WAGGGS Program in a Bag

You in Guiding: Learn About WAGGGS (YiG3)

We're doing lapbooks again this year and I decided our WAGGGS meeting we would do as Program in a Bag. Each Patrol works at their own pace and does as many of the activities as they can. Each activity is in a plastic sheet protector with the instructions face-side down.

I gave them 8 activities to start and if they finished those, then they could pick from the last 3. 3 out of 4 Patrols finished 8-9 activities. One Patrol had difficulties and only completed 5 of the activities. I sent them home with what they missed so they could earn their square.

WAGGGS Program in a Plastic Bag

Activity #1: Uniforms (YiG3#5) (Paper Doll file)
INSTRUCTIONS: St Vincent and Grenadines in our Twinning Country partner. Learn about their uniforms by
1. Colouring the paper doll in the appropriate colours
2. Cutting it out
3. Gluing it into your lapbook.
Equipment: Colouring pages, Markers/Coloured pencils, Scissors, Glue

Activity #2: World Centers (YiG3#2) (World Centers Posters, Updated Booklet with Posters)
INSTRUCTIONS:
1. Cut out and fold your World Centers booklet.
2. Find the matching poster for each page and fill in the details.
• For the map, put an X at each location. Don’t worry if you can’t write the whole name.
3. Put the booklet into pocket in your Lap Book.
Equipment: Booklet, Posters, glue

Note: This activity originated with Owl and Toadstool. I updated the booklet to include Kusafiri (and subsequently, she also updated her booklet!) She created the original posters file, I created the Updated Booklet and posters, based on her design.

Activity #3: World Flag (YiG3#4)
INSTRUCTIONS: Play a World Flag beetle game.
You are to draw the World Flag, but you can only draw what the dice tells you draw! Using the following instructions, take turns throwing the die and see who can complete their World Flag first. Use the World Flag card to show you where everything should go. After the game is over, you can put the World Flag card into a pocket in your Lap Book.
Equipment: Paper, D10, pencils, World Flag cards from Guide store
NOTE: This game can be adapted to use a regular 6-sided die instead of a 10-sided die (Game taken from this site)

Activity #4: KNOTTING (YiG1#5)
INSTRUCTIONS: Tie Reef Knots! Time yourselves for 5 minutes. See how long you can make the rope by tying the smaller pieces together with reef knots, one person at a time. When the time is up, measure your rope. At the end, we’ll see which Patrol could tie the longest rope.
After measuring, untie all the knots so the ropes are ready for the next patrol.
Equipment: Ropes, Masking tape (for measuring)
Hint: Reef knot—Left over right and under; right over left and under.

Activity #5: Camp Skills: Bedrolls (Camp-out badge #3)
INSTRUCTIONS: Using the supplied equipment, make a proper bedroll.
Equipment: Tarp, Sleeping bag, Blanket, Pillow, Stuffy, Bungee cords/rope

Activity #6: Teamwork
INSTRUCTIONS: Flood! The flood waters are rising! Try to fit your entire group onto a "rock" (a plastic tarp). Once everyone's on the "rock", the flood waters can rise further (i.e Fold the tarp in half and then fit everyone on it again). How small a "rock" can your group fit on?
Equipment: Tarp

Activity #7: Problem Solving
INSTRUCTIONS:
1. With your Patrol holding hands, pass a hula hoop around the circle without letting go.
2. Try it again, and see if you can do it faster.
3. Add the second hula hoop and send it in the opposite direction and try to get both hula hoops back to where they started.
Equipment: Hula hoops

Activity #8: CWFF: INSTRUCTIONS (YiG3#3) (Word Search)
1. Fold Word Search in half twice.
2. Glue folded Word Search into Lap Book
3. Glue CWFF label onto Word Search
4. Work on Word Search
Equipment: Word Search, CWFF Label, Glue

Activity #9: Minutes
INSTRUCTIONS:
1. Stand in a circle. Every Guide closes her eyes. At the word “Go”, each Guide must estimate the length of a minute, and sit down when she thinks the minute is up. Ask a Leader to tell you who was closest.
2. How many times can each Guide touch all four walls in a minute? Write down your score.
3. Every Guide must balance on one foot for one minute. Ask a Leader to time you.
Equipment: Leader, Stopwatch

Activity #10: Dexterity
INSTRUCTIONS: Complete a jigsaw upside down without peeking. When you are finished, turn it over to see the picture.
Equipment: Puzzle

Activity #11: Gadgets
INSTRUCTIONS: Make a camp gadget.
Equipment: Skewers, Rope, Program book

Special Event: The Bigger Picture

It was time for the biennial NS Guider's Conference. The theme this year was The Bigger Picture and if you look for the hashtag #GGCNSBiggerPicture2015 on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, you can find lots of posts and pictures of all the goings-on!

