Mission: Sisterhood Senior Journey

My Senior Girl Scouts choose to work on the Mission: Sisterhood Senior Journey at our last overnight camp out. There are many sections to this journey, today I will share with you what we did with our girls in the following areas:

• Starting Our Sisterhood
• Know Thyself
• With Friends Like These
• Sisterhood Knows No Boundaries
• Celebrating the Circle of Sisterhood

In this post I will share with you some of the activities we did for each of the areas of this Journey.

Starting Our Sisterhood

What does Sisterhood Mean to You?

Use Poster board and write Sisterhood is…. Girls will need to go up to the paper and write down one line that would complete the sentence. Once done read off the paper as if it were a poem to the rest of the group.

The poem my girls came up with:

Sisterhood is…
a quality of friendship and love
friendship between two girls that makes them sisters
being a person that cares for friends, is trustworthy and can tell anything to.
honesty, Caring, loving, trustworthy and important.
being yourself, caring friendly, fun and friendship.

After writing poem on paper the girls wanted to create a word cloud to see what words really popped out. There are many sites online that create word clouds, the one we used made shapes so the girls created a heart shape with their poem.

Know Thyself

Call Out What Makes Up Your Inner Beauty

Have the girl’s line up, single file, one behind the other. Starting with the girl in front, have each girl turn around and say something nice about the girl behind her, then move to the back of the line. After each girl has had turn mix up and do it one more time. After the last girl has gone twice, ask the girls to remember what the girl said to them: raise your hand if the compliment you received mentioned your outward appearance. With the girls hands still up—ask the girls if they are surprised by the number of ‘superficial’ compliments given to each other—and challenge them to find inner strengths and do it one more time.

With Friends Like These

 What do you value in friendship?

On a large paper or poster board, write the following question: “What do you value most in a friendship?” Give each girl three small pieces of paper and ask her to write a word or phrase on each card that answers the question. Collect all of the cards and tape each value up on the wall. If some values were chosen by more than one girl, they can be taped in a row to show how often they were valued by the group.

Friendship Craft

Make 2 Duct Tape Key chains, keep one for you and give the other to someone else. I used the directions right off the Free Kids Craft website

Utilize the Mission: Sisterhood Leader guide (pg 46)

Now, turn the girls focus on levels of friendship, meaning the depth of closeness and trust they share with each other. Pass out the Friendship scenarios found in leader guide and have them take turns pairing up to role‐play them. The girls should be encouraged to have fun with them. After a few minutes, ‘freeze’ each pair and ask the rest of the girls if they think this friendship is a “further” (it can go further) or a “fizzle” (it is destined to fizzle) ‐ and ask why. No right or wrong ending to these scenarios, but they should always try to resolve the situation as quickly as possible

Sisterhood Knows No Boundaries

Let the girls know that communication comes in many forms. Sometimes it’s not what you say, but how you say it that gets your message across. Ask them if they know what non‐verbal cues and body language means. Play a game to see how accurately the girls can send out and decode messages via body language. Take out the container of moods and tell the girls the rules: No words allowed! When it is your turn, just pick up a slip of paper, read it, and act out the mood while the rest of us guess. Anyone wants to share a time when she misinterpreted a friend’s body language and how it turned out.

Sisterhood Craft

Make a Duct Tape Tote to take with you next time you go out on the town with your friends. There are many patterns online.

Celebrating the Circle of Sisterhood

 Cell Phone (Game of Telephone) 

Have all of the girls sit on the floor or around a table in a circle. Ask them to take out their cell phones. Have each girl write a brief text message on their phone describing an incident. Tell them not to send the message. Have the girls write their message on a slip of paper to have as reference for later. Ask each girl to pass her phone to the right. The next girl will read the message, then erase it and re‐write it in her own words, handing the phone to the next girl. The phone passes around the circle until it returns to the owner. Then have the girls take turns reading the final text they received and the original she wrote at the beginning. Have girls read the original message and what the message turned into ask how this affects their relationships. Ask girls to each come up with one situation best not to text.

Tell girls in future to create a mental checklist and run through before hitting ‘send. Use the 3 R’s: Review, is my text clear? Recipient, Am I sending it to the right person? Ready, Am I sure I want to send this?

Circle the world for sisterhood crafts

We purchased Stepping stone kits so each girl could create a friendship stepping stone. To keep with theme of circle of sisterhood I found round ones. Make cement friendship stone. One thing I have learned over the years, no matter how old the girls get, they enjoy making things, I always try to reinforce what they are learning with some type of craft or activity.

Paper Doll Circles

Have each girl get started by choosing a sheet of paper, we purchased scrapbook paper so variety of colors and styles.

1. Make a square a little bit larger than the size you want for your final circle.
2. Place the paper patterned‐side down.
3. Fold along the diagonal to make a triangle.
4. Fold the triangle in half and in half again to make a smaller triangle.
5. Place the corner where the folds meet at the bottom and trace the triangle’s shape on a piece of plain paper.
6. Draw a girl on the plain paper triangle, making sure the hands, feet, and skirt are right against the edges of the triangle.
7. Transfer the girls pattern to the folded paper.
8. Cut out the girl, being careful to leave hands, feet, and skirt edges against the folds (don’t cut them apart!).
9. Open up and voila! It’s a Circle of sisterhood.