Movie Night and Cookie Rally

January 2013

The story behind this odd event that lasted far too long is thus: we had promised the girls a movie and pizza night because they did so well with Nut Sales.  The plan was to have it the Friday before Christmas.  The girls would wear their pajamas, have pizza and watch the American Girl Movie, Chrissa Stands Strong.  This movie is about standing up to bullying and would tie in nicely with the red petal.  They could bring their dolls and have a nice low key event.

Then I got the flu and the movie night was postponed until January.  The day we wanted to do it was the night of the official Girl Scout cookie rally.  We found one being held at a nearby school, so we opened it up to the troop.  Seven girls wanted to go, so we decided we’d go to the rally then come back and have the movie night.  Great.  Wonderful.  I was excited.  The girls were excited. Yup. 

Then they canceled the rally we were going to and tried to get us to go to one that ended way to late at night for our girls.  So we bought the materials from the people doing the rally and decided to hold our own.  Wow.  Not the best idea.  It was this an exhausting night.  3-7:30.  Wow.  Yeah. 

Goal and Badges:

We finally did the last tiny bit for the Red Petal, continue to work on the Financial Leaves, especially “Count it Up” and “Talk it Up”, and get cookie rally patch and movie fun patch.

Official Girl Scout Cookie Rally

Movie Fun Patch.  $1 from Troopmoore on Ebay

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Yup, handwritten again.  Didn’t get my act together until February.

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Gathering Activities

When the girls came in we had on my computer the Girl Scout Cookie Rally Movie that was being played all over the country that night at Rallies and Cookie Sleepovers.  It’s an hour long.  No way our girls could watch the whole thing.  So we watched chunks of it.  I had prewatched it and decided what would be fun. 

It’s at http://www.littlebrowniebakers.com/media/sleepover.html

For the gathering we ushered the girls into the room and let them watch the beginning of the video.  We didn’t make the girls sit quietly or anything.  The 3D part isn’t until later in the video, so no glasses needed.  We got through the intro and the call and repeat part of the video.

Word of warning, my girls showed up ready for a party.  They were wound and wild from minute one.  Some of the quiet activities we had planned either required a lot of maintenance from us or were scrapped for more lively activities.

 

Daisy Circle:

We said the promise together then went around the circle telling what “friend” (doll or stuffed animal) they had brought with them today.   Then we went over the plan for the day.

Cookie Door Hanger

After safely placing their “friends” with their sleeping bags, the girls headed to craft room to do a craft that we got in our rally pack.  I’m not going to post directions because they are all there in the following link along with the printables you need:

http://www.littlebrowniebakers.com/volunteers/garden-of-goals/

Picture from website.  Don't have one left at home.

My girls mostly chose either a hundred packages or “to get the puppy” incentive (125 packages) as sales goal, which was fairly ambitious.  (5/8 did make that goal in the end though.)  We had to help them spell their fun and service goals.  Most of them said field trips or zoo camp for personal goals and feed puppies or something for service goal.  It helped, of course, that we had talked about the troop goals the week before.

Most of the girls liked this activity.  One or two were too wound up to sit and do much.

 

Cookie Safety Bingo

Next we moved to another room to play “Cookie Safety Bingo.”  This was also something we got from the cookie rally packet, but you can print it out yourself from the links below.  You will also need coins, chips, stickers, or stamps for the girls to mark their spots.  We had cookies for prizes.

Instructions:   http://www.littlebrowniebakers.com/media/filebrowser/safety_bingo_activity.pdf

You can print the bingo cards here: (the people who printed ours must have set it for 2 pages per sheet, because ours were smaller, to save paper I guess.  This worked fine.):

http://www.littlebrowniebakers.com/media/filebrowser/bingocards_cookie_safety_1to20.pdf

These are the “posters” which are the different lessons or tid-bits about cookie selling safety (very good for the girls to learn).  Reading one of these is the equivalent of getting a random number in regular bingo.  Ours were much smaller than poster size, but the girls couldn’t read them.  Maybe some of them could have if they had been bigger.  We let the girls take turns picking a card then the leaders would read it out loud: 

http://www.littlebrowniebakers.com/media/filebrowser/safety_bingo_signs_lr.pdf

Girl Scout Cookie Movie with 3D Glasses

Next we moved back into the room where the on-line video was set up.  The rally packet came with 3D glasses so we handed those out.  The 3D portion of the movie is about 40 minutes into the movie. 

