Updated
December 2007