Meeting #13: Planning

You in Guiding: Be Involved in Your Community (YiG4)

Camp-Out (CO)

6:30-7:00: Patrol Time--We have camp coming up, so we had the Patrols plan what they wanted for meals and snacks.

7:00-7:30: Horseshoe
We had each Patrol tell us what food they planned. For each meal, each Patrol told us their thoughts, we gave out some suggestions, and then everyone voted. Our Quartermaster got a new Waffle Stick maker for Christmas and planned to have that for Saturday breakfast, but she was voted down for pancakes and bacon.They also requested tacos, which we had had at tent camping but wouldn't have thought of for residential camping (for some reason). And they suggested chocolate fondue for Saturday mug-up, which is a great idea! They get to practice lighting a match and it's delicious! (CO#1)

Then we needed to decide how to raise money for CWFF. Of course, before we could come to that decision, we had to talk about what CWFF was and ways that we've raised money in previous years. We've made water bottle money banks and done penny calendars and asked them what they wanted to do. After much discussion, they came up with taking back bottles to raise money. With GGC fundraising rules, we told them that they can't go door-to-door asking for refundables, but they could ask their friends and family and they could put up signs requesting people to bring their refundables to them. We will have a friendly competition between patrols to see who can raise the most. They are to return the refundables themselves and bring us the money. (YiG4#5)

The next decision they had to make was about what kind of hat traders did they want to make for Thinking Day. Our District has a party for Thinking Day and all of the units bring hat traders for the girls to trade. The WAGGGS theme this year is "Education" so our crafty Guider came up with some neat ideas for the girls to pick from. There was a backpack, a book and pencil, birthday in a bag, clipboard and pencil, jump rope. They decided that they liked that backpack and the book, so we decided to do both and put the book into the backpack. And the other ones that they liked would be available as a craft at camp to make.

7:30-7:50 Games
Then we decided that we'd been sitting and talking for long enough, so we played some games! We did the Caimarusa dance and I Let Her Go-Go that we learned last year while doing the Twinning Challenge.

7:50-8:10 I had some Canadian Guiding Trivia Questions that we challenged the patrols with. We gave each patrol an animal sound and one girl from each patrol competed at a time.

8:10-8:30 Singing
We ended the night with some fun songs and closing.

Meeting #11: Tool Time

Beyond You: Try New Things (BY3)

6:30-7:00--Patrol Time: We had the girls plan their Christmas party for next week. We only had enough girls for 3 groups, so they planned food, craft, and games.

7:00-7:10--Horseshoe

7:10-8:15--Tool Time (BY3#2)
I got this idea from the 1st Castlegar Guides page. It's an older site, based on the old program, but it has some really good ideas that are still useful with the new program.

Equipment required: Hammers, Nails, Sandpaper, Levels, Measuring tapes, Screwdrivers, Drills, Screws. We got scrap wood pieces by going to Home Depot and asking if they had any we could have. They gave them to us for free.

We set up 4 stations.
Station 1: Sanding. Each girl picked a piece of wood and some sandpaper. We talked about how there are different grades of sandpaper and you start with the rougher paper and then move to finer paper as it gets smoother.

Station 2: Hammering. The girls practiced hammering nails into pieces of wood.

Station 3: Levels and Measuring. We taught them how a level works and then had them measure and level various things around the room. (Measurement worksheet, Word doc)

Station 4: Drills. The girls used cordless drills to predrill 2 holes into a piece of wood. In the first hole, they screwed in a screw with a screwdriver. In the second hole, they used the drill to put the screw in. Then we asked them which was easier. Because the drills were new to them, they thought using the screwdriver was easier. Then we asked if they had to screw in 100 screws, which would be easier and they agreed that the drill would be faster and thus easier.

8:15-8:30: Cleanup and closing.

Meeting #10: Planetarium

Astronomy badge

Easy night! An outing to the Planetarium.

Dalhousie University has a program that promotes STEM with children called Supernova. They have a program where they will help Guide units earn science badges. We chose to do the Astronomy badge and it's a great experience.

The facilitator is a Dalhousie student and she showed us the stars and covered 6 pieces of the Astronomy badge. The program lasts a little over an hour and the girls seemed to really enjoy it. And then we got to hand out badges!

Special Event: Heritage Home Skills Sleepover

Heritage Home Skills badge (HHS)

On the kit list, we asked the girls to bring 2 large tomato cans (empty), a soup can (empty) and a shoebox sized container  to take their crafts home in.