We started on Friday with the opening ceremonies, which was MCed by Brenda Harvey. Our Twinning Leads, Lashauna and Janice, showed us a great SVG tourism video that got everyone on their feet and dancing.


Then we played Family Feud with #twinning2020 questions about our partner country, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. Questions included: Which countries are paired with which provinces? What sports are most popular in SVG? What are the most important agricultural products in SVG? What are the names of the levels of Guiding in SVG? What are the 5 areas of focus in the SVG Ranger program? 

After the opening ceremony was over, we went back to our room and hung out with some young Guiders who are mostly university students. It was lots of fun and we got to meet some new people, which is a great reason to attend Conference!

There were dozens of sessions to choose from on Saturday and I enjoyed all 4 that got. 

Music for the Musically Challenged
I love singing campfire songs so it's always nice to learn some new ones, and there are always new ones to learn. 
Black Socks: I knew this one, but I learned new actions to go with it but they are on Becky's Guiding site if you scroll down.

Make New Friends: Again, I've done this in a round but not with actions. I can't find the actions but I'll try to describe it. Standing in a close circle, everyone puts their right arm in front of the person beside them. Then they take their left hand and hold the hand of the person two to their left. Everyone should have the same arm crossed over top all the way around the circle. The leader starts with both of her arms on top of the other arms. Then when you start singing, you bring your arms over the person's head and this goes around the circle until everyone has their arms around each other. Then you can go back the way you came you'll end up as you started. 

Herman the Worm craft

I Let Her Go Go: We learned this when we "travelled" to Curacao!

Herman the Worm: Always a fun one. We changed the people Herman eats into a Spark, a Brownie, a Guide, a Pathfinder, and a Ranger. We were also given a simple craft that could be done by the girls when you teach them the song.

It's Not Hard: This was new to me and should be fun to teach to my girls.

Singing in the Rain: I did this as a girl, and it's an old standby of mine, especially if we're camping in the rain!

Dum-Dum-Da-Da

Dum-Dum-Da-Da: This one was completely new to me. Here's a Youtube video which shows it being sung and with slightly different actions. I love the way this camp director uses a "Ready" call and repeat to settle everyone so he doesn't have to yell over them. I may need to try it!

Rain Storm

Canadian Girl Guides (yell)

Good King Wenceslas with Barnyard Choir: A video of us singing this at Conference closing! You could use any easy song to do this with the girls, like Jingle Bells.

It Isn't Any Trouble: On the fourth verse, you can just make a laughing sound and then you can sing it through and each line will end with S-M-I-L-E, then G-R-I-N, then L-A-U-G-H and then the last line you would laugh.

Say Why: One I never sang as a girl, but love it now that I've learned it as an adult. We sang this at our last camp!

It's a Small World: with Guiding verses

T.I.R.O: I've never heard this one before and it was another fun action-type song. Here's a video, because I could never describe it! The only difference is that we put our right leg in front of the neighbor's left, which put us even more off balance!

And then we ended with Linger and Zulu Farewell (Go Well and Safely).

SUPER GUIDER GREATEST HITS
Two of our Guiders got to attend the Super Guider Conference in Ontario last year and brought back some of their learnings to share. They also gave us each a flash drive with more info on it, because it's hard to condense two days worth of sessions into 75 minutes! 

Mary Louise talked about outside activities and easy ways to incorporate outside activities into your meetings and we had a fun game of Oh Deer. The space wasn't large, but it was perfect for Guiders who really don't want to have to run!

Caira talked about communication. We played a game where you draw on each other's back and the front person then has to draw it on paper (a form of telephone). Then we played in pairs (back-to-back) and one person had to describe it to the other using only words and the other person had to draw it. Then we did the activity where you say something mean and squirt out toothpaste. Then you say something nice and have to put the toothpaste back in the tube, showing how hard it is to take something back once it's been said. 

This was a great session and I can't wait to delve into all of the information on my flash drive.

TWINNING 2020
After lunch, I did a session with our Twinning Leads, Janice and Lashauna. They talked about the Twinning Resources on the NS Girl Guide page and what's been done so far and then what's in store leading up to Thinking Day. 

