Scout Day 2016
The 4th Annual ASGC Scout Day was held on February 27th and deemed to be yet another successful educational program! Although the response was not as overwhelming as last year, we still needed to have 2 sessions. We mixed things up a bit this year and educated 10 Cub Scouts alongside 6 Girl Scouts for the morning session. The afternoon session consisted of 11 Girl Scouts. All participants were between Kindergarten and 3rd grade coming from Aurora and surrounding communities.
We would not have such a successful program without our volunteers. We met on the Thursday before the Saturday program to set up nine stations and prepare the take-home items. The program ran like clockwork and you couldn’t tell the new volunteers from the seasoned ones.
Starting out at the registration table with Alison DeBroux, the scouts then decorated a bag to put all their take-home items in. Sue Graham got them started on their bird adventure by reading The Best Nest by P.D Eastman. Each ‘flock,’ or team of three scouts, then rotated to the various stations.
Sarah Cochran and Nicole Ryman were very adept at the newly modified bird song and ID station. Newcomer Matt Valencic (who on Thursday did what any avid birder would do and polished the lenses on all our binoculars!) was a big hit at the Binocular station, despite the Blue Jay identification card flying away with a wind gust. Jim Tomko, running the Feathers, Bones and Wings station, showed the scouts that even if they had wings, they could not fly. Kathryn Craig taught them that if they had beaks, they may not like the worms, bugs, nectar and seeds and birds eat. Jan Slife walked the scouts through the Feet are Neat station. Sue Graham continued on her nest theme and showed them her vast nest collection. Betsy Siman, working at the owl pellet dissection table, showed them that being a bird of prey might not hold the most appetizing diet. Julia Toth facilitated our craft for the program helping the scouts decorate a bird mask. Katie Cochran showed the scouts how to make a bird feeder out of a bagel. Special thanks to Betsy for providing an excellent lunch for the crew of volunteers. We look forward to planning our 5th Annual Scout Day in 2017!