7:00-7:30—Arrival

7:30-8:00—Orientation/Icebreaker

8:00-8:30—Half make freezer raspberry jam (HHS#1), half make butter (HHS#2)

Biscuits with homemade jam and butter

Freezer raspberry jam: we used the instructions in the pectin packaging, but it was basically just raspberries (we used frozen), sugar, and pectin. The girl mashed the raspberries with the sugar, stirred in the pectin, and then poured into jars.

Butter: whipping cream and salt in a Tupperware snack size container. The girls shook the butter in pairs. It took about 10-15 minutes, depending on the vigor of the shaking.  Once it separated into curds and whey, we poured off the liquid and then it only took a few more shakes to get it into smooth butter.

8:30-9:00—Switch on the jam and butter making

9:00-10:00—Campfire and mug-up.  Mug-up was biscuits with homemade jam and butter, plus cheese and hot chocolate.

10:00-10:30—Get ready for bed

11:00—Lights out

SATURDAY

7:00-8:00—Wake up and pack up gear. Let me say, our girls are well-trained. They rolled out of bed and started packing up immediately. So proud!

8:00-9:00—Breakfast (Continental—muffins, boiled eggs, fruit, yogurt)

Bottle cap candles

9:00-10:30—Three group round robin—bottle cap candles, straw weaving, stained glass

Activity 1: Bottle cap candles 

Melt crayons in tin can double boiler. Place wick in bottle cap. Pour crayon wax into bottle cap. (HHS#4)

Activity 2: Straw weaving  

Straw weaving

Tape three straws together. Run yarn through each straw. Tie in overhand knot at one end. Tie another piece of yarn to an outside straw. Weave the yarn over and under to the desired length and then tie off onto the straw. Gently push weaving off of straws and then tie off the bottom yarn. Voila! Bookmark. (HHS#3)

Equipment: 3 straws for each girl, variegated yarn, tape, scissors

Note: this activity may take more the 30 minutes to complete. The girls can come back to this if they finish another activity early or complete it at home.

Activity 3: Stained Glass: It was supposed to be contact paper, black yarn, and glitter, but the glitter was way too messy. We experimented and ended up using small pieces of tissue paper instead of glitter. The person leading this should discuss how to make actual stained glass. (HHS#6)

Hippo in progress

Completed project!

10:30-10:45—Snack

10:45-12:15—Three group Round Robin—Hat craft, glitter balls, tin can stilts

Activity 4: Hat craft

Equipment: Precut yarn, precut toilet paper rolls, scissors

Activity 5: Glitter ball: Pour Pledge into plastic ornament ball. Swish around gently (try not to create bubbles) to coat the inside. Pour excess out. Pour glitter into ball and swirl around until ornament is coated with glitter on the inside. Put top back onto ornament. Equipment: Pledge, ornament balls, glitter

Activity 6: Tin can stilts—punch holes in cans with can opener; tie string through cans—should come up to mid thigh. Learn to walk on stilts. Option: decorate paper to go on outside of can to personalize. Equipment required: cans, string, can openers (HHS#7)

The girls had so much fun on the stilts. They even choreographed a small routine together. We forget that sometimes it's the simple things that give them pleasure.

12:15-1:15—Lunch—pizza on English muffins, vegetables

1:15-2:00—Closing

Meeting #8 & #9: Sparks Campfire

Meeting #8

You and Others: Learn How to Plan (YaO3)

6:30-7:00--Patrol Time: We gave them evaluation sheets to evaluate the Halloween party last week. (YaO3#1)

7:00-7:30--Horseshoe: We talked about each activity from the Halloween party and what went well and what didn't. Each activity had some positives and negatives. We had a couple of girls who took the constructive criticism poorly, but we explained that no one did a bad job--we were just discussing what could be done differently next time to improve things. The main takeaways this year were that they would prefer a craft to a spooky story, and the spooky story wasn't very spooky.

7:30-8:00--A Sparks group meets at the same time as us down the hall. They have all new leaders (plus an experienced Junior Leader), so we offered to come teach them some Guiding songs. We spent time this meeting getting ready.

I gave the patrols the table of contents from my songbook that I've put together of songs that I know. I have them organized by campfire order, and asked them to pick 3 or 4 from each section that we could teach the Sparks. Becky's Guiding Resource has a great visual on how to organize a campfire.

Once each Patrol had a list, we went through them as a group to see what they came up with and then whittled them down into a small program for next week. We asked them to keep in mind that Sparks can't read well, so they have to be songs that Sparks can  learn fairly easily. This is what they came up with:

8:00-8:30--We sang some of the songs, to make sure we all knew them.

