Meeting #6: Halloween Party!

You and Others: Learn How to Plan (YaO3)

Event Planning (EP)

This meeting was completely planned and run by the girls. It's hard for us controlling Guiders to step back and let them make mistakes, but that's how they learn and we did our best. (YaO3#1, EP#4, EP#6, EP#7)

6:30-6:40--We just let them mill and look at each other's costumes as everyone arrived.

6:40-7:10--Craft: Juice Box Mummy. Each girl in the Patrol was responsible to bring the supplies for this. They all remembered the supplies, though not everyone remembered to bring a juice box. Some girls brought extra, but I think not everyone had a juice box to make the craft. We felt bad for them, but as part of a Girl-Led activity, we left them to be responsible. We will discuss this at the Party Evaluation and see if they can come up with ideas of how this can be avoided.

We made the Craft Patrol clean up the mess the girls left behind when picking up their craft supplies (mostly rice spilled everywhere). One of the girls said to me, "We told them to be careful and not make a mess, but they didn't seem to listen!" Ha! Now they know how we feel!

7:10-7:15: The Sparks from down the hall came to parade their costumes for us, and then our girls paraded for them.

7:15-7:40--Games

We told the group when they were planning to come up with two games and that they'd have about 20 minutes for games. They planned three games and were then disappointed that they didn't have time to play the third game.

The games they picked were quite fun. The first one was a Candy Corn relay. There were two teams, and each team had two buckets. The one farthest away was empty and the one closest had candy corn in it. The girls used a spoon to transfer the candy corn from one bucket to another. This took longer than they thought so after everyone had had at least one turn, they ended the game and determined the winner by who had the most in their bucket.

Their second game was Pin the Mouth on the Jack-o-Lantern. They had two Jack-o-Lanterns so groups could go at the same time. They had two mouths, and they left the one closest taped on while the next girl went.

7:40-8:05 Snacks

The Snack Patrol were in charge of setting out the snacks and cleaning up afterward. Their hardest task was waiting for the other patrols to get their food before they took theirs! There was lots of food, so no one was in danger of not getting any, but some were hovering, desperate to be able to get a cupcake! Everyone remembered to bring what they needed (Brownies, Cupcakes, Cookies, Punch, Fruit, napkins, plates, cups) and they did a great job.

8:05-8:30 Campfire and Ghost Story

The Campfire Patrol found a website with a number of cute Halloween songs set to well-known songs. (This is a similar page--Halloween songs--but it's not the exact one because it has some they didn't sing.

Halfway through the songs, the Ghost Story patrol read the story that they wrote last week. I had helped them type it, but no one else had heard it and they did a really good job with it. In the end, a witch turned one of our Guiders (and the mother of one of the girls who wrote the story) into a toad!

I think the girls had a lot of fun, and they did a great job leading the activities. Some girls were more proactive than others, but they all participated in their own way.

Meeting #5: Halloween Party Planning

You and Others: Learn How to Plan (YaO3)



You and Guiding: Understand the Promise and Law and Motto (YiG1)



Event Planning (EP)

6:30-6:50: We gave the Law Mini-Book (comment or email Guider Lee Ann from the Owl and Toadstool blog for the file) to work on for their lapbooks. We have a number of old envelopes donated by someone who works in a card store, so we cut those in half to make pockets for the lapbooks. We put the Guide Law mini-books into the pockets, since the back page is used and can't be glued in.

6:50-7:00: Horseshoe and Discussion

7:00-7:30: Be Prepared for Camp-we led a discussion about what the girls need to Be Prepared for camp. They created a kit list, with each girl contributing something to the list that they need to take with them to camp. (YiG1#3)

7:30-8:00: Halloween Party Planning
The Patrols drew from a bowl to determine which aspect of the party they would plan. Topics were:
Food
Games
Craft
Campfire
Ghost Stories

We gave them laptops to do their research (the school has WiFi this year!) Each Patrol will have about 20 minutes for their portion of the party, with the Ghost Story part of Campfire. (YaO3#1, EP#1, EP#3)

8:00-8:30: Friendship Bracelets
As the Patrols finished planning, we taught them how to make friendship bracelets, an method I found from Pinterest. The idea is that they will have their bracelets in their Patrol boxes and can work on them when they first arrive. We are planning to send the finished bracelets to Sangam. Every Patrol didn't get a chance to start the bracelets as they didn't finish their planning in time, but we assured them that everyone would get an opportunity to make the bracelets through the year. (YiG4#5)

Meeting #4: Patrol Elections/Code of Conduct

You in Guiding: Understand the Promise and Law and Motto (YiG1)
You in Guiding: Learn about Guiding (YiG2)

We're still getting used to such a big unit and how much time it takes to do things and move girls around.

(20 min) Patrol Elections: We had asked the previous week who wanted to be Patrol Leaders and Seconders. We let 2nd and 3rd Years run and we had 8 who wanted to run. We were going to have 5 Patrols and we needed 10 girls to run, so we let 1st years who had been Brownies also run.

We started  by having the girls give short speeches and it was amazing to hear what the girls had to say. Most had written down their speeches. One 1st year hadn't been at the meeting the week before and wanted to run for Seconder and she gave a great speech considering she was unprepared!

