Who do you want to be?

As I watch these girls grow and mature my biggest hope and prayer for them is that they are now, and remain, comfortable in their own skin.
That they surround themselves with positive friends.
That they focus on their character more than their looks.
That they will reach out and help others.
That they will find something they love to do in life and make it happen.
That they will embrace their uniqueness and not try to be like everyone else.

It's really hard with all of the social media, magazines and tv shows that put so much emphasis on looks and status. So, in an effort to at least get a discussion going we talked about it today, looked at and compared some images and watched a video or two about girls being self assured of themselves.

You may have seen this but it is a commercial called "Always, Like a Girl" and it is amazing how girls view themselves or at least comments they hear from puberty and beyond.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjJQBjWYDTs

We also watched this short commercial "Verizon Inspire" which makes me really want to check myself on the comments I make to the young girls in my life.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XP3cyRRAfX0&feature=kp

They were surprised at what happened in both of these videos. Likely because there are still in elementary school but I told them to work hard to remain true to who they are and what they want to be even though some people may tell them differently.

We compared a few images. This wasn't about who was more attractive but I asked questions like:
What did we think these women did during the day?
Do they look happy?
Do they look healthy?
Would they be fun to hang out with?

My personal fave

Everyone agreed she looked hungry!

1st woman president of India

Katie, only 19, missionary in Uganda who adopted 13 girls!

The human barbie

They all loved this one. 

After a good talk we headed to the craft table and the girls created signs that was either one word that they wanted to describe them as they got older or what they wanted to do as a career. 

Then, I took photos of them looking happy and confident so they can look back and remember what it was like to be pretty care free and have some dreams at 6-10 years old!

I love all of these photos!

It was time for treats and it happened to be Miss Ella's birthday so we had special cookies and some kool aid.

We tackled one more small task before we had some free time.

They filled in the blanks on a letter to themselves. We talked about how as you get older sometimes you forget what you had dreamed of doing or what was important to you when you were younger. 

So, they can keep this letter with the photo (I'll have them this week) and look back on it once they are in middle school and even high school.  I will keep a copy myself to send them in a couple of years in case they lose it!

Gals with glasses

Time for a some dancing (we learned the Wobble) and exchanging of favorite songs and videos and then the parents were here!

See you next week...

Helping the Homeless

This week we talked about homelessness. How do people become homeless? How can we help them?

The timing was appropriate as I am going on a missions trip with my church to Los Angeles this week to work with the Dream Center. They serve 80,000 people a month and are open 24 hours a day.
We will be hitting the streets in some very rough areas to try to get people into the Dream Center where they will be fed, cleaned, clothed and hopefully enrolled in a long term program to get them off of the streets for good.

We started our discussion by just saying words that you think of when you see a homeless person.

The list was lengthy and included the following:

dirty
hungry
not attractive
sad
scared
bad clothes
lazy
hopeless 
tired

Then we talked about what could have happened to make them homeless and these things came up:

they dropped out of school
they quit their job or got fired
they did drugs or were alcoholics
they broke the law
they were born into it







We discussed how all of those descriptions may be true and they maybe made some bad choices but they were people just like us who just lost their way and maybe they needed someone to give them hope and a chance again.

We watched a youtube video called "make the homeless smile". It is a couple of young guys who give out food, clothes, water and some money to the homeless and shake their hands and give hugs.
It showed the girls how easy it is to make someone smile.

Off to our project which was making up bags to hand out to homeless people on the streets rather than just giving them money.

My boys love doing this and we keep bags in the car all of the time and have one handy if we see someone on the corner asking for help.







The girls came up with this list of things that they thought would be helpful:

Food/water, blanket, pillow, money, shoes, coats, comb, tooth brush/tooth paste, rain poncho.

I had purchased all of these things at the Dollar Tree to make up 5 bags and of course the girls had to make up some cards to add a personal message and some drawings.

As our team activity we broke up into small groups and had to figure out how to make a budget work.
I gave them a list of monthly bills and a monthly salary and the bills went over what they would be bringing in. They needed to decided together how they could cut down or eliminate certain things to make the budget work.

Each team worked separately but they all agreed that eliminating Eating Out and Cable TV would be a good idea. They would settle for Netflix for $10 per month.
They also agreed to sell the car and ride their bike or take the bus. Oh to be 8 years old again and enjoying biking everywhere right?

We were done with all of the hard work.
Now it was time for a snack and hair painting.

I have purple streaks in my hair and they all wanted to have some so I got out the washable red and purple paint I have.

My lovely assistants became stylists.

Lots of fun, great ideas and discussion! These girls make me proud.

No SuperGirls next Friday or the 4th of July. See you on the 11th!

First day of SuperGirls 2014

Our 3rd year of SuperGirls started today!
Although some girls had other camps and classes to attend and some forgot that we were starting today, we still had fun with a small group of five along with three leaders.

Things are a little different this year. Peyton, my super assistant decided to get a real, paying job. I shouldn't have given her such a good reference!
She is working with the Eagan Puppet Wagon so if you go to see a show, make sure to say hello to her.
We also tore down the basement fort and we are not going to do so many crafts. We will still make a few things but not so many time consuming glue and glitter filled projects.

Our new leaders are Lauren, Holly and Emme. Lauren was a SuperGirl last year, Emme is Mia's sister and Holly is Emme's friend. I feel very lucky to have their help this year.

After a bit of catch up and talking about the good and not so good parts of the school year we focused on our theme for the whole summer in SuperGirls.....

We will be talking about and implementing respect at all of our gatherings. This is a theme in my home with my boys also this summer. 

We talked about all of the ways we can be respectful. By listening, not talking in a rude tone, using eye contact, having manners, taking care of people's things, following through on your commitments, cleaning up after yourself, and the list goes on. We took a look at this chart to help us.

We did a little mini game and came up with an acronym for their name of positive words to describe them. Words like amazing, easy going, nice, adorable, mischievous, silly, elegant and laughs a lot made our list. 

Then we needed to make our RESPECT poster which will be hung up at each gathering. Everyone added their thought and their artistry. We left some room for those girls who weren't there to add to it.

Emme photobombing. She's going to fit right in.

After our poster making, we headed outside for a snack and more talking and laughing.

Our newest member Lily! She has waited 2 years to be in the group.

I had a couple of team building games planned out but with the small group we decided to do some dancing instead. The older girls started the dancing and everyone joined in.

And then it was time to go! We may have to play with the end time a bit. Noon seems a little long but 11:30am seemed a little short. I'll see what our plans are for next week and if it seems we'll go long, we'll make it 11:45am.

A great start to our summer. We'll meet next week and then have two weeks off.

Hope to see everyone next week!

Valentine's Day

The day was filled with love and laughter!

I am going to keep this post short since we did not have a real structured time.

Our activities included:

1) Sharing with the group all of the hearts everyone found. Good job!

2) Making Valentine cards and assembling gift bags for the kids at Dakota Woodlands. Really good team work on this!

3) Improv skits in groups having to use the 4 words you were given like, love, yuck, sick, donkey,  fell...

4) Cookie decorating with a total overload of frosting.

5) Cleaning up, playing in the fort and checking out our new cat.

A monkey on the ankle

A couple of monkeys on the wrist

Funny skit

Who can get the most frosting on their face?

A thank you card from Dakota Woodlands

We will try for another SuperGirls gathering in April or May and then we'll start up our summer Fridays in June!