Meeting #9

You and Others: Learn about Leadership in a Group (YaO1)

6:30-7:30--We went straight to the Sparks meeting room. They had their opening, and then we joined them in a campfire circle. We had an indoor campfire, made from wood and Christmas lights.

We went around the circle and everyone introduced themselves and then we had some fun singing! We overplanned and had more songs than could fit in 30 minutes. We skipped the yells and chants and some of the silly songs. We finished with On My Honour and Taps.

After Taps, the Sparks group served everyone Smores. They toasted marshmallows in a toaster oven, and then put them between two chocolate chip cookies. Delicious!

7:30-8:30--We went back to our meeting room and played some games. We started with one we had prepared last year and never got around to using. It's from the Cookie Rising section under Teamwork. You put the letters of the alphabet on cards and spread them out in a defined area. Then the girls have to touch them in order and each girl has to touch at least one letter. They need to figure out how to do it on their own. They started by going in order around the circle, which resulted in girls having to reach far across the circle to touch a letter. It took them 56 seconds. Then we helped them think up ways they could improve their time. It took some effort and some prompting but eventually they figured out if they each took letters that were close to them, they could do it faster. Then we had to remind them that every girl had to touch one. We have some competitive girls, so when some girls were slower to touch their letter, others touched it for them and then not everyone touched a letter. But eventually, they all touched a letter and could do it in 23 seconds! (YaO1#2)

Then we tried another "teamwork" game, which is really hard. The girls sit in a circle and can't discuss strategy. Then they have to count, but only one girl can talk at a time. There are some that insist on always saying a number or trying to say it faster than anyone else (again, the competitive ones) and some who never said a word, waiting for others to go first. I think the highest they got to was 8. (YaO1#2)

Then we tried "What Are You Doing?" again, but it seems to work better with 10-12. With 19 girls, the ones who are waiting get too disinterested. We tried splitting them into 2 groups for it, but by then they weren't interested so we regrouped.

Since they were lined up opposite each other, we tried doing Caimarusa. We could sing the song and mostly remembered the movements, but I think we had one step missing. It was still fun though!

Meeting #7: Volunteering at the Food Bank

We couldn't have the school for our meeting tonight so it was a perfect night to go to the food bank. Every day they get more leftover bread from the grocery stores than they can use so our job was to dump the old stuff. And the girls had a blast! We dumped 115 bread flats in about an hour.

We ran out of dumpster space and we had some time before the parents came so I taught them a game I learned at conference. 

What Are You Doing?--the girls line up in two single file lines, with the girls at the head of each line facing each other. One girl starts doing an action, say tying her shoe the other girl asks, "What are you doing?"  The first girl names an action she isn't doing, say eating an ice cream cone. The second girl starts doing that action while the first girl goes to the end of her line. Then they just keep doing this. 

I thought they'd ask to stop, but they seemed to really like it and played for about 20 minutes. It was a great leaving (or coming) game because the number of girls didn't affect game play. They could pop in and out line easily!

Nova Scotia Guider Conference

This past weekend, I attended the biannual Nova Scotia Guider Conference. Every two years, Province puts on a learning weekend for all provincial Guiders (and Rangers this year). It's a great time with lots of learning and laughing.

On Friday, once we found the hotel (Truro is not that big!), it started with the Opening Ceremonies. Our Chief Commissioner Sharon Callahan was a surprise guest and said some words, along with our Provincial Commissioner Holly Thompson. The MC and Conference Chair Debbie Mellish was hilarious the whole weekend and did a great job keep things moving. Then we sang Make New Friends in a round and it sounded great.

Make new friends and keep the old
One is silver and the other gold.

A circle is round and has no end
That's how long I want to be your friend.

Then we invited all of District Guiders who were there (6, plus our Area Commissioner) back to our room to hang out and we had lots of fun.

Climbing Jacob's ladder

In the morning after breakfast, we had a joint session on Social Media, let by @talya_talks, who moderates GGC's social media sites like @girlguidesofcan and the GGC Facebook page. Nova Scotia has just started their Twitter feed @GGCNovaScotia and Facebook page and Talya talked about how we can help build that up and why it's important. I don't tweet often--I use my Twitter for reading mostly--but I then spent the day tweeting all about conference #nsguiderconference.

