Thinking Day: Greece

The Girl Scout troops in our Service Unit coordinate a huge Thinking Day event every year.  As I understand, individual troops choose a state or country to represent.  One year they choose a state, and the next year they choose a country.  Troops decorate a booth to represent the country or state they have chosen.  During this fundraising event, Girl Scouts, their family members, and friends visit the booths.  They purchase tickets that allow them to do the craft, play the game, or enjoy a snack at each booth they visit. This year will be the first year our troops attend this Service Unit Thinking Day.  Our girls will not create and run a booth this year.  Once they experience the event, they will be able to vote how they are interested in participating next year. 

To celebrate Thinking Day in 2012, our girls had an opportunity to learn about Greece.  Decades ago, the grandmother of one of the girls in our troop immigrated to the United States from her small village in Greece.  The girl's mother agreed to interview the grandmother about her life as a young girl in Greece.  The mother then shared the grandmother's stories with us.  She brought books from the library so the girls could look at pictures while she presented information about Greek architecture and Greek contributions to the modern world.  She introduced the girls to the Greek alphabet and helped them count to ten in Macedonian.  They were also given a brief history of the Olympic Games.

Finding Greece on the globe.

 

Our favorite part of the meeting was when the mother shared some fascinating stories of the grandmother's childhood.  Everything from her home and her chores to her toys and her education was so different from the lives of young girls living in the United States.  The girls were then given the opportunity to try on an outfit the grandmother wore when she was around their age. 




The girls finished up the meeting by making an Olympic torch.  This craft did not cost us a dime because we had the paper remaining from a previous craft.  The girls also worked on an Olympic rings coloring sheet while they enjoyed Greek cookies.  We all had fun learning about life as a young girl in Greece.  Thanks for reading!