Meeting #18: Canadian Guiding badge Part 1

Canadian Guiding badge (CG)



You in Guiding: Learn About Guiding (YiG2)

Discovering You: Discover Your Creativity (DY2)



To help the girls earn their You in Guiding square, we decided to work on the Canadian Guiding badge.

6:30-7:00--Patrol Time -- Decorate a divider for your binder/folder to collect resources.  Each girl has a binder they bring to the meetings, where they can store their badge work that they do at home, or put any handouts we give them. As part of this badge, they are going to start a Resource section in their binders where they can add songs and games and crafts. For the Patrol Time, we gave them dividers (I got a pile of them that were going to be thrown out at work) and they decorated them to start their section. Materials Required: Dividers, markers

7:00-7:15: Horseshoe--At Horseshoe, we discussed what a Resource was and gave them the link to Becky's Guiding Resource. They were tasked with bringing back at least one resource to add to their binder. (CG#6)

7:15-7:45—We gave the girls facts about history of Guiding and asked them to make up a game, skit, poem. They all chose to do skits, and they came up with some really inventive ones. One group had facts about what the uniform used to look like, so they did a take off of Little Red Riding Hood, where Little Red became a Girl Guide and described her uniform to her Grannie.

Another group did a montage of a number of little facts, including one girl being a rocket, another Roberta Bondar and a third was a box of cookies. Roberta Bondar "rode" the rocket, taking the cookies with her to outer space!

The girls drew pictures to create props and costumes and did a fabulous job all around on the skits. (CG#1, YiG2#2, DY2#3)
List of Canadian facts (Word doc)

7:45-8:15--Valentine's Day craft--Since it was Valentine's Day, we thought we'd let the girls do something fun. We started with this craft idea.

We changed it up some though, We used feather boas from the Dollar Store--one boa gave enough for 4 girls. We cut the styrofoam balls in half, so they each had half a ball to cover. And we used real candy hearts instead of stickers, because that's what we could find. The girls had a lot of fun making them and they turned out really cute.

We ended the night with heart-shaped cookies.

Extra: Thinking Day Party

Besides being a Unit Guider, I'm also the Deputy DC for our District, so I helped plan our District Thinking Day party. (And I forgot my camera, so we don't have any pictures of the event!)

We rented ice time at a rink and the girl and their families came and skated for an hour. We had a great turnout--almost 100 girls and their families came for the skate.

After the skate, we went upstairs to the community room and had a pizza party (members only)! We had pizza and juice boxes for everyone.

Each unit was instructed to make hat crafts/SWAPS to bring and trade. Each girl had three and everyone walked around and interacted. There were some really great crafts.

Then we made large cheques for each unit to present how much money they had raised for CWFF, totaling approximately $300.

Finally, we all sang "Happy Birthday" to Lord and Lady Baden-Powell and ended the party with cupcakes for everyone. (We had each unit bring cupcakes for themselves.)

Meeting #17: Thinking Day Activities

You in Guiding: Learn About WAGGGS (YiG3)

Do you ever have one of those meetings, where nothing goes as planned and everything takes way longer than you anticipate? Yeah, we had one of those meetings. The girls had fun though, so I guess that's what counts!

6:30-6:50: Patrol time. We planned to play charades later in the meeting, so we asked the girls to come up with ways they can reduce their greenhouse gas emissions (save energy).

6:50-7:10: Horseshoe. They were very unenthusiastic in their singing, so I made them redo it! And then their circle collapsed as they went along, so I made them redo it a third time! We'll see next week, if they remember to do it right the first time. We talked about what we had planned for the night and about the upcoming Thinking Day skating party, and then we updated their books with what they'd completed recently.

7:10-7:45: Hat crafts: For our District Thinking Day party, each girl is bringing 3 hat crafts to SWAP with other girls in the District. We decided on these butterfly SWAPS. We had them paint the puzzle pieces, which took a little longer than we expected. Since the theme is "we can save our planet", we thought using puzzle pieces for our SWAPS would fit the theme.

