Meeting #25: BAA Challenge

BAA Challenge

In the UK, many units create challenges and sell the crests to raise money for trips and such. There is a Guiders Forum where they advertise these challenges, and most are willing to ship overseas if you pay through PayPal. My Pathfinder helps out in our unit and loves sheep, so I suggested that they lead out this challenge as a meeting for our Guides. And it seemed fitting to do a meeting about sheep the week before Easter!

Brownies in the UK are aged 7-10, which covers most of the ages of a Guide unit (9-11), so when using Challenges from overseas, I usually do the Brownie requirements.

Patrol Time: We gave the Guides outlines of sheep and had them decorate them and then create a field on a large sheet of paper for their flock of sheep. (Sheep Template)

7:10-7:30: Shaun the Sheep videos

We watched two Shaun the Sheep videos. I have a projector that we connected to my laptop and pulled up the videos on YouTube. The girls found the videos funny--we were only going to watch one, but everyone liked it so much and the girls were all sitting quietly, so we watched a second one. They're only about 8 minutes long.

7:30-7:50: Wool

We talked to the girls about wool and why it keeps you cool when it's hot and warm when it's cold, and dry when it's wet. (Info from How Stuff Works)

Then we made a craft. I bought a skein of wool yarn that we could pull apart into the wool fibers. Then we glued that onto a sheep body template and used clothespins for legs and the sheep turned out really cute! (Sheep Template)

7:50-8:10 Snack!

We made sugar cookies shaped like lambs. We gave them icing, mini marshmallows, and chocolate chips so they could decorate their cookies, which they all love to do!

8:10-8:20

To close out the night, we sang the Humpty Dumpty Rap and asked the girls to start with Nursery Rhymes about sheep. We came up with Baa Baa Black Sheep, Mary Had a Little Lamb, Little Bo Beep, and Little Boy Blue. Then we did other nursery rhymes, though it's surprising how few nursery rhymes the girls actually know. Luckily, I know lots of words to lots of nursery rhymes, so even if they can only start them, I can usually finish them!

CHORUS:

Hump-ty Dump.
Hump Hump De Dump-ty Dump-ty
Hump-ty Dump.
Hump Hump De Dump-ty Dump-ty

Verse 1:
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall
All the king's horses and all the king's men said
OOH! AIN'T THAT FUNKY NOW!

(chorus)

Verse 2:
Little Jack Horner sat in a corner
Eating his pudding pie
He stuck in his thumb,
and pulled out a plumb and said:
OOH! AIN'T THAT FUNKY NOW!

(chorus)

Verse 3:
Little Miss Muffet sat on her tuffet
Eating her curds and whey
Along came a spider, who sat down beside her
and said:
OOH! AIN'T THAT FUNKY NOW!

8:20-8:30 Closing

Meeting #20 & #21: Healthy Eating Badge

Discovering You: Stay Fit and Healthy (DY3)

Healthy Eating (HE)

Fit for Life challenge (FfL)

6:30-7:00--We asked the girls to come up with ideas for a healthy snack for next week. They came up with lots of good ideas. We had sort of already thought about smoothies, so when they mentioned that, we grabbed onto and they all thought it was a great idea. So we let them "plan" it, even though we steered them towards what we had already planned. :)

7:00-7:10--Horseshoe

7:10-8:00 Canada's Food Guide (DY3#3)

I ordered copies ahead of time of Canada's Food Guide. It was free and it was nice to have a copy for each girl that we could talk about together.

This webpage (http://www.cyh.com/HealthTopics/HealthTopicDetailsKids.aspx?p=335&np=284&id=1431) explains why the body needs proteins, carbs, and fats (HE#6)

We picked up flyers from the local grocery store for each girl. They cut pictures out of the flyers of foods they like that they could eat in a day to make up the right number of servings in each food group and glued them onto construction paper to make a collage.  (HE#2)

We handed out a journal sheet for them to record their diet for a week (HE#1, FfL#B)

8:00-8:30 Enrollment--we had 2 girls who missed enrollment in the fall and another girl who joined our unit in January who needed to be enrolled. It was just a simple ceremony--we did horseshoe for the parents, said our promise, enrolled the new girls, and then everyone got presented with badges.

Meeting #2

6:30-7:00 Patrol Time

Each Guide designed an ad for healthy food/healthy living (HE#3, DY3:#2)

7:00-7:30 Horseshoe

Discuss their food journals and see who achieved their food intake. They had to have returned their food journals in order to earn the badge. (and can return it at any time in the future)

Display their ads for other patrols to see.

