Girl Scout Leader Supply Kit

So as I mentioned, I'm totally immersed in Girl Scouts right now, and I love it! We are having our second meeting tomorrow afternoon. The first meeting was at my house, because our troop was so new that we had not received confirmation for a meeting site. Now we are all approved to meet at one of the nearby elementary schools -- which is great -- they have a large "all-purpose room" (cafe-gym-atorium, is what my sister-in-law Susan calls them -- you know, lunch, gym and assemblies all occur in one place!), bathrooms, playground -- perfect! And, it's free! But, since it is not at my house where I am prepared for all sorts of activities and emergencies, I decided to make a travel kit for my Girl Scout supplies. I grabbed an empty Rubbermaid tub from the basement (practically everything we own is in Rubbermaid tubs in the basement -- my husband's record collection, mementos of my children's early years, pictures, clothes, holiday decorations, china...) and I gathered some things from around the house. We also stopped at the dollar store and I picked up a few other things that I might need. Here's what I have so far:

- paper towels
- plastic bags
- band-aids (I need to get a first aid kit)
- hand sanitizer
- scissors, tape, glue sticks, crayons
- pipe cleaners
- wooden craft sticks
- acrylic paints, paint brushes, paper plates for "palettes"
- wipes (I LOVE wipes -- my kids are both out of diapers, I will never stop buying wipes...)
- construction paper
- scrap paper
- coloring pages
- yarn
- brown paper lunch bags
- napkins

I need a couple more things from the store tomorrow -- I thought I would grab a box of small paper cups to keep in there for snack time. To help save the troop some money (and my co-leader and myself), we are going to have a sign-up sheet for snack. This way one person won't be in charge of it for the whole year, and as we learned from doing this in preschool, the kids seem to enjoy getting to have their own choice of what they want to share with their friends.

I also have to organize my binder -- I learned in training that I need to carry the girls' health forms with me to meetings, field trips, etc. I bought a binder to keep all of those forms in, my training info, a copy of the handbook (I'm buying one, but it's on back-order until December!), attendance forms, meeting schedule, etc. (Ask anyone I work with -- I am the binder queen of America -- love them...)

Trying to stay organized and being prepared will probably go a long way to helping me be a good leader. And, having everything in one place will make it easy to leave my kit in the back of my van and I'll be all ready for my Girl Scout meetings.