Plants and Animals badge

Plants and Animals badge (PA)

Beyond You: Learn About Our Environment (BY4)

We used two sessions to complete the Plants and Animals badge: A trip to the Shubenacadie Wildlife Park and then finished up at our meeting. (BY4#4)

Animals:

I contacted Shubenacadie Wildlife Park. They put on lots of different sessions, but none really fit what we wanted but they were great to work with and I sent them our badge requirements and they created a program to suit our needs!

Raccoon footprint

We arrive and started learning about how animals and plants are classified. She introduced the concept of  kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species. Then we looked at their shell collection and determined if they were bivalves (clams, oysters), or gastropods (snails). (PA#8)

We chose to include a craft with our session, so we made Plaster of Paris footprints. They had lots of different footprints to choose from: skunk, raccoon, deer, etc.

Next we went on a tour of the park. Sue was great and gave us lots of great info. It was a cool day, so we got to see animals moving around and being active that you don't necessarily see when you go to the park on a hot summer's day! They each had a clipboard and wrote down the Latin names of the animals we saw. (PA#6)

After our tour, we went back to the learning center and did a few more activities. She set up four hula hoops labelled AIR, FOREST, DESERT, WATER and a bin of stuffed animals that they had to place in the environment that they lived. The girls loved doing this and was such a great activity! They even turned the hula hoops into Venn diagrams (Owls live in the air and the forest!) (PA#5)

It was a 3-hour session and the girls learned lots and had a great time.

For girls who couldn't go to the Wildlife Park, we created a worksheet for them to complete and home. (Animals worksheet, Word Doc)

PLANTS
6:30-7:00 Patrol Time: I created a fun worksheet to learn about all of the things that can be made from plants! (Plant puzzle, Word Doc) (PA#1)

7:00-7:15 Horseshoe We discussed what we learned on the worksheet.

7:15-8:00 Plant people/chia pets
Supplies: plastic cups, pantyhose, soil, googly eyes, grass seed, spray bottle

The girls put grass seed into the toe of the pantyhose and then filled with soil and tied a knot in the pantyhose. Put the panythose into the plastic cup with the knot side down. Glue on googly eyes, draw on a mouth, and then mist water onto the top to wet the seeds. The grass will grow and create and hair! (PA#2)

8:00-8:15  Plant nourishment--This takes pre-prep. Around lunch time (or you can do it the night before), I put a pice of celery into water with red food colouring, another into a glass with blue food colouring, and a third piece of celery I split halfway up and put one side into the red water and one side into the blue water. The result was pretty cool--the leaves on the split one were red and blue! We talked about how the celery veins pulled the water up to feed the leaves, and that's how plants drink water from the soil.

8:15-8:30 Clean-up and closing

Meeting #9: Volunteering at Food Bank

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

Supporting Your Community

We went to our local food bank to help out for the evening. We started out by hearing a presentation on how many people use the food banks in Nova Scotia each year and how many are children and of all the ways Feed Nova Scotia helps the community. (YiG4#1)

Then we sorted through parsnips and onions that they'd received in bulk from farmers. We had to remove any that were rotten and repackage the rest into smaller, more manageable boxes. The girls had lots of fun with it and worked very diligently and got it all done before it was time to go.

It's always so rewarding to help out at the food bank, no matter what the task and the girls always seem to really enjoy it. (YiG4#3)

And this was our 5th year going as a unit, and Feed NS gave us a plaque, thanking us for our service!

And they're even all wearing their uniforms, more or less. 

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!

Meeting #29: Community Heritage outing

Beyond You: Discover Your Community

We were looking for a way to cover off another piece of the Discover Your Community square. We live in a rural suburb, with a number of subdivisions that have been around for less then 20 years, with a lot of older houses on the main road through our community.

We got in contact with Blue Barn Farms through a community heritage society and it was a really interesting night. When we first arrived, the girls got to into the chicken barns and see the baby chicks under the heat lamps.

Then we went into the barn, which was over 100 years old. The owner's father-in-law was there, and his great-grandfather had first bought the land in 1849. So it was a family farm and was still in the family. He told us all about how the farm used to be, before there was electricity and what our community was like all those years ago. (BY1#1 or #6)

Then we got to into the cow section and see the calves with their mothers and watch them drink their milk, and there were also more chickens in the barn, which were a few weeks older than the other ones we saw and didn't need heat lamps any more.

All of the animals on the farm are grain- or grass-fed and they are free range, which also ties in nicely with the work we did with Operation Earth Action and buying locally produced food.

Then we went back outside and played Stella-Ella-Ola while we waited for the parents to come pick them up.

Special Event #3: Winter Hike

Beyond You: Explore the Outdoors and Nature (YiG2)

Since we had to cancel our meeting due to snow, we arranged for a hike on Saturday. We had a girl moving away and we wanted a chance to say good-bye to her before she moved to New Mexico.

It was cold and there was lots of snow on the ground, but it was sunny and there wasn't much wind at all, so it was a beautiful day for a hike.

We had one girl who started complaining about 15 minutes into a 2 hour hike, but we got her through it. We stopped every 15 minutes or so for a water break, and at the halfway turnaround point, we stopped for a snack.

As we walked, we looked for interesting things along the way. We saw a river that was still running, and dogs, and animal prints in the snow, and ducks swimming in the water. (YiG2#1)

On our return, our complaining girl walked at the front and stopped complaining, and said that the snack break was enough and her legs didn't hurt anymore. We think knowing how far she had to walk back helped her--though she did declare that she was never going on a hike again!

We had a great time in the beautiful outdoors!

Meeting #7: Fire Station

Fire Safety

We found out that we didn't have the school for this night, which was supposed to be our Remembrance Day meeting. We'll have to do Remembrance Day next week, after the fact. But one of our Guiders stepped up and booked the fire station for us.

We sent them the requirements for the badge before we got there, but the fire fighter who had planned to lead the session wasn't going to be there, so when I arrived first, they had just found out we were coming! But I gave them my book and they did an awesome job!

We started upstairs in a classroom where the two fire fighters who were leading discussed most of the aspects of the badge that they needed to learn. They spent about an hour going over the badge requirements, interrupted numerous times by questions! We have a couple of girls who, I swear, had their hands raised almost the whole time. As soon as a question was answered, they raised their hands to ask another.

(Funny side note--before we started, I told them to make sure they had questions and no stories. A few minutes in, one girl raised her hand and started to tell a story. Before the leaders could say anything, the girls sitting behind her gave her a little poke and said, "That's a story." Hee!)

Then we went down to the station bay where the trucks are. The fire fighters put on their gear and masks, then they turned out the lights and got down to crawl around, to show the girls what they would look like if they were in a fire and coming to rescue them. It is a strange sight and a good thing for girls to see if they were ever in a bad situation.

Finally, they got to go on the trucks. They went in five at a time and I don't know what he was telling them, but he explained a bunch of things about the truck. When they came out, they had water fire extinguishers set up and the girls got to try to spray the extinguishers, which they really enjoyed.

We had an activity planned, in case they finished early, but the fire fighters really seemed to enjoy talking to the girls and telling them all about what they do, that they used the whole 2 hours!