Balcony Girls: Lesson Two, Pumpkin Crafts and Confidence

I'm really loving leading this group of sixth grade girls through the Balcony Girls material.  Yesterday was our second meeting of the year and, since it was a week before Halloween, I used the fourth lesson which included an adorable craft you make with pumpkins.

Thankfully, this meeting did not involve a "life lesson" for the leader. 

The topic was Confidence and from the look on the faces of the girls as we sat around the dining room table, it hit home.  I loved the visual of crumpling up a crisp twenty dollar bill and asking the girls what the value of the bill was now that it was all crumpled up and messy.  The examples of gossip, rumors and friends breaking your trust as a way you might get "messy"  really struck a cord with each girl. 

Making our Pumpkin Flower Pots and getting all "messy" on the deck and digging out the guts of the pumpkin so that we could put a little "beauty" back into it was a great visual.  My back deck was a mess of pumpkin seeds and potting soil at the end, but it matched my previously clean kitchen with the remnants of the "homemade apple pies" we made as our snack using biscuits and apple pie filling. Yummo!  But a little mess was so worth it in order to connect with these girls and pass on these life lessons.

It does my heart good to be leading these girls through our Balcony Girls/Scouting year.  Next on the agenda is to make homemade fleece blankets to display our GS patches.  We've even talked of creating our own balcony girl patches so we can remember these lessons in the years to come.  Better get my creative juices flowing.