My morning was a double session, which was a hike and geocaching. Victoria Park is a 400-acre woodland park and trail system right in Truro--we could walk there from the hotel. We stopped to try to find a geocache at a small park on the way, but it was hidden too well! We were all around it but just couldn't figure out where it was.

At the falls

There are two main features at Victoria Park. The first is Jacob's Ladder, a 175-step climb! There is a break about halfway up, which most people took advantage of. The picture is from the halfway point, so we still had a ways to go!

The second are the falls--Waddell Falls and Joseph Howe Falls. We'd had a wet week leading up to the weekend, so the falls were flowing beautifully. We were hiking for 3 hours and it was great to get out of the hotel and in the fresh air. Brenda Harvey was our facilitator and since she is local to the area, had lots of great information and tidbits about the park and Truro.

Girl Guide tree carving

The streets of Truro have tree carvings that were commissioned when a lot of the old elm trees had to be cut down due to Dutch Elm disease. On the way back from Victoria Park, we went down the street that had the one that the Colchester Area Girl Guides commissioned.

My first session after lunch was called Trendy Crafts for Guides and Pathfinders. Jennifer Trott-Zisserson is a Guider who is also a Grade 5 teacher and she loves to craft purposeful crafts--more than just colouring and fun foam, which is good for the younger levels but the older girls do want more. She explained Pinterest to those who didn't know what it was and talked about some great craft ideas, like screen printing. Then we got to do some crafts of our own. She had three quick crafts for us to try.

Glitter balls--these are really easy and really pretty. You take a clear plastic or glass ornament ball that you can find at Michael's. You pour clear Pledge cleaner into the ball and swish it around to coat the inside and then pour the excess back into the bottle. Then you pour glitter into the ball and it sticks to the Pledge. It takes more glitter than you expect! And that's it!

Morse Code necklaces/bracelets: This was tedious, though smaller finger might do better with it, and I do like how it turned out. You think up a message in Morse code and write it out (mine says "4th HP Guides"). You add the clasp with crimping beads, then add your message, using long beads for dashes and round beads for dots. You can put crimping beads at each end of your message if you want to keep the message from sliding on the necklace.

Duct Tape Roses: I really liked these and they were quite easy to make too. Cut strips of colourful duct tape into 1" or 1.5" inch strips. You need about 20 (mine had about 10 on it). You fold one corner down not all the way to edge and then fold the other corner down to make a point in the middle. You can either roll it up on itself or around a pencil (like I did). Repeat this for all the other pieces, wrapping them around the first one and staggering the points.

My last session was Drama Queens--Using Drama with Guides and Pathfinders. I signed up for this because I'm not always imaginative and I don't enjoy drama so I wanted some new ideas. As a result, I was dreading it because I knew I'd be out of my comfort zone, but it ended up being my favourite session! There were 15 of us in the session and it was led by Charlotee Dornadic and Darlene Duggan. Charlotte is a drama teacher and has been a Girl Guide member for over 55 years. We learned lots of games and there were a number of outgoing, drama-types in the session, so we laughed a lot too.

We had a bit of time after our last session before supper so we worked on the Scavenger Hunt. With our registration package, we got a list of about 40 questions, and the answers were posted around the hotel. We were proudest of the fact that the largest Pathfinder unit in the province is found in our District!

Dinner was a sit-down turkey dinner. Though we did mix and mingle throughout the day, we had a lovely meal with all of the Guiders from our District. We were joined by some Guiders who had just come for the day, as well as some who we hadn't connected with the night before.

After dinner we had a short group session on the changes to Safe Guide, including the importance of everyone reading the SG4 and knowing what to do in case of an emergency. After that we had campfire, which is always fun. We learned some new songs and sang some old favourites. I finally liked the song "Three Sharp-Toothed Buzzards"! I never understood it before. And Ain't No Flies on Us brought out the competitive side in everyone involved!

We had another evening of fun and good times in our hotel room. We were all very thankful that the clocks went back an hour and we got an extra hour of sleep!

Sunday started after breakfast with an Ideas Market. People bring hat crafts and crafts and crests to sell to raise money for various things like CWFF or international trips. There were camps promoting their facilities and an Area promoting their challenge. 

And we ended the weekend with a closing, giving out door prizes and Scavenger Hunt winners. We ended with Go Well and Safely, one of my favourites, and Daytime Taps.

Conference is always a fun weekend. There are lots of sessions available. Commissioners did COGS, there were the Program Stream sessions, people skills, crafts, drama, outdoor skills. The Conference Team did an amazing job putting everything together and I can't wait until it's time to do it again in two years time!