Then we did an activity from the WTD Activity pack. The theme this year is Connect, and we did #3: Connect with How I Learn. I like making origami, so I had a lot of fun with this activity. I'm a visual learning, so the heart origami where we only got to look at instructions, was my favourite way to do it. 

Finally we made some Caribbean punch from the Let's Meet SVG: Culture Sharing Activity.

PROMISE AND LAW
My next session of the day was on the Promise and Law and activities to incorporate activities into our meeting. I'm not good at touchy-feely stuff, so this was a good session for me to stretch my comfort. 

One activity was there were papers hanging on the walls with various places like Outdoors, Community, Friends, School. Then we had to write down things we can do each place that relate to the Promise and Law. 

BRIDGING
The last session of the day was a chance for Guiders of each branch to get together and discuss and share ideas. 

Cats on a bus

After our supper banquet, the Rangers led a number of games for the Guiders. There were 5 or 6 activities, and we rotated through 4 of them. We did the back drawing game of telephone, a drama game called Get on the Bus, a version of Headbanz, and Pictionary. They all did a great job running the activities--they'll be great leaders in the future!

All in all, it was a great weekend! I met lots of people, learned lots, and had lots of fun. Thanks to the Conference Committee for putting on such a great event. See everyone again in 2 years! 

Special Event: Camp in a Year (Residential)

Nova Scotia Brownies 100th Anniversary Challenge

You in Guiding: Learn About Guiding (YiG2)
You in Guiding: Be Involved in Your Community (YiG4)

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

Discovering You: Discover What's Important to You (DY1)
Discovering You: Discover Your Creativity (DY2)
Discovering You: Stay Fit and Healthy (DY3)

 

Beyond You: Try New Things (BY3)

Campfire Leading badge (CL)

For our camp we completed the NS Brownie 100th Anniversary Challenge (full disclosure--I helped create the challenge!) and we had our theme as Camp in a Year. The two dovetailed nicely together and we had a wonderful time!

FRIDAY

7:00-7:30 Arrival

7:30-8:00 Orientation and Ice Breaker: The girls played the Human Knot as we waited for our last girl to arrive. Then we went over the rules and the plan for the weekend.

8:00-9:00 Glow Stick Ring Toss (4 groups)—

This was really fun. We had two different versions of the game--2 groups had a hoop made out of bracelets and 3 necklace pendants to throw into the hoops. The other 2 groups have 4 water bottles with necklace pendants in them and used bracelets to try to throw onto the water bottles. (STEM #2)

Supplies: 5 bracelets/hoop, 3 necklace pendants/hoop, 8 water bottles, 8 necklace pendants, 6 bracelets 

While we were outside, we also lit sparklers, then had our countdown to 1915 New Year's, and sang Auld Lang Syne.

9:00-9:30 Mug Up—Apple juice and Sprite in plastic champagne glasses. Appetizers of crackers, cheese and turkey kielbasa. They had a choice of either straight apple juice or apple juice mixed with pop.

9:30-10:00 Campfire—We had a campfire sing-a-long. (CL#1) We sang:

Fire's Burning

Buddies and Pals

Ging Gang Gooli

Sharks

Barges

On My Honour

Taps

10:00-11:00 Get ready for bed

11:00 Lights out

SATURDAY

7:00-8:00 Wake up and make valentines. Each girl made 2 valentines to give to the girl sitting on either side of her at breakfast.

Supplies: card making supplies or premade valentines 

8:00-9:00 Valentine’s Breakfast--Pink pancakes and fruit

After breakfast, the girls did their duties before we started our stations.

9:00-11:30 Four stations, 30 minutes each

STATION 1: Birthday boxes (SERVICE #1) (YiG4#3) Each group will make create 1 box with the supplies needed to have a small birthday party. 

Supplies: Cake mix, frosting, candles, cups, paper plates, decorations, party favours, napkins, small toy for birthday child (we got Beanie Boos, since our girls love stuffed animals so much), wrapping paper to decorate boxes, cookie boxes

STATION 2: Brownie History (HERITAGE)—One of our leaders still has her Brownie badges on a piece of yellow felt so she brought that and the girls had to guess what they thought the badges were for and then they searched through the Brownie Badge Archive from the Ontario Girl Guides that had been printed off to find out what they really were (YiG2#6)

STATION 3: Fractals (STEM #3)

In 1915, Waclaw Sierpinski describes the Sierpinski triangle for the first time, though the pattern had been used in decorations for years before.  Fractals are self-similar patterns that can be found in many places, but nature is a great place to start looking.  The Sierpinski triangle is the simplest fractal to recreate.

