Girl Guide Day 2017!

Friday, April 28th was a PA day for area schools, so we held a Girl Guide Day! 6 Guides took part in the program day, and later on 5 3rd Year Guides and 1 Ranger had a bridging sleepover.

Our morning started off with sanding and painting wooden plaques for making string art later, and then moved on to perler bead creations.


We then had a snack (popcorn) and talked about some of the items in the Hiking and Outdoor Adventures Badges:

• How to behave on public and private property
• What information should be left with someone when you set out on an outdoor adventure
• What you should take with your on an outdoor adventure (and why)
• Minimum impact/leave no trace hiking and outdoor adventures

After drawing templates for our string art, we headed outside. We decided to have lunch right away, and ate on the front steps of the church, watching the people arriving at the fairgrounds for the dog show on the weekend. Once we had all eaten and cleaned up, we played a massive game of hide and seek, followed by Crows and Cranes. In Crows and Cranes, there are two teams - one is crows, the other cranes. The game leader calls out one team, dragging out the crrrr... part. The team that is called, chases the other team to the end of the playing area. Anyone tagged joins the other team.

We had a bit of a STEM experiment afterwards, seeing if plastic eggs can really be used in place of film canisters for rockets. While the rocket part was unsuccessful, we had lots of fun making the chemical reactions with baking soda and vinegar!


Going back inside, we finished up our string art projects by hammering in nails using the templates made earlier, and using embroidery floss to create the designs.


Clean-up followed, and then we headed into the kitchen to make a fruit salad for snack - apples, oranges, plums, grapes, pears, pineapple and berries. We then headed back outside. While we ate, we learned a bit about Guide History and looked at some artefacts from Guiding history, including Michelle's youth awards and camp blanket, a 1970s uniform, program books, brochures, cookie cutters and pins. As we were already sitting in a circle, we also learned how to make a braided blanket and completed a blanket to be donated to a women's shelter as part of the Action on Poverty National Service Project. The day ended with final perler bead projects and a game of Everybody's It tag.

Fall Frolic 2015 - STEM

On Saturday, October 3rd 6 Guides and 2 Guiders attended Fall Frolic 2015 at Camp Teka in Paris along with about 250 other Sparks, Brownies, Guides and their Guiders. Despite the cold, windy weather we had a great time and the rain held off until the final activity of the day and didn't become heavy until shortly before the parents arrived to pick up the girls.

After opening and flag raising, we headed to our first station - Compass Games. The girls learned about the 8 main points of the compass and played a number of different games. They started off with a game where if they had the item that was called out (i.e. blue eyes, a brother, like pizza) they had to run to a given point. Next they had a choice of different games. The ones chosen were Foxlease Ball, where the girls form a tight circle and have to move a ball from North to South (or any other set of directions) using only their feet. If the ball goes outside of their circle, they have to return to their starting point. Another game was to make as many words as possible using the letters in the word COMPASS, and the last game was compass drawings.

Our second stop was a craft. We talked about DNA and what it does, and then each girl made a beaded double helix of her own.

After a snack and a drink, we headed onto our third session - Wide Games. Here the girls were challenged to gather the supplies necessary to recreate a molecule to save the world! Lots of teamwork was needed in order to put gain all the items and put the molecule together correctly.

After