Talk about why smoking is bad for you. (FfL#C)--this discussion actually lasted quite a while and the girls all had interesting thoughts on the subject.

7:30-7:50 Food Labels

Health Canada has a PowerPoint that explains food labels, so we went over this with the girls. (HE#4)

We were discussing the ingredient list on labels, our Junior Leader remembered a fun video to watch, so we found it on YouTube and showed the unit. Animaniacs--Be Careful What You Eat

7:50-8:20 Smoothies--we had frozen fruit and frozen yogurt (FfL:E#1)

8:20-8:30 Closing

Meeting #24: NS Membership Challenge

I Am Growing Guiding in Nova Scotia Membership Challenge

You in Guiding: Learn About Guiding (YiG2)

Nova Scotia created a Membership Challenge to help with their goals of retaining and increasing membership. The pink part is earned through doing activities and the blue part is earned by increasing membership in your unit.

As Guides, we needed to do 8 activities to earn the pink crest. We had done a number of activities as a unit through the year to complete this--just through our normal unit activities--and we used this meeting to reinforce what we did to earn this challenge and then do a couple of activities specifically for the challenge.

5 Activities from I Am Growing Guiding Challenge:

1. Participate in a bridging activity with at least TWO different levels of Guiding.--our Halloween parade with Sparks and Brownies
2. Do a service project in your community while wearing your uniform. --Feed NS
3. Participate in a large Guiding activity such as a District or Area camp, or day camp. --Thinking Day skate
4. Participate in a community event such as Remembrance Day, a community parade or fair -- we attended Remembrance Day as a District

3 Activities from I Am Keeping Guiding Strong Challenge

1. Share your Unit activities: send a photo (make sure everyone has a photo release), a poem, or an article describing one of your Unit activities to your District, Area or Provincial PR person.--my fellow Guider and I have tweeted a number of our activities to @GGCNovaScotia. Camp, Feed NS, Screen Printing, Thinking Day--whenever we do something fun, we try to remember to tweet it. We learned well from our session on Social Media at the NS Guider Conference!
2. Plan a joint activity with another Unit. -- Campfire with the Sparks

So that left us with one activity from each section to work on.

6:30-7:00 Patrol Time--we asked the girls to think of things they can do as they grow with Guiding, in Pathfinders, Rangers, and as an adult. (Make a list of Guiding things you want to do when you are older. Share the list with your Unit.)

7:00-7:15: We discussed what they came up with. International trips--both as independent groups and on National sponsored trips; Canada Cord, which counts as a high school credit (and then we had to explain what a high school credit was and why you would want one!); Chief Commissioners' award; Junior Leaders in younger units; scholarships; camps. (YiG2#3)

One group misinterpreted the instructions and came with things that they've already learned and how these skills will transfer into every day use, which was also interesting to hear!

7:15-8:00 Write a song about Guiding. 

We asked them to break up into groups of 2-4 and make up a song about Guiding. They were all very creative and wonderful. One of our other Guiders recorded them, and when she sends them to me, I'll put them up here. 

8:00-8:20 Games

We played Fruit Basket, which we had planned to play when we were doing the Healthy Eating badge, but ran out of time. They had a lot of fun with this game. After they played with fruit for a while, we changed it up to be animals.

8:20-8:30 Closing

#22 Cookies Rising

Discovering You: Understand How to Be Responsible (DY4)

 

6:30-7:00 Patrol Time: One of our Guiders is also our District Commissioner. Her term is up in June and it was recently announced that she will become our new Area Commissioner. For Patrol Time, I gave the girls construction paper and stickers and asked them each to make a Congratulations card for her. We kept the activity a secret from her and presented the cards at Horseshoe.

7:00-7:10 Horseshoe: I love how creative our girls are! They made some beautiful cards for Guider Wendy and she was surprised that we pulled it off without her knowing about it. 

7:10-7:30 Taking the Temperature Activity (memberzone login)--We did this a few years ago and it was the last piece of programming that we needed to do for our third years! (DY4#4)

7:30-8:15 Cookie Rising activities:

Business/GGC--We used the Taking the Temperature thermometers and then used them to discuss cookie selling. I used the cookie selling tips from the book (You and Others: Learn How to Plan #2), changing some from positive to negative, and the girls ran from one side of the room to another in various ways--hopping, jumping, crab walk, etc--to say if it was a good thing to do (Cold) or a bad thing to do (Hot).

Financial--We talked to the girls about how much money our unit will earn this campaign and then talked about all the ways that we as a unit use the money. We also talked about the portion that goes to District and what District spends money on.

Social--We played the Alphabet game from the badge activities.

8:15-8:20 Songs and closing