Now, to be honest, our girls had a really hard time with the glasses.  They didn’t like keeping them on and at this point they were getting really restless.  My co-leader snuck off the order pizza while they were watching and I fast forwarded to 42 minutes in to a game called “What’s Your Cookie IQ?”  This is a very fun game (that they would have done better on if they could read, so I’ll probably try it again next year.) 

The game has the girls vote for the correct answer by moving their body.  For example if you think it’s the Trefoil put your arms up and if you think it’s the Thinmint put your arms down.  There are a few rounds with them getting faster as it goes through.  The game was a lot of fun.  It was hindered by the instructions being written on the screen so I had to read them.  I was actually pausing the game as it got really fast.  But, really, this is best part of the video.  Very cool.

Dancing

I think we threw in the towel at this point and decided that we were just going to play dancing games until the pizza arrived.  The girls were done with anything resembling focus, so we tossed out anything else we had on the schedule at this point.

Duck, Duck, Cookie:

Lame name, but it was kinda fun.  Basically "Duck, Duck, Goose", but instead of "Goose" they would say a kind of cookie.  Then, if the person was caught they were put into the center and we would "bake" her into that cookie.  So I’d say, “Everyone throw in sugar, everyone crack an egg, everyone cut up butter…. Ok, everyone stir…”  The girls would follow the hand motions. At the end the girl in the center would get "baked" and we would “eat” her.  Make sure to remind the girls to be gentle with the “eating” and that is pretend and to maintain personal space or the girl in the middle may get scared.

Skip Cookie Jar:

Skip Stew is a game my daughter loves where the girls skip in a circle to music.  The music stops and the girl who stops moving last goes into the “stew” in the center of the circle.  We made the stew into a “Cookie Jar.”  My co-leader played so she could be the first one in the stew while I ran the cd player. 

Dance Like Me: 

After Skip Cookie Jar we allowed free dancing.  "Dance Like Me" is a game I made up on the spot when things were starting to go down hill.  I stood up and yelled “Everyone Dance Like Me!”  then a danced a lot of really silly, funny dances until all the girls were giggling and engaged.  Then I yelled, “Everyone Dance like Sarah,” and Sarah (I don’t actually have a Sarah btw) starts dancing silly and everyone does what she does.  Every few minutes I switched girls until everyone in the room had gone at least once.  Might have been the highlight of the evening.

Pizza

Pizza.  No explanation necessary.

Movie

The movie we chose was Chrissa Stands Strong.  This is a movie by American Girl (and a two book series) that has won several awards for the way it deals with bullying.  I really wanted the girls to watch it as part of their “Courageous and Strong Petal.”  I do wish we had done a separate movie night, because their focus wasn’t where I would have liked it to be.  We held this in the basement with sleeping bags and pillows.

http://store.americangirl.com/agshop/html/item/id/150667/uid/918

This was not a light and fun disney movie.  The adults in the room found the bullying uncomfortably realistic.  Actually a lot of the movie is uncomfortable in that way, but it was a beautiful story where a very sweet girl learns to stand up to bullying and get through it without it damaging who she is.  It also shows the girls how to stop being a bully and how easy it is to be pulled into being one of the bullies. 

Even though the movie was intended for 8 year olds, I felt this (6-7) is the age where the girls need to be taught the signs.  The Mean Girl years are getting younger and younger.  In the end, all mygirls said they liked the movie (I was surprised) and it does have a happy ending.

 

Ice Cream

After the movie everyone got to come upstairs again for ice cream.  We held this up as a carrot to be good, with moderate success.  We made an sundae bar where we scooped out vanilla and chocolate ice cream for them and they could then add various sauces, sprinkles, candy and whip cream.  Unsurprisingly, a success.

Last Bit of Party

Until the parents showed up we let the girls dance and play freely.  I started doing the zipper pull craft that we never got to at the table and 3-4 girls came over and wanted to do it too.  (If interested link: http://www.littlebrowniebakers.com/media/filebrowser/zipper_pull_activity.pdf). Those girls made the craft.  The others just danced until their parents showed up to take them home.

I’m not sure what happened after they left, but wine may have been involved.