We've had a really hard time with this year's theme for Thinking Day, which is adolescent health. I thought I'd pass on some of our SWAP ideas so that you could use them.

One of the moms in my troop, who I'll leave nameless, came up with the idea of a germ swap. It's a short idea and you'd be able to work on it yourself, but here it is: "I thought those little bud tubes from the florist with some pipecleaner creature inside might be cute as a pin." Personally, I'd buy those little google eyes and add them. Yes, I know, germs don't have eyes, but we're taking liberties here anyway.

The other SWAPS we came up with include the following "healthy" foods:

* An egg, which I made unhealthy by suggesting it be a fried egg made out of fun foam.

* A carrot, also made with fun foam or out of little triangle bags filled with something (shredded paper, beads) orange and a tassel top (yarn, curling ribbon).

* A pizza with toppings to represent the food groups (made with fun foam; if you haven't noticed, I like fun foam).

* Grapes or cherries made out of green pipe cleaner and round balls of some sort to represent the fruit. (I said I had ideas, not complete details, yes?)

Looking around as I'm writing this, I found a great page of sushi swaps. It might sound funny, but they're cute looking and you could have a nice discussion about why this Japanese food is healthy. Learning about different cultures is a part of Thinking Day afterall.

On that theme, I easily found a taco SWAP when I started thinking about ethnic foods and did a quick search online. It's made out of fun foam (big surprise). You could do the pizza, sushi, and taco and do both healthy food choices and talk about Italy, Japan, and Mexico!

Other health-related swaps, and in case you can't guess, we aren't doing any of these so we haven't even talked about the "how" of these.

* A stethoscope
* A toothbrush
* A tooth
* A jump rope
* A tennis shoe
* A jump rope
* Any kind of sports ball
* A bathing suit (to emphasize sport not body image!)
* Sun glasses (talk about sunscreen and the importance of sun-savvy behavior)

If you're going with a more traditional Thinking Day and not focusing on health, last year we did SWAPS that represented the WAGGGS flag and the trefoil pin. Flags of different countries are always popular and, hey, you can make most of them out of fun foam!