Wednesday

Girl Scouts were interesting last night. We had them “help” us set up our Turkish style tent and then did some show and tell with some cool Mongolian things on loan from Rebecca (thanks Rebecca). This quickly got chaotic as everyone wanted to try on the clothes and hats and boots, they kept taking things and running off, or just running, and SCREAMING. We pulled everyone back in and the Jr’s did a worksheet on symbols while the Brownies did some stretching exercises. Then we played buddy tag, then (mercifully) everyone went home. I’m trying to locate the source of the problem with this group. Having the Brownies and the Juniors together doesn’t work very well, there are behavior issues in both groups and a real problem with not listening. The Juniors don’t work well together, there is a strong clique of older girls, and there is a division in the group by age and maturity. The older girls are hard to motivate and engage, but will stay with a project longer once they are engaged. The younger girls are more willing to try things, but suffer from an extreme lack of focus. They tend to wander off unless things are constantly happening. We need to do more active games and interesting activities, but they are SO bad at following directions I’m afraid someone will get hurt. Maybe we need to do some team building with them before we work further on any badges. I don’t so much want to force them to be friends, just to get to know one another and work more as a team.

Gotta think positive!