The request was made by MoonshineOverKY.

~Ruby

I believe it was MoonshineOverKy.

Hi Big Red - it was me! Thanks, everyone!

My daughter and my coleader's daughter are doing their best to make their 500 box goal selling cookies this year. I thought I would brag about my coleader's daughter a little because it may be helpful to some other girls on AQ.

My coleader's daughter wrote letters to all of the local firestations and a few businesses asking for donations for our council gift of caring. So far, three firestations have donated and she has a meeting to talk to the owner of a local business about her letter. I have received 2 of the checks so far, from those two alone, she has brought in $240. Not too shabby!

I read something else online that said the number one reason people don't buy girl scout cookies is because they weren't asked. Here's another great way to ask!

Wow, that's awesome business sense of her part. If you don't mind me asking, who is the troop doing the gift of caring for? Thanks for sharing that ideal!

The donations are for the Central NY food bank. Its through our council. our troop didn't pick a seperate one.

Will have to check on our food banks here is town. That's a great way of spreading the love of Girl Scouts through our cookies.

It sure is! Good luck. :)

That is awesome!!! Great idea!!!

We love the Gift of Caring program, since we don't actually have to deal in stock for that :P

Our council gives to the troop to troop program, so donations buy for active military personnel both on shore and off.

So many are choosing to donate this year rather than buy for themselves.

One more week for us!

In years past, our council donated to the troops. Either cause is terrific. :)

Good luck with your last week. Our Cookies come in Tuesday. It's getting exciting. shhhhh..... I love sorting cookies.

I like sorting cookies and don't mind keeping track of everyone's...it's the trying to gamble on not running out but not having too many left at the end that stresses me out.

not running out but not having too many left at the end

That's when the gift of caring comes in handy.

Several years back my Girl Scout troop had the honor of knowing a submariner who was assigned to a boat in Groton, Ct. After talking to him, we realized that submariners did NOT get Girl Scout cookies....at least in his 26 years on a boat.

We took care of that at cookie time. The girls made a huge poster with his picture and his boat on it and explaining the Gift Of Caring and about this special group of servicemen who didn't get cookies.

Well I don't have to tell you the number of boxes that were donated by the end of our cookie booths.

Because I knew this wonderful guy, he showed up at a cookie booth to the surprise of the girls. What a wonderful day that was.

Several cases of cookies made their way to CT. to the boat via my granddaughter, Buttermilk (letterboxing name), a Girl Scout.

A month or so later the troop went to Ct. on a weekend event and we were the guests of the submariner. We were able to be driven around the base, tour the boat and enjoy ice cream and Girl Scout cookies with some of the crew while on the boat.

So the girls gift of caring was so much more and it will be a memory we will all never forget. He also gave us patches for our vests.

So if you are near a submarine base and a boat is in, please don't forget these guys. They deserve the same treatment as the rest.

Hi folks. I got roped into helping my Girl Scout Troop decorate for this year's Father/ Daughter dance. The theme is My Super Hero Dad. I know Cricut makes a super hero cartridge that has Batman and Superman logos, but I can't find one cheap enough for a one time use and my machine is the basic model. I can return it by mid April. Anyone able to help the Girl Scouts?

A friend has asked me to come to her Girls Scout meeting to teach them about letterboxing.
I'd like to know how should I teach them to carve, if at all.

I have 6 carving tools, and lots of carving material, but I'm not sure the parents would be okay with the girls using them.

I've read about using the metal part of a pencil eraser, but wouldn't the images turn out really bad?

Alternatively, they could use foam stamps, but that isn't really how we letterbox.
Any advice on what you did with your troop.

We are going to do the foam with our girls next week. They will play around with making themselves stamps with foam, but we will plant rubber as a troop. We have 16 girls. There is no way I want that many girls armed and dangerous. ;)

I think I will write up instructions for them to take home about letterboxing and carving if they want to try it with their families later. I already know that a handful in our troop have carved rubber before (with me, one on one).

Is this for a Try-It? If so, I would see what the requirements are.

I personally would focus on the clue solving and stamping into the logbook (they can each buy a cheap rubber stamp that represents themself, or have the troop leader provide them), just as a beginning letterboxer would do.

Depending on the age group, it is important not to overload them with too much info at the beginning. Carving lessons can be for another day :)

~J (former Brownie Troop leader way back in the day, and para-educator of elementary school kids for over 18 years)

When I taught my daughters troop, we used craft foam and a pencil to draw the design on. We then used a heavy duty double sided tape to tape it on a jar lid. It uses less time and gives them a quick stamp. I had also made a little log book by cutting paper in half, then folding it half and stapling a few together at the fold. That way they could exchange stamps. They each came up with a trail name too. Most of them were animal based.

