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I love blogging, and I love girl scouts!  I adored it as a youth growing up, and I adore it now as a leader.

HOWEVER! I want to make sure that this blog is truly addressing our needs as leaders, and offering really useful resources.

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I want to offer a safe, and anonymous place to get out all your questions and frustrations.  I want to know what you WISH you knew when you started this endeavor.  Are there resources you have since discovered that would have been great to be directed to right from the start? Were you grossly unaware of the massive amount of time and dedication leading a troop takes? Were you unprepared for your parent meeting?  Did you AMAZING membership coordinator offer you some great resources, and you'd like to see those made available for others? 

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Also - what would you like to anonymously ask other leaders. Do you need to know how that one upbeat gal manages to *always* have a sunny disposition? Do you wonder how leader Sally manages to do SO many events? Are you hitting a wall with fundraising and trying to figure out how other troops seem to be rollin in the dough? Or are you frustrated with waning numbers, and wondering why more leaders wont volunteer on a service unit or council level?

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Please share!  

Healthy Habits Fun Patch

One of the MANY great things that girl scouts do, is to complete 'fun' patches.  Fun patches are just that - fun.  They technically have no requirements, and you can purchase them through the council, or through a variety of websites - www.snappylogos.com is a go to for us.

When my girls do a fun patch, our troop implements some rules.  This isn't for everyone, but we really like this process.  We choose a patch, and then we choose 3 requirements to go with it.  One requirement must be a hands on activity, one must be education based, and the third can be whatever they wish.

The patch this post is about is the healthy habits fun patch.  My girls are 5 and 6, and this is a great patch to do at this age.  They are becoming more independent in these areas of life, and giving them the knowledge to make healthy decisions will benefit them for a long time to come!

 The three requirements chosen for this one were:

-  General Healthy Habits

-  Making a Healthy Smoothie  

-  Healthy Eating Pledge 

The first thing I did for this badge was that I asked the girls these questions:

1. What is health?
2. What does it mean to be healthy?
3. Why do we want to be healthy? Why is it important?

After that, we took a look at this infographic and talk about being healthy.  We went over the bullets on this infographic, and talked about *why* those things are healthy.

For the second requirement, we did just that - we made a healthy smoothie.  I have a nutra bullet, so this made this task pretty simple - I just brought it along to the meeting.  To make this step more exciting, I selected a variety of items for this step.  I had them all out displayed, and asked the girls to first choose what the healthy options were, then to select, as a group, what we would put in our smoothie.  I didn't want to mess with a *lot* of smoothie, so I just grabbed some dixie cups and gave each girl a small bit.

The items I brought were: 

• Apple
• Banana
• Clementine
• Strawberries
• Carrots
• Girl Scout Cookies
• White Sugar
• Honey
• Processed Juice
• A juiced apple
• Snickers
• Hershey Chocolate

The girls really enjoyed creating something themselves, and this showed them that they can choose a variety of healthy items and make something delicious.

The last part of this meeting was a healthy habit pledge.  After much discussion about healthful habits, the girls were armed with ideas on how to make their own live healthier.  I created this fun pledge sheet, and you can get a printable copy of it by clicking this link.

I had the girls write down *ONE* thing they would like to change in their lives to make them healthier, happier little people.  Our plan is to start our next meeting with this sheet as well, so they can write down what they did to keep their pledge. 

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial! If you do this badge, please tell me about it! How did it go - did you do it the same, or tweak it a little? I love hearing about other's experiences.