theflyingeagles

What a busy month! We spent January working on a multiple chapter project collecting baby items for the South Park food bank. First the kids made signs to decorate our collection boxes, which we placed at school & work. Then we spent the day at PCC collecting donations which the West Seattle Blog posted for us. Yesterday was the grand finale, we went and volunteered at the food bank. The kids had a great time distributing produce to each patron (the baby items were handed out by the more experienced crew.) Plus, we had two new prospective members join us!

Collecting at PCC in a still icy parking lot after snow week:

At the food bank:

At our last meeting we went to Marra Farm & did some fun activities with Amanda Saskill of City Kid Farms.

Even though we had our reservations about an outdoor activity in December everything turned out great and we had a beautiful (if cold) sunny day! Also, check out Amanda’s awesome video about local sustainable food here.

Ready... Set...

Giddyup, Whoa!

the last leaves of autumn

winter husk

does it bite if you stick your fingers in?

Thumper

the chain gang

planting garlic bulbs

junior planting bench

volunteer potatoes

For our first meeting this fall we made birdfeeders out of pine cones &  peanut butter rolled in birdseed. We also made applesauce using the super fun apple peeler/corer crank.

In February we will be volunteering for Baby Day at the Food Bank so we will spend the next 2 months collecting the following items for our Baby Drive:

• little jars of baby food (preferably fruit)
• diapers size 1-5 (greatest need is size 4-5)
• gently used baby items such as books, toys, dolls, games

At the end of September we had a great nature walk at Seward Park and celebrated Amber’s last day as our troup leader. She is already missed!

Home of the Douglas Squirrel

Douglas (courtesy of wikipedia)

I spy...

Sqebeqsed Trail

Amber's Camp Fire whistle

test run

In August we explored the trail to fitness and had a yoga class in the park led by our friend Karen. The kids especially liked practicing their lion’s breath. Afterward everyone painted a tile for the spray park project.

What an exciting night we had! Our course was really well received, so much that we won 2nd place from the golfers votes! We saw the Mayor & met the Chief of Police in addition to hundreds of neighbors. We had several hole-in-one’s and many golfers came back to play a second round! We are really proud that our Camp Fire kids are such an important part of the South Seattle community.

Our 2nd place trophy, we will affix it proudly to our Wohelo ceremonial candle.

Chief Diaz

Special thanks to Tim for helping to build the structure for our course!

In July we welcomed a new member, Liliana to our group and started production on our mini golf hole for the Putt Putt golf event. Here is a preview of what the kids have been working on:

And a couple of pictures of some of the homework that went into our project:

After our first Camp Fire meeting one of our kids wrote a list of activities for us to do as a group, including “be in a parade.” Ask and ye shall receive… on July 9 we marched in the Seafair Wallingford Kiddies Parade. We made small flags for each of the kids with their names on them and the kids colored & decorated them. Then we made an official banner which will hopefully be used for parade seasons to come!

All the flag poles started at 36″, they were pretty easy to break though and by the time the parade started Hondo only had about 6″ left. (no exaggeration). Luckily we had an extra, next time we will hold a contest where the person whose pole remains intact is the winner.

It was a lot of fun to see what the other participants put together. Pizza-Pirate? (say it in a phony Italian accent)

We walked behind the keystone cops… The Parade Marshall said to “Leave enough room that you don’t get dizzy from the exhaust fumes”. That sounds like some serious parade veteran advice.

Our cheer section!

Sweet Mahogany Drill Team

taking a brief rest after the parade route

going back to meet the parents at the park

angle of repose

At our second June meeting we introduced the kids to the Camp Fire word WoHeLo and lit our red, white & blue WoHeLo candle. WoHeLo is a combination of the first two letters of the words “Work”, “Health” and “Love” and is meant to represent the joy and worth of life. The word WoHeLo can be used as a greeting or password which the kids embraced.
Continuing with the Trail to The Environment, we got to meet Emmett & Jake’s chickens and Jake gave us a tour of the chicken coop. Afterwards we had an egg spoon race. Before finishing up we handed out patches & stickers for achievements from previous meetings and we closed with a belly-down circle time.

from left: Hondo's, Kaya's, Sydney's, & Hollis'

In June we started the Trail to The Environment. We talked about the differences between pets & wild animas and the kids made bird houses out of recycled milk cartons. And, of course, as truly modern Seattle children we had a 50/50 split representation of soy & cow’s milk… (what, no rice milk?)