After the speeches, they each got a piece of paper and wrote down 5 names for Patrol Leader and 5 names for  Seconder and they had to be 10 different names. (YiG1#2)

(5 min) We adapted the Code of Conduct (MemberZone login) activity we did last year. We have the first five items (Respect, Safe Space, Privacy, Set an Example, and Care) written on a large piece of paper and had the girls read off the each item and we discussed what each meant. (YiG2#4)

(5 min) Reef Knots: We gave them rope that they could keep in their Patrol boxes (one for each girl) and had them practice making reef knots. (YiG1#5)

(10 min) We announced the girls who would be Patrol Leaders and they lined up along the front. Then as we announced the Seconders, they got to choose which Patrol they were with. Then we drew the remaining girls out of a hat and that's the order they chose their Patrols. It worked quite well and there weren't any complaints, which is always a good thing. (YiG1#2)

(20 min) Horseshoe Practice: Since they were already lined up, we started Horseshoe Practice. We let the new girls get their songbooks they had velcroed into their lapbooks last week. The first time through, we just sang the song while standing still. Then we had them march in place as they sang it a second time. Finally, they got to march and sing and move all at the same time! We have so many girls, they have to sing it through twice to get everyone in place--I think we'll learn the Guide Law song to sing too so they don't need to go through it twice--or maybe we'll learn the second verse to the Guide Marching Song!

(20 min)  Code of Conduct: We had the girls make up skits based on the five topics we'd discussed.  As always, some were really good, and some could be better. We have one girl who is new to Guiding and when we said we were going to do skits, we had to explain what a skit was! Being in Guiding for so many years, sometimes I forget that not everyone knows the basics of Guiding! (YiG2#4)

(20 min) CWFF Banks: Shift Mama issued a great challenge to her fellow Girl Guide friends to collect pennies in decorated water bottles and I thought it was a great idea! We asked the girls to bring empty bottles in, and we had extra for those that forgot (especially since we planned to do this last week and ran out of time). We touched on what CWFF is (we'll go into more depth after Christmas). The girls had lots of fun decorating and as always, some girls could have used another 30 minutes, though they all turned out nicely.

And we made it through another meeting! We still want to teach them how to make Friendship Bracelets that they can work on when they first arrive, but we still haven't found time. We're getting most of our stuff done and eventually, we'll catch up. :)

Meeting #3: Promise, Law and Handshake

You in Guiding: Understand the Promise and Law and Motto (YiG1)

(30 min) We gave them a Promise and Law word search to work on, created by Guider Lee Ann**. This kept them busy while we took in uniform order forms, cookie money, and dues from the parents. With 28 girls, that's a lot of parents to meet with and take in money from. The girls should really be responsible for handing in their money. I would probably change this, so that the girls come in and sit at their tables and we call them up to deliver whatever money and forms need to be delivered.

(Uniform Order Sheet, created by another Guider in our District)

(25 min) Get To Know You/Learn the Handshake--I took this idea from Brownies Meet and she explains the prep required quite well. Each girl got a container of unique beads and an empty pipe cleaner and had to meet all of the other girls. They had to use the Guide sign and the Guide handshake and introduce herself to the other girl, and then they exchange beads for their pipecleaner. When they were done, they could make the pipecleaner into a bracelet (though with 28 girls and 5 leaders, the bracelets were quite big!) This was lots of fun and the girls really enjoyed it. (YiG1#4)

(15 min) We did the Promise/Law/Motto game from the Guide Toolbox I found on the NB Girl Guide site. It's an old Active Living guide, which links to the old program, but has lots of good ideas that adapt to the current program. The Guider reads half of a phrase from the Promise/Law/Motto, and the girls need to find the matching phrase around the room and do the activity that goes with it. (YiG1#1)

(30 min) We spent the rest of the time working on our You in Guiding lapbooks, an idea I got from Guider Lee Ann of the Owl and Toadstool blog.  We put 4 things into our lapbooks and will be adding to them throughout the year, until we complete the You in Guiding square. To make the lapbook, you basically take two file folders and overlap them, so you end up with a half flap that folds in on the right side, under the whole flap that folds from the left. Last year at work, one of our Admins was throwing out a huge pile of file dividers, and gave me a large stack to use for Girl Guides. I used four of these to create the lapbooks for the girls. (YiG1#1)



(phote taken from  Owl and Toadstool blog)



1) We folded up the Promise and Law word search and glued it into the lapbook, and then put a label on the outside of the folded paper. The girls are to complete the word search on their own.** (YiG1#1)

2) We glued in the Promise craft we did the first week.

3) I created a folded minibook of songs they need to know for Guides, like the Guide Marching Song, Taps, etc. We used velcro to add this to the book, so they can take it out when we practice horseshoe the first few times. (Guiding Songbook) This site has a good quick explanation of how to fold a minibook.

4) Another Promise craft I saw on Pinterest. We printed out the promise on white paper. We drew a hand on fun foam that they had to cut out and we gave them the square of coloured paper. To secure the thumb and finger down, we used double sided sticky circles and then glued the whole thing together and put it into the lap book.

We had a few more activities planned for the night but we spent too much time at the first of the night dealing with parents and paperwork! We'll do more next time.

The girls really liked doing the lapbooks and it's a great way to do little crafts and activities and keep them all together.

**I have linked to the files and ideas that I created for the lapbook. Guider Lee Ann has provided me with a number of files that we'll be using. If you'd like to use files from Guider Lee Ann, she's willing to share if you contact her at her website.