Meeting #18: Screen Printing

Beyond You: Try New Things (BY3)

Discovering You: Discover Your Creativity (DY2)

Double Dare greeting cards

We wanted to complete the Try New Things square, so I was trying to think of things we could do. Then I thought of my cousin-in-law, who recently opened up a print studio with her twin sister, called Double Dare Print Studio, where they make really cute greeting cards, post cards, etc. I wasn't sure what their space was like, so I contacted her to see if they could accommodate showing 20 girls what they did.

Unfortunately, their space was smaller than I thought, but I also knew they did a demo at an art gallery one weekend, so I asked her if their equipment was portable and if they could come to us. She thought that was a wonderful idea!

She figured they'd need about 45 minutes to explain to the girls what screen printing is and how it's done and then they'd have a project that the girls could complete and take home. And since it was coming up to Valentine's Day, we'd finish the night with a small Valentine's Day party, with some games and treats.

6:30-6:45--Arrival
We didn't give them a task for Patrol Time, but just gave Bryanna and Alyssa time to set up their equipment.

6:45-6:55--Horseshoe

6:55-7:45--Screen Printing

They explained to the girls their background in art--they both have fine arts degrees--and then the basics of how screen printing works. (DY2#4)

Bryanna created a design especially for us. They wanted to use two colours, so they preprinted the first colour for everyone so there would be time for them to dry. They explained how they got the design from Bryanna's drawing to becoming something that was capable of being printed many times.

It was really interesting to see how it's done! They showed us how to place the design where you want it and how to make sure each subsequent print would be placed similarly, so they turn out mostly the same.

Then each girl got a chance to put the blue trefoil design onto the gold maple leaf. Once all the set-up is done (the hard part), the printing part is very straight-forward and the girls did a great job making their prints. Then the all wanted Bryanna and Alyssa to sign their prints! It was really cute. (BY3#6)

7:45-8:15 Valentine's Party
Once we finished the screen printing, we got to have treats! I made heart-shaped cinnamon cookies, and we brought icing and sprinkles so the girls (and leaders and guests) could decorate their cookies.

Then we played some games that I found on the internet--Valentine's Minute-to-Win-It. We bought lots of candy hearts and gave them plates and chopsticks.

The first game, they had to see how many candy hearts they could transfer from the middle plate to their own plate in a minute, using only chopsticks. They had fun with this!

The second game, they had a minute to stack the candy hearts as high as they could. Again, lots of laughs and some concentrating for this game. They liked the games quite a bit and we played each one twice. We had some little prizes (pencils, erasers, etc) to give to the winners.

8:15-8:30--We had time for a couple of songs and then we did closing.

Thanks so much to Double Dare Print Studio for coming to see us and teaching us all about screen printing. The girls learned a new thing, and then I realized that this also covers bringing a local artist to your meeting to learn about their craft!

Double Dare Print Studio's handmade design for us

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)

Meeting #16: Thinking Day Hat Crafts

Discovering You: Stay Fit and Healthy (DY3)

Fitness Fun (FF)

Fit for Life (FfL)

For Thinking Day, our District is having a skating and pizza party. After skating, we are doing a hat craft swap, so each person is required to bring 3 hat crafts to trade. We had voted on the hat craft we would make at a previous meeting.

We set everything they needed out for them to make the backpack and book.

We told them they didn't have to make one complete one themselves--that they could divide up who made the pencils and who made the books and who made the backpacks, especially since we didn't have enough glue guns for everyone to use them at the same time.

And they turned out quite nice, if I do say so myself!

This took up most of the meeting. They needed to make 4 each--one to keep for themselves and 3 to trade. We gathered up the traders to keep o make sure everything will show up on Thinking Day.

Then we handed out a month calendar and asked them to keep track of how much exercise they did for the month. We asked them to get 20 minutes a day, 3 times a week, which isn't really much, especially since they should be having gym twice a week. They'll need to bring it back filled out and we told them that we'd rather they bring it back with less than the required amount than for them to falsely fill it out. This calendar will used for three pieces of programming! (DY3#4, FF#2, FfL:A)

And we finished the night with campfire songs and closing.

Meeting #15: Ice Rescue/Safety

You and Others: Learn About Safety (YaO4)

Fit for Life challenge (FfL)

Ice safety is an important part of winter life in Canada. We did this topic the last time we did Fit for Life challenge and the girls really enjoyed it so we decided to do it again.

6:30-7:00 Patrol Time
We had the girls finish their What Makes Me Happy lists from last week, and it gave the girls who missed last week's meeting a chance to get it done. (FfL:F1)

7:00-7:15 Horseshoe
We had everyone share what Makes Them Happy. (FfL:F1)

7:15-7:30 Slideshow
I put together a PowerPoint presentation on Ice Safety and Rescues. Most of the information came from the Red Cross website. (Ice Safety Slide Show, PP)(FfL:H2, YaO4#6)

7:30-7:50 Ice Floe game
We got this game from Becky's Guiding Resource. We went to the gym and the girls worked in Patrols (about 5 to a team) to get from one side of the gym to the other. We gave them newsprint papers to stand on and if they ripped them, they could get a new one but would have to start over again. We also made them start over if they put their hands or feet "in the water". They really enjoyed this!

7:50-8:20 Ice Rescue Skits
We asked them to make a skit about rescuing someone from the ice. We had rope and some brooms they could use in their skits. After each skit, we talked about what they did right and what they did wrong. As the skits went on, they remembered more things. They did a great job with the skits!

8:30-8:30 Closing

Meeting #14: Gym Games

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

Fit for Life Challenge (FfL)

We're working on the Newfoundland Girl Guides Fit for Life Challenge this year. There are 10 activities that need to be completed, and we've been doing them here and there. Tonight, we were in the gym because the Sparks needed our regular room, so we decided to have some fun!

6:30-8:00--I looked through some websites (www.gameskidsplay.net and www.dragon.sleepdeprived.ca) to find some new games to try. Sometimes we have the girls pick and choose which games, but tonight we just taught them games, with the hope that they will enjoy some new ideas and will ask for them again. I picked more than we'd need. (Gym Games, Word doc)

We played:
Head Catch
Ball Lose-All (Ffl: D#5)
Caterpillar
Five Pennies (we used quarters)
Rattlesnake (we own a large stuffed snake that we used for this)

8:00-8:20--We returned to our room after the Sparks left and the girls listed and drew things that make them happy. (DY1#6, FfL: F#1)

While they were doing that, we collected their papers and money for our upcoming camp.

8:20-8:30--Closing

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.