• Dots are the midpoints of the edges, half way between the corners.  Connect the dots as shown below to form a new triangle, pointing down.  Colour it in.
• You are now left with three white triangles.  Find the midpoints of each of these three triangles, connect them, and color in the resulting triangles (pointing down).
• Each of the 3 triangles now turns into 3 smaller triangles, leaving 9 small white triangles.  Connect the midpoints of each of the 9 white triangles to form 27 smaller triangles, pointing downward.  Colour them in.
• Continue this process if you wish, as long as you have patience.
• When you are done, cut the big triangle out and write your name on the back.
• Next join your fractal triangle with 2 other fractal triangles to form a bigger triangle.
• Then add 2 more groups of 3 triangles to form a bigger triangles made of 9 triangles

Supplies: Pre-printed triangles, markers/colour pencils (BY3#4)

STATION 4: Campfire songs (ARTS #1) For each of the four groups, I prepared a different set of songs from 1915 or earlier. With each group, we sang/learned all 7 or 8 songs in the set, and then each girl chose a song to lead at campfire that night. Then we practiced what they need to do to lead a song (say the name of the song, divide the group if it's going to be in rounds, explain if there are repetitive parts in the song). (YaO1#5, CL#2, CL#3, CL#6) (Songs with lyrics, Word doc)

9:00-9:30 STATION 1

9:30-10:00 STATION 2

10:00-10:30 Easter Snack—Snacks were put into Easter baggies (one of our Guiders has everything you'd ever want) and hidden outside for them to find.

10:30-11:00 STATION 3

11:00-11:30 STATION 4

11:30-1:30 LUNCH Cinco de Mayo—Tacos in a bag. We've started taking the camp stoves to residential camp as well as tent camping, to give the girls more exposure to using them. 

Cook hamburger on camp stoves, chop tomatoes and lettuce, grate cheese. Everything goes into a Ziploc bag with tortilla chips, salsa, sour cream

After lunch, we had a pinata for them. We had mostly non-candy--stickers, pencils, notepads, plastic rings--plus Welch's gummy snacks, chocolate bars, and rockets. They were told to take one of each non-candy thing and then they were allowed to have 2 food products. 

We lined them up from youngest to oldest, to take away the fighting over who got to go first. For the first time through, they were blindfolded and got to take one swing. The next time through, they weren't blindfolded but again, just one swing at the pinata. I think they all got 3 chances to hit it before it broke enough to spill its content. 

1:30-2:30 Quiet time/Free time--Now is the time that they can hang out in the bunk room. We also set out craft supplies for them to do with as they please and to make presents for their secret buddies.

2:30-3:15 Afternoon snack—Eid al-Fitr. We have a Muslim girl in our unit and wanted to include a holiday that's important to her as well. I emailed her mom for suggestions and they offered to bring the date squares for our snack. The date squares were DELICIOUS and every girl tried them and most of them loved them.

Date squares, carrots, cucumbers

3:15-4:15 Outside games  (ACTIVE LIVING #2) 

Playing Mousetrap

We organized some outdoor running games and had a beautiful afternoon for it. We started with some tag games, then played Mousetrap and Pip, Squeak, Charlie. Then we got some ropes and balls out and let them play some games on their own. 

If it had rained, we would have done some inside, since we had a fairly big space in our building. If we hadn't had a space, we would have played board games instead.

(DY3#4)

Supplies: jump ropes, hula hoops, balls

4:15-5:00 LBP Time line: I took the story of LBP that is in the BC Lady Baden-Powell challenge booklet and created 12 milestones in LBP's life, while also adding in when she visited Nova Scotia. I made 4 sets for the relay race. First, I read the story out loud to them, and then they had a relay race where they had to gather the 12 colour-coded pieces, and then put them into order. (LBP Relay race, Word doc) (YiG2#1)

5:00-6:30 Supper—Halloween-inspired food. We had Mummy dogs (crescent roll hot dogs), spider dogs (each end of the hot dog was sliced into four and then boiled, which makes the "arms" curl up), plus a pasta salad.

6:30-7:30 Quiet time/free time--More time on their own

7:30-9:00 Campfire

The girls all did a great job leading their songs at campfire that night. (CL#7, CL#8)

9:00-9:30 Mug Up – Christmas Eve. We roasted marshmallows over the fire and then everyone got Smore mix as well (Teddy grahams, mini marshmallows, and chocolate chips). Plus hot chocolate, which was much needed on the cool October night!