One of our leaders also has a small photo printer, so she took a unit photo and printed them out so they could be attached to the SWAPS.

7:45-8:00:  We did the CWFF activity from the World Guiding Goes Tartan challenge (p14). It was interesting to hear what their thoughts were on who to give the money to. I would say that one they most often wanted to fund was the HIV/AIDS clinic in Honduras. I touched briefly on what AIDS was (a disease that can be transferred through bodily fluids, like blood), without going in depth. (YiG3#3)

8:00-8:20: We finished up the butterflies, curling the antennae and gluing them on and adding pins and tags.

The butterflies took much longer to make than we anticipated--especially the painting. We had Thinking Day pennies that needed to be rolled, as the girls returned their CWFF banks from a month ago. The rolling would only take 5 or 10 minutes--we just didn't have time! We also wanted to play charades, as the craft and charades would complete a section of the Climate Change Challenge, which we started a few years ago.

Halloween Ideas

Halloween ideas? In February? Out of season, I know, but I've received a pile of information from a fellow Guider, and I'm going to try to get it all added, once I can get it categorized.

HALLOWEEN ADVENTURE

Beyond You: Explore the Outdoors and Nature

This is such a great idea--I can't wait to try it out! You send the girls out trick or treating and they need to use compasses and directions to figure out how to get the houses. If the girls wouldn't be self-conscious, you could do this any time of year, but as a Halloween party would be safest. (BY3#3)
Halloween Adventure (Word doc)


OPERATION BLACK CAT

This is another Halloween scavenger type adventure, where the girls have a booklet of activities to complete and go out into the neighbourhood to specific addresses to trick-or-treat.
Operation Black Cat Prep Info (Word doc)
Operation Black Cat booklet (PDF)
Fun Fall Word Search (PDF)

Meeting #16: Skating

Discovering You: Stay Fit and Healthy (DY3)

Last year, Halifax hosted the Canada Winter Games, and as part of the facilities, they installed a temporary outdoor skating oval on the Halifax Commons. When it wasn't being used for the Canada Games, it was opened up for free to the public. They had a trailer where they offered free skate rentals. The Oval was busy and the line for skate rentals could be over an hour.

The public rallied to have the facility installed permanently, and after some negotiations, it was arranged, and now Halifax has free outdoor skating in the winter!

We went as a unit last year, and it's such a great outing--it's free, it's fun for girls, it exposes them to activities available in the city, it's great exercise. We live in a suburb about 30 minutes from downtown, so we're not right next door.

We went again this year, and again, the girls had a great time. What I love most is watching the girls who are good skaters going slow and helping the girls who aren't as strong skaters, because 1) the weaker skaters are getting out there, unafraid and unembarrassed at their lack of skill and 2) the stronger skaters are showing leadership and empathy in helping their friends.

For girls who haven't earned it yet, this counts as DY3#6. It also counts as #8 for the Outdoors in the City badge.

The happy skaters! I forgot my good camera so we'll have to make do with the cell phone picture.

Meeting #15: WAGGGS Square and World Guiding Badge Part 2

World Guiding badge (WG)

You in Guiding: Learn About Guiding (YiG2)
You in Guiding: Learn About WAGGGS (YiG3)

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

Patrol Time (30 min): We gave the girls a Connect the Dots Guide History activity sheet to work on that I found on this page: 1st Castlegar Girl Guides (PDF printout) Almost all of the answers are in their program books, so I thought they'd be able to do it, but they really struggled with it. We left it with them to take home and finish if they wanted, but now I'm thinking we should have had them hand them in and give them back to them again until they figured it out!

Horseshoe (20 min): At Horseshoe, the girls presented the facts that they researched about their WAGGGS country that we had given them at the previous WAGGGS meeting. Most girls came with a fact, which was nice to see! (WG5)

Story of Guiding (10 min): We have one third-year Guide who is working on her Lady Baden Powell Award. We assigned her to lead the participation story about Guiding, from Becky's Guiding Resource. (YiG2#1, WG1)

World Centers Fact Game (20 min): This is a combination of an activity from the World Guiding Goes Tartan challenge and a co-operative game we learned at NS Guide Conference. We posted signs in four corners of our meeting space, one for each of the World Centers (Our Chalet, PAX Lodge, Sangam, and Our Cabana). We read off a fact about one of the Centers, and the girls would have to choose which Center they thought it belonged to and go to that corner and hop up and down. The trick was that they all had to agree on the answer as a group before we would tell them they were right and could stop hopping.

