For this year's Thinking Day our troop's country was the United Kingdom. A good chunk of our girls are Doctor Who fans, so it wasn't too surprising that this country was on their list. And luckily we've been there this year and had lots of photos and mementos to help with the booth.
We decided to prepare for Thinking Day by working on several of the retired junior badges -- Girl Scouting Around the World, World Neighbors and Global Awareness -- and worked on this over four meetings. We were able to finish the first two badges, and got most of the way through Global Awareness.
For Thinking Day our service unit has participating troops create a country display with a food sample from that country as well as a country swap. Each girl is given a bag of $4 in dimes to "spend" on food samples & swaps. The dimes get donated to the Juliette Lowe World Friendship Fund.
Girl Scouting Around the World:
We gave the girls homework for #2, #5, #6, and #10 by giving them the Girl Scout and WAGGS websites with a specific list of items to look up, read and explore. We then talked about it during a meeting. For #1 and #3 the girls participated in Thinking Day and put together our display.
World Neighbors:
We focused on our Thinking Day country to complete this badge. The girls were given a list of websites to help them look up information on the UK (#3, #7, #10). We set aside different meetings to focus on the three main areas of the UK and their culture: England, Scotland and Wales. We learned Welsh and Gaelic words and English slang; talked about their holidays, food, traditions, government, famous authors (Harry Potter, anyone?), culture (including popular movies and tv), and school life and well as girl scouting in the country. We played games from the country in another meeting. And of course we sampled some shortbread cookies!
Global Awareness:
In the course of working on Thinking Day we also completed #1, #3, #7, and #8. We'll have to work in the rest of this badge in future meetings.
We picked up country booklets from Patchwork Designs. They have patch programs for different countries and even have cute rubber stamps for your Thinking Day passports. We just picked up the booklet to use with the girls. We loved the booklets - they have info on food, holidays, a fun language word-match, maps, flags, games, website list and more.
Here's the websites we gave the girls to use:
http://www.worldthinkingday.org/en/home
http://www.wagggs.org/en/home
http://www.girlscouts.org/who_we_are/global/
http://www.girlguiding.org.uk/home.aspx
http://projectbritain.com/
http://travel.nationalgeographic.com/travel/countries/united-kingdom-guide/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_inventions_and_discoveries
http://www.msichicago.org/scrapbook/scrapbook_exhibits/catw2005/traditions/countries/united_kingdom.html
Putting Together the Display:
We talked with the girls about what they wanted to have (and should have) on their display and then let the girls decide what they wanted to bring for the next meeting to put together the poster. They decided to decorate the back of the display with the UK flag. So, we picked up a blue tri-fold board, red and white duct tape, and a yard stick to make the flag. All the girls got to help trace the lines and make the stripes.
We accessoried our display with books and pamphlets, a real sporran, a large flag, British food (thank you World Market!) and shortbread cookies. I wish I'd realized the photo I took was a bit blurry (or had taken a few more) but right after I snapped these the back of our table collapsed and the whole display went flying! Nothing like last minute stress....

The display - an old cookie tin used to hold our country swaps. One parent had a kilt including the sporran and a traditional Welsh hat. And we had to include Harry Potter!

A quick shot of the other side - our food samples (we chose the easy way this year and bought boxes of shortbread cookies). Tea & clotted cream jars with a cute metal phonebox that used to hold tea bags was used to collect dimes.

Swaps!
Everyone needs a cool swap. The girls had a good discussion and came up with some great ideas for a country swap. In the end they voted on the double-decker bus. One of the girls wanted the flag across the bus. A parent took that idea and really went to town, adding a picture of each girl looking out the window of the bus. We printed these out on heavy cardstock and attached ribbons to the pin.

Want our list of topics we gave the girls for homework? Download the file here:
Download World Thinking Day-Topics.pdf (53.5K)