Top row from left, Catherine White and Manolya Elsekkaki, bottom row from left, Clare Dabaldo, Uma Krishnan and Jackie Litschewski of Girl Scout Troop 2049, made up of eighth graders from Cooper Middle School. The troop hosted 11 younger troops at the Old Firehouse Teen Center Sunday March 18 for their annual Thinking Day celebration. Photo by Alex McVeigh.
McLean — The Old Firehouse Teen Center hosted more than 150 Girl Scouts Sunday, March 18 for their annual Thinking Day Celebration. The event, which also celebrated the 100th anniversary of the Girl Scouts, featured displays from 11 troops examining the culture and history of a specific country.
"Thinking Day is an annual event the Girl Scouts used to share cultural education," said Sally Hack, a parent from Troop 2049, which hosted the event.
Troop 2049, made up of eighth graders from Cooper Middle School, put on the event as part of their Silver Award project.
"We all remember Thinking Day as younger scouts, so we decided to plan the event for our Silver Award," said Clare Dabaldo, a member of the troop. "It was fun, but complex, to reach out to so many different troops around the area. We enjoyed finding out about all the different countries presented here."
One of the events put together by Troop 2049 was the fact hunt, which gave the younger scouts a list of questions to answer by visiting all the stations and finding out a fact from each one. Girls who filled out all the answers turned in their paper for a chance to win a prize drawing.
"I was surprised when I learned the answer to the question about how many castles are in Germany," said Diana Liddell, 9, a member of Troop 2069. "There are 25,000 castles. I thought the number would be much smaller."
Troop 2069 gave their presentation on Venezuela. Members of the troop split into group beforehand and each one did a country, then they voted on the one to do their presentation on.
"Venezuela is a pretty interesting country," said troop member Isabella Hendricks, 10. "They have a lot of different animals there, and a lot of them I wouldn’t expect to see there."
As part of their presentation, each troop presented a popular food item in their country of choice. Troop 5160 made crepes at their station on France, while Troop 5412 did their project on Italy and gave out biscotti.
Some scouts were surprised at some of the cultural discoveries they made.
"I really liked learning about cherry blossoms during out project on Japan," said Maddie Ernst, 9, of Troop 686. "They’re so lovely, and since they’re Japan’s national flower, we got to learn a lot about them."
In between stops around the globe, the girls could also stop at various stations and make a re-usable tote bag for groceries, or make a fish out of twisted plastic water bottles, tissue paper and glue.