SWAPS - Some Whatchamacalit With A Pin

These are the SWAPS we made for camporee.  I could swear I copied them from the web, but maybe I combined a few sources into this - so here's what we did.

Our Brownie troop is working on the WOW (World of Water) Journey and one of the things was sharing with others - camporee swaps seemed like a great opportunity.  So, this is what we made.

                       
QuickVersion:  (for people, like me, who don't like instructions)  safety pins, jewelry baggies, tissue paper or paper basket fill, shrinky dink plastic, colored pencils/sharpies, MS Office clip art.  And "fortunes" with info about how to save water & our troop number.

0.  Setup:  I found clip art from the Microsoft Office clipart site and made a piece of paper that had lots of fish/sea/water themed black and white clip art that would be fairly easy to trace and color.   I sized them so that their max size was 1.3", but they could have been bigger.  I made a copy of this paper for each girl.  Also, I tried it all out so I could show an example to the girls. 

1.  At the first meeting, the girls each got one sheet of plastic.  We used sharpies and colored pencils, and the girls traced and colored the designs they wanted onto their plastic.  When they were done, they cut out their shapes and we put them into baggies with their names on them.  Aside from tracing and coloring the clip art, other ideas that fit with the theme were:  umbrellas and rainbows.  Some girls also made hearts or pro-GS messages.

2.  Between Meetings, I cut out the ones that didn't get to finish and I baked them all, in batches.  It was not as bad as I feared - no major warping, not too stinky, I didn't get them all discombobulated.  The shrinky dinks went back into each girl's baggie.  I also found a lot of tips about saving water at this site, and put the ones that elementary school aged kids could do (they are not going to replace the toilet with a low-flow one) with the troop number in an excel table and printed out a page for each girl to use.

3.  At the second meeting, the girls assembled the swaps by filling the bags with shrinky dinks and either tissue paper or paper basket fill.  Then add the pin and "fortune" about how to save water.  And then, back to the baggie to wait until Camporee.