Thinking Day State Swaps

Our service unit held its annual Thinking Day event last month, and this year’s theme was States.  I opened up the fifty states to the Juniors and asked them to come up with their top three choices to turn in.  California was their number one, and it hadn’t been claimed by another troop. When we got down to business after the break, all five of them claimed they didn’t choose California.  I asked which one they picked, and they each named a different state.  Good thing I had taken a picture of their list that they had originally written on the whiteboard.  I showed them the picture but they still looked at me like they didn’t believe it.  I’m not sure what that was all about except maybe their brains rotted out over the break.  I had already submitted California as our choice, so we couldn’t have changed it at that point anyway. 

We earned the Historically Speaking Patch Program for California from Patchwork Designs while working on this – added bonus!  I thought it was a great way to prepare for Thinking Day.  And no, I was not paid by Patchwork Designs to promote their patch program just like Peyton Manning was not paid by Budweiser for his comments after the Super Bowl.  Our Brownies completed their patch program for Pennsylvania as well.   That’s a lot of P’s – Patchwork Designs’ Pennsylvania Patch Program.  Say it 5 times fast.  SQUIRREL

Here’s the trifold board for California.  I thought they did a great job.  The holes were filled in later.

So what’d we do for our swaps (that parents most likely threw away as soon as they got home)?  We had to make 215 of them, so it had to be inexpensive and easy to make.  Well, we made bottle caps with the California flag.  The bottlecaps came in a pack of 48, and after doing the math, it was cheapest to use a 40% Michael’s (no ads in this blog) coupon for each one instead of buying them in bulk on Amazon (no sponsorship here either).  But you have to make “separate trips” in order to use a coupon for each item, so I made 5 different “trips.”  A few of them were walking back to my car, making a “I coulda had a V-8!” gesture (I wasn’t paid by V-8 either – I think it’s nasty), and walking back into the store exclaiming, “I forgot that I needed two of them!” and of course fooling no one.

A bottlecap swap is very easy to make.  I printed off the flag design on Avery #5512 Multi-Use Labels (dang, I need to start charging) and a troop ID as well.  They fit perfectly in the bottlecap, and, making sure you buy them with the holes already punched, loop a safety pin in the hole.  Voilà!  Instant swap – and it’s easy to knock out a ton of these as well.  Here’s the final result:

The Daisies picked Kansas, and since its nickname is The Sunflower State, we dropped a couple of sunflower seeds in a 2×3 bagette bought at A.C. Moore (dangit, another lost sponsor opportunity!), slapped a label on the side, and stuck a safety pin through the top.  I think I saw the idea somewhere on Pinterest (no $$ traded hands).  We got the Daisy parents involved, and they went to work.  I thought it turned out well:

All in all, we had a great Thinking Day!  But one of our Daisies threw up.  I think she got very excited, and after sampling the food at a few booths, it just didn’t sit well.  She was very disappointed that she had to go home, but you know, party foul and all that.