9:30-10:30 Get Ready for bed

10:30 Lights Out

SUNDAY

7:00 Wake up

8:00-9:00 Bags must be packed and outside before campers are allowed to have breakfast. Once finished breakfast, they can help clean the building.

Breakfast: Muffins, fruit, boiled eggs

9:00-10:00 Clean up

10:00 Guide’s Own Oh, they were so intrigued by the stockings! We filled them as though we were in 1915, with oranges, chocolate, a small toy (rubber duckie), and their earned badges. We started by singing Buddies and Pals, revealing our Secret Buddies, singing Say Why, sharing our Apples and Onion (2 things we liked about camp, 1 thing we didn't), singing Softly Falls, opening our stockings, and finally singing Daytime Taps.

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 #8: Remembrance Day

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

Beyond You: Discover Your Community (BY1)

Remembrance Day fell on our meeting day this year. We couldn't have our meeting at the school that night, but we could attend the community ceremony!

Our whole District participated and we had over 120 members in attendance! The Guides, Scouts, and Cadets all contribute to the ceremony--we parade in, we have members "stand guard" at the cenotaph. This year, one of my Guides read In Flanders Field.

Lined up, ready to march in 

I think this is an important activity to be involved in and am always pleased at how well the event is attended by our Guiding community!

And I always tell the girls that there is very little that we do that doesn't relate to programming in some way. Participating in the ceremony is an activity of our choice that helps us be involved in the community (YiG4#6) and as a Unit, we participated in a community event (BY1#3).

Meeting #7: Valentines for Vets

You and Others: Learn How to Plan (YaO3)

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

Event Planning

6:30-7:00: Patrol time--We gave the girls evaluation forms so they could evaluate the planning and execution of the Halloween party we had. Party Evaluation form (Word doc) (YaO3#1, EP#4)

7:00-7:15: Horseshoe--We had 3 new girls join after our Bring a Friend night, so that was great! We started off explaining to the new girls a bit about Guiding. Then we had 2 girls who had brought in treats they'd made for the Tasty Treats badge and present what else they had done for the badge.

7:15-7:30: Our meeting next week falls on Remembrance Day so we decided to spend the night working on Remembrance Day activities. We handed out the Peace badge worksheet that we'd created a few years ago for them to fill out and bring back to earn the Peace badge.

Then we talked about what Remembrance Day was and what veterans were. 

7:30-8:00: -Valentines for Vets (Guider Cara on the Brownies Meet blog has a great write-up on Valentines for Vets)--We gave them lots of supplies so each could make a Valentine that we could send to Valentine's for Vets. Since Valentines need to be sent early in January, this seemed like a good time to do Valentine's for Vets, with the war time/Remembrance Day theme.

We gave them preprinted verses that they could glue in the cards (we took them from theValentines for Vets site), and a preprinted label that said "4th Hammonds Plains Guides" to glue on the back, and lots of stamps and stickers and pretty paper that they could use to decorate the cards with. (YiG4#3)

Meeting #4: International Day of the Girl

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

Discovering You: Discover What's Important to You (DY1)

International Day of the Girl Challenge (IDotG)

6:30-7:00 Patrol Time--I made up a worksheet for them to create their Superhero. While they were working on this, we collected dues and cookie money and health forms. (Superhero Worksheet Word Doc)

7:00-7:15 Horseshoe--We talked about what International Day of the Girl is. I tried reading the information from the Challenge, but it uses a lot of big words that we had to rephrase to help them understand. Then each girl shared her Superhero that she created. (DY1#6)

7:15-7:40 Literary Heroes--Before the meeting, as leaders we brainstormed books that we had at our houses that we could bring in. We had Hunger Games, Harry Potter, Anne of Green Gables, Dear Canada Diaries, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Trixie Belden, Sheree Fitch. Before we showed the girls what we had brought, we asked them to name books that were written by women or had girls/women as main characters. Well, our girls are great readers! They came up with most of what we brought and then so much more. (DY1#6)

As I wrote them down on the white board, another leader wrote each one on a slip of paper. Then we had the girls draw a slip of paper and describe the book/author without using the title or character names. They seemed to have a lot of fun with this.

7:40-8:010 Real life heroes: I knew our girls wouldn't sit still to have us read them stories about the real life heroes in the challenge (Roya Shams and Danika Bax). Malala Yousafzai had just won the Nobel Peace Prize, and so I looked for a story about her and found a good one on Time for Kids. So we gave each Patrol one person to read about and then present it to the rest of the group. They all wanted to do skits, of course! They did a pretty good job of conveying the message for each girl, with a little summary at the end.  (YaO1#4 or YaO1#6)

8:10-8:20: How Are You a Hero?--We didn't have time for each girl to create a sheet on her own, but we worked together to come up with ideas about how we are Every Day Heroes in our Guiding and non-Guiding lives.