The foam stamp is just an intro for them to get the idea. You could do a quick demo of how to carve with carving materials and offer to help any who would be interested outside of the meeting.

I'd do the metal part of a pencil, pinched into a V shape, with erasers so you aren't "wasting" your good stuff.
The images won't be spectacular. But they're kids and it's their first time. They'll definitely be "good enough" to make them happy.

That said, if you're only doing one meeting, you might need to choose an aspect to focus on. Our meetings are typically 90 minutes tops, and there's a limited attention span, too.

We just did foam stickers stuck to Gatorade lids for our girls, but we have nineteen of them. For our first foray, we hid boxes in our library and wrote out clues, but we are going letterboxing for real in April. Our girls were perfectly happy with their foam stamps, and the ones who actually took a shine to boxing have gotten more into it on their own. They all know they *can* carve and that most people do, but only the ones who are actually interested in sticking with it have taken it to that level.

You could suggest doing stamp carving as a make-your-own badge for those who are interested in that side of things.

I have taught them carving and they make their own mini-logbook from index cards. For carving material, they have used actual carving material and knock-off pink erasers (bought in August during back-to-school sales).

They can carve! I was going to teach just our Brownies to carve, but the Daisies & Juniors wanted to try too, so I let them. They amazed me!! We used Speedball nibs & squares of pink stuff - they don't need to be big. I think I had them sketch their ideas on tracing paper.

I think it helped that I didn't have a lot of handles, so only a few were actually carving at a time - made it easier for me to keep an eye on them. We divided them into 3 groups, 5-6 girls per group. While one group was carving, one group was seeking a box we pre-hid, & one group was decrypting a message in code.

Go to the dollar store and buy a pack of pencils and pink erasers. As mention earlier squeeze the pencil top minus the eraser for their carving tool. Have them draw their image on the eraser or tracing paper if it involves letters and then just carve the line which will be a negative stamp image. You'll be amaze how well a pencil nib carve. If they mess up they can get one more try with the other side. We did this when the girls were juniors. They really had fun with it.

Years ago on this very website, I explained the hows, whats, etc. on teaching a letterboxing class to Brownies that my troop did to earn money for trips. The FIRST thing to do is to tell them what Letterboxing is. None of the requirements ask that and we found it difficult to write a letterboxing dictionary not know what topic/badge was all about.

You also have to pay attention to the 'safety wise' rules! I had my carving items there and a couple of leftover 'pink' stuff to show them the carving material. With my supervision, I allowed them to just make a couple of 'cuts'/grooves' to see how it felt.

If you can find the 'message', check it out. It is quite lengthy.

Have fun and good luck.

Great! Thanks for all of the feed back. I have tons of erasers given to me by a letterboxer looking to retire from boxing. I can just bring my tools and material to demonstrate, I was also going to hide boxes for them to find and bring some logbooks that I've made.

I'm going to try to keep it pretty simple, from what I've seen online the Girl Scout book does a pretty good job of explaining it.

I've had mine carve stamps. I give them a little piece of pink stuff and some nibs. I actually carve without the handle (just the nibs in my fingers), so I taught then to do the same. I think it is safer than using a pencil top, and I've never had a parent question me about it.

I honestly think it is more important to teach them the difference between Letterboxing and throwing a butter container full of trash under a shrub.

Someone has a great Web page that they made. Not sure of the link...

One of the required Webelos activities under the new program is to go Geocaching...and Geocaching is specifically noted. Yuck... Granted, I have a few years to worry about this since my oldest is only a Tiger, but I think our den will be seeing if we can get away with planting a hybrid to get through this particular requirement!

I think that BSA is too tied to geocaching.com. Even as a geocacher and scouter myself, I think that they should have made it the "geolocation games" merit badge. That way they could have included all of the geocaching websites, letterboxing, munzees, Pokémon GO and anything else that comes along without changing the name. The requirement could have been to find and log two types of these things and explain what is involved in the others.

Given that, go ahead and make a hybrid. Some reviewers require that you provide exact coordinates to the letterbox. Reviewers in Utah (and other places) allow them to be treated like actual letterboxes; you provide coordinates to the starting location then the seeker follows directions from there. You still need to provide the coordinates of the actual box (for distance checks between caches) but they can be hidden from all but the reviewers.

It would be nice if all reviewers allowed directions, but some interpret their guidelines differently. Ask local geocachers who have hidden hybrids what they suggest. They will have experience with those reviewers and know the allowed boundaries.

Your den won't have to create/hide a geocache for the Webelos Camper requirement. Just go and find one. But the Boy Scout merit badge for geocaching requires the scout to "plan a geohunt for a youth group" and "set up a course with at least four waypoints".