Residential Camp--Water Badge

Water for Life Challenge
(edged in blue for Guides)

Water badge

Beyond You: Learn About Our Environment (BY3)

For fall camp, we did the Water for Life Challenge (no longer active as of 2016), the Water Badge, and this also tied into Beyond You Square: Learn About Our Environment #3.

The following is our camp schedule, with programming parts expanded out.

Every residential camp, we do secret pals--the girls and leaders all pick a name, and have to do acts of kindness throughout the weekend. They can make a craft, wash her dishes, any sort of thing, and try to keep it secret. We use this for the Discovering You: Discover What's Important to You #5.

We know the girls like to craft, so we have four or five hat craft examples, but let them make whatever they want at craft time. Some of them do the hat crafts, but most like to do their own thing (and then copy what the other girls are doing!) The craft table is available at all times, though sometimes it is hard to keep them away from it! There are a lot of crafts made for their secret pals.

Friday

6:30 Arrival

7:30 Camp rules and Ice breaker game

WfL #4: Discussion of the Water for Life Logo and why Girl Guides are promoting Decade for Action

http://www.un.org/waterforlifedecade/wdlogo.html

The Water for Life Decade Logo depicts a fountain of water painted in dark blue. The fountain consists of two cupped hands rising out from an ocean of water represented by two horizontal broad wavy lines. In a point-line style the water streams out of the fountain in both directions, portraying water that is harnessed 'for Life'.

The words "Water for Life 2005-2015" appear below the artwork.
The Water for life decade logo will be available in the six official United Nations languages: Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish.

Girl Guides is promoting it because it’s a United Nations initiative, and Girl Guides/WAGGGS helps promote UN initiatives that affect children/girls/women around the world.

8:30 Campfire and Mug Up

10:00 PJs

11:00 Lights out

Saturday

8:00 Breakfast and cleanup

9:00 Discussion of: source of water in community: WfL #1/WB #2 (We had to do some research about our local watershed)

uses of water: WfL #2

ways to conserve water: WfL #2/WfL #5/WfL #14/WB #3

          Skits about conserving water: WfL #3 (After our brainstorming session on how to conserve water, the girls split up into groups and created skits about conserving water. They always love creating skits!)

10:00 Snack and make buddy burners

10:30 Relay races: WfL #10 We had the girls carry large bowls on their heads, but not with water in them—it was too messy inside and too cold outside (we camped in November). We did this as a relay race, to have the girls learn to balance them on their heads

          Hike to lake

          Cloud discussion while on hike: WfL #29

11:15 Craft/free time

12:00 Lunch

1:00 Duties

1:30 We split up into four stations and spent 20 minutes at each one:

1. water cycle experiment: WfL #50 Water Cycle in a bag (updated link to a similar activity)

2. Tsunami experiment: WfL #38 Tsunami Experiment (updated link to a similar activity)

3. Rain dance: WfL #48 (how to do a rain dance)

4. Plants, animals, insects that live in water: WfL #24/WB #6 (I didn't plan this part. They made water habitats with materials from outside and used coloured clay to make animals that live in and around the water, and tin foil to represent the water)

3:00 Aquifier snack and discussion about aquifiers: WfL #20/ WfL #15/WfL #23/WB#1

Edible Earth Parfait

Discussion of leisure activities and how they can be harmful to environment: WfL #25/WfL #26/WB#5 We did this while they were eating their aquifier.

3:30 Trivia: A review of everything we’ve discussed over the weekend, plus WfL #36

4:00 Free Time

5:30 Supper

6:30 Duties

7:00 Impromptu talent show

8:00 campfire and mug up

10:00 PJs

11:00 Lights out

Sunday

8:00 Breakfast

9:00 Pack up

9:30 Guides Own: WB#8  We’ll sing Barges, reveal our secret buddies, sing Swimming Swimming in a Swimming Pool, discuss our apples and onions (2 things you liked about camp/1 thing you didn’t like), give out badges, sing Go Well and Safely

All together, we did 18 things from the Water for Life Challenge to earn 3 crests (the blue Guide crest, the orange Brownie crest, and the pink Spark crest).

We did 6 things from the Water Badge (page 160 of the Guide Book).

Everything we did over the weekend counted for Beyond You: Learn About Our Environment #3.