8:20-8:30 Closing--We cleaned up the room and then sang Taps.

The meeting came together really well and I think the girls had lots of fun.

Meeting #3: Understand the Promise, Law, and Motto

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

Patrol Time: Promise Crossword (from Ontario Leader Ladder p76) (YiG1#1)

Horseshoe

Patrol Leader Speeches and Elections: We will have three patrols this year, so we needed 6 girls to run, which included 2nd years. We only had 3 girls who wanted to be Patrol Leaders, and 4 who wanted to be Seconders, which meant 1 girl was going to miss out. Only the girls who were running for Patrol Leader had to give a speech. (YiG1#3)

While the votes are counted, we played the reef knot game.

Reef Knot Game (Ontario Leader Ladder p45): We hid the rope as the girls arrived, around the room and down the hallway. We had about 35 pieces of rope for 11 girls. They were in 3 groups, and they could go out and look one girl at a time, and had to tie the knot before the next girl could go look. Once all the rope was found, they measured their ropes against each other to see whose was longest. (YiG1#5)

Handshake Dance--this is the activity from the Program Book. Since we have a small number of girls, we played like musical chairs and had eliminations and a winner. Our Junior Leader picked "All About That Base" for the song for them to dance to. (YiG1#4)

Election Results: We named the Patrol leaders. As we named the Seconders, they got to pick the Patrol Leader to work with. Then we drew names and filled out the Patrols. Our 2 first years picked different Patrols, which I was happy about.

For Patrol Emblems, we went through our existing badges to try to use them up. We had 4 Poppies, 4 Forget-Me-Nots, and 3 Bluebells. We explained to the girls that we were "Using our Resources Wisely" and they didn't seem to mind. One girl was missing, so we let the group of 4 pick first. Then we let the next group pick and whichever picked Forget-Me-Nots would be the group that the missing girl would be in.

Be Prepared activity: We set up three stations around the room. The girls would go to each location and write down what they'd need to Be Prepared at each location. When they were done, we discussed their lists. They came up with some creative ideas, like an air-conditioned RV for the desert! (Supplies: Signs for around the room and papers for the girls Word Document) (YiG1#2)

Promise, Law, Motto game from the Guide Active Living Toolbox (other levels can be found on the NB Active Living page). We'd say the first part of a line of the Promise and Law and they'd have to find it around the room and do the activity that was with it, like hop on one foot, etc. All of this is in the Toolbox. (YiG1#1)

Closing

It was a lot of little activities, but it went nicely from talking to active and back again.

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

Meeting #17: Discover Your Community

You in Guiding: Learn about WAGGGS (YiG3)

 

Beyond You: Discover Your Community (BY1)

6:30-7:00: We don't have any meetings set aside just for WAGGGS this year, but we're still trying to include some information for the girls. Girl Guides of Southwest Texas has some interesting worksheets about Thinking Day/WAGGGS that we printed off for the girls to work on during Patrol Time. I included the following sheets:
World Thinking Day Calendar: This has some trivia questions that are American leaning, but there were some interesting questions that our girls could answer too.
Fun Facts about the Four World Centers
World Thinking Day Friendship Circle Activity
WAGGGS Dot to Dot Activity

7:00-7:10 Horseshoe

7:10-8:10 Round Robins
Activity #1: We printed off a large map of our community. (Luckily, I work in an engineering firm with large plotters, so every once in a while, I get my co-worker to print things off for me). Each girl would mark on the map where she lived, and then as a group they figured out where all the important places were in our community--schools, stores, fire station, etc. (BY1#2)

Activity #2: We borrowed a wheelchair and a walker from a pharmacy and used them to determine how accessible our meeting place is. Now we're in a school, so it is very accessible, with wide doors, automatic doors, an elevator, and accessible bathrooms. But we talked about each of these features and what would make a building inaccessible. And they were all excited to be pushed in the wheelchair. :) (BY1#4)

Activity #3 & #4: They spend two sessions continuing to work on their WAGGGS sheets. We directed them to work on the Friendship Circle Activity, which was pretty neat. I printed off some pages from Owl and Toadstool of what uniforms look like around the world and told the girls to colour each girl in the cutout a different uniform colour. (YiG3#5)