This was a fascinating game to watch, to see the dynamics of the girls. We didn't quite get through half of the facts, because it took the girls so long to agree on each one. I've said that we don't really have any leaders in the group, but it's also that there's no one that everyone will follow and listen to. There's no one voice that will direct the group, so they all have their own opinions. Some of the girls were contrary just for the sake of contrariness. We nudged them along in learning to compromise ("If you come to this corner and it's wrong, we'll go to your choice next"). There was also a sense of not wanting to be wrong, even if it would help the group. (World Center Fact Sheet, taken from the World Guiding Goes Tartan challenge). ( YiG3#2, WG6, YaO1#2)

Snacks (20 min): Finally, we got the what the girls had been waiting for all night! Each girl was assigned to bring food from a World Center country to feed her patrol. We said to bring enough food for 6-7 people, but most brought enough to feed the whole unit! It was an international feast! So they each ate from their patrol, and then shared with everyone else. I wish I had remembered to take a picture of the food, because it was fabulous. (WG4)
Britain: packaged imported British cookies, scones, chocolate tarts
India: butter chicken, rice, and naan bread; pita bread and hummus
Mexico: homemade sopapillas, nachos, cheese/chicken tortilla roll-up
Switzerland: homemade Swiss chocolate cake, Swiss chocolate, homemade spitzbuben cookies (jam sandwich cookies), homemade basler leckerli cookies

Each girl who was at both of the WAGGGS meetings and remembered to bring her fact and food, earned the WAGGGS square and the World Guiding badge. Girls who missed the first meeting were told which countries they were to bring food and the fact from. We also gave them handouts (WAGGGS uniform word search (YiG3#5, WG2) and World Flag coloring sheet (YiG3#4)) to complete and bring back.

We had one more activity (CWFF) that we didn't get to but will hopefully do at our meeting before Thinking Day. If they bring back the completed handouts, this will complete the WAGGGS square for these girls. I have to figure out one more activity for them to do for the World Guiding badge yet.

Hike #4: Milk Carton Hot Dogs

We're still working on our Hiking Challenge, and we're about a third of the way there! We went back to Jerry Lawrence Park, where we had our first hike, so we can take a picture in the same spot for each of the seasons (Beyond You: Learn About Our Environment#1).

The girls were all instructed to wear appropriate clothing: hats, mitts/gloves, warm boots, snow pants/long underwear, warm coats. We had no idea what the weather was going to be when we planned this--it's been fluctuating between +10C and -10C for the past couple of weeks, with not much snow around. We had a snow storm on Friday, turning the park beautiful and just perfect for a winter hike! The temperature was a little cold (-11C) but it was sunny and there wasn't a whole lot of wind.

We planned to do milk carton hot dogs (and put our Yellow Activity paperwork in to cook with fire). We had some difficulty getting the lighters to work in the cold, but one of our leaders had the special touch and we did get them all lit.

Milk Carton Hot Dog Instructions: Put your hot dog in the bun and wrap them up in heavy duty tin foil. Place two hot dogs in a 2L milk carton (the milk cartons burned better than the Tropicana OJ cartons). We found it helped to tear the corners in strips and bend them down to help them catch on fire and burn better. Once the milk carton has burned away, your hot dogs are ready with a toasted bun and a heated hot dog.

Lessons learned:
1. Hot dogs don't heat up enough if they are frozen to start.
2. Propane lighters don't work well in cold weather. Remember to bring matches. Tip from another Guider if using matches--use the long, fireplace matches, because it can take a few seconds for the milk carton to catch.

Most of them cooked perfectly, but then, everything tastes better when you're cooking outside. We also gave them a granola bar and an apple to round out their lunches.