I’m celebrating all things Girl Scout Cookies this week on the blog! This Friday, Cookie Booth Sales (sales in front of stores) start in Western Washington. Before that, on Thursday night, I’m helping to host a Cookies and Cocktails event with my Girl Scout council (If you’re in the Seattle area, you should come! Buy tickets here). So, it seems like a great week to blog all about Girl Scout Cookies!
This past Friday, and every year at about this time for the past six years, my Girl Scout troop hosted a Cookie Rally to kick off Cookie Booth Sales. We always have so much fun, and it’s a great cookie kick-off. My girls are in eleventh grade this year and it’s their last year selling cookies, so it’s our last year hosting the rally. I thought it’d be fun to document what we do and how we do it as a resource for others who might want to replicate our fun!
We found a perfect location that has been our go-to every year for the rally – the local Skating Rink (Lynnwood Bowl and Skate is awesome!). The contract we worked out with the skating rink included a dinner option (pizza and a soda). We charged each Girl Scout the total amount to cover the skating and dinner, plus a small additional fee to cover our activity expenses and a fun patch.
We also allowed parents/siblings to come to our event, and they paid to cover just the skating and food.
In addition to having skating as an activity, we set up activities and each of my girls hosted one of the tables. Over the years, we tried a variety of activities, and here are our favorites…
First up is a photo booth. We’d borrow cookie costumes from our local Girl Scout council office, and I bought props from Amazon. At the rally girls and parents could use their phones to snap pics at the photo booth.
Another station that was always a hit was Cookie Tasting. I cut up cookie boxes to create labels for jars, then filled the jars with sample bites of each cookie flavor.
We’d always have some sort of crafting station, that we’d change up each year. One year, we had poster board and markers for the girls to make a poster for their cookie booth. Another year, we did festive cookie glasses. My favorite craft was cookie bracelets. I found these awesome foam beads at Michaels one year and basically bought everything they had in stock (I couldn’t find them anywhere online anymore).
Of course, we wanted to make sure we had a couple stations dedicated to skill building, so we always did a safety station and a change counting station. My favorite safety station was safety pinwheels. My favorite money station was dice rolling – girls would roll one dice to see how many cookies a customer bought, then roll the other dice to see how much they paid with; then, they’d calculate the change.
The rally always lasted 2 hours, and that seemed to be the perfect amount of time for a little skating, a few cookie activities, and a lot of fun!
If you’re interested in hosting a Cookie Rally, the best resource I’ve found is on our bakery’s, Little Brownie Bakers, website.
Check back tomorrow for a fun cookie recipe! And, if you’re looking for Girl Scout cookies, buy them online here.
Party, or RALLY, on!
JW
Sounds like a ton of fun!