Girl Scout Camp- 1942 Rations Shopping Activity

For the third day of our Girl Scout Time Machine Camp, we focused on 1942, focusing on WWII on the homefront.  We made Victory Gardens, Star Spangled Crowns and for dinner, we shopped at the Victory Market with our Rations stamps.

The girls each received a shopping list, for tacos or taco salad, and circled the items they would like to purchase.  Then, using their ration book (index cards stamped with letters on each card, for example P for Protein) they purchased items within their limits at the store, and we punched their Rations books with a hole punch.

At our store, we simply labeled each of the food sections with a limit, for example, Bread was limit 1 (either choosing taco chips or taco shells) but veggies were unlimited (easy to grow in your Victory Garden), etc.

The shopping list I used is here as a printable if you would like tacos, or could be duplicated with whatever your group is cooking.

Girl Scout Camp Passport Craft

Our Girl Scout Day Camp theme this year was Girl Scout Time Machine. 

To mark our unit's time travel, I prepared passports for each child, and put them on a lanyard (see photo).

I purchased navy blue cardstock (one 12 x 12 sheet made 2 passports), and holographic girl scout trefoil stickers (at Michaels) and holographic letter stickers for the covers.

For the inside, I made a simple template, which I've turned into a printable, here (passport first page printable) .  I cut out the foldable first page, and then several other pages of the same size, folded them together and half and stapled them to our passport covers.

For each day we traveled, I prepared stamps to reflect what we had done for the girls to glue into their passports.  I would leave some of the stamps blank for he girls to draw in their own entries.  I downloaded this template from a site while prepping for camp, but I'm not sure where to give the credit to at this point.  The blank stamp template can be found here .

For the lanyards, I purchased plastic passport covers at Office Depot.  I cut them shorter at the top to fit my passports and reduce the overall size.  On the top, left hand corner, I placed a piece of plastic clear packing tape over the side (not over the corner) and punched a small hole for the lanyard.  (the tape was so it wouldn't tear...and they didn't).  I purchased lanyard hooks from the craft store, as well as green and white plastic lacing. Because I lack any type of braiding or other skills, I simply took three pieces of plastic cording and tied a knot every inch or so for the necklace.

I placed the passports inside, and at the end of each day of camp, passed out the stamps and glue to add to the passports.

The photo, above, shows some of the girls wearing their passports as they did competed in building "tinker toy" marshmellow towers on 1912 day (when tinker toys where invented).

Magnetic Camp Kaper Chart

Each year, I volunteer as a camp counselor at my daughter's Girl Scout Day Camp.  If you've ever been to Girl Scout Camp, you'll be familiar with Kapers, or chores.  Each Girl is assigned a chore every day in camp for upkeep, etc.

Using an idea from Pinterest, I purchased a large oil drip pan from WalMart for $10.00 (in the auto department).  I then purchased paper pockets from a teacher store (although I also saw them later at Dollar Tree).  I purchased letter stickers and used black posterboard to create each of the camp Kapers, and laminated them, and attached magnets to the back.  I similarly put magnets on the back of each pocket.

Since my unit's theme is Girl Scout Time Machine, I made index cards for each girl featuring their name at the top (you can see them sticking out of the pockets) and a sticker of a historical American Girl doll on the card with the year the doll was featured in (we are spending each day of the week focusing on a different time period over the last 100 years.

Each night, I'll switch around the kapers so the kids have something new each day.  To ensure all kids get to represent the unit on Camper Council, I've made 3 kids each of the 4 time periods, and will use the girls with the sticker from the time period being featured that day (for example, Rebecca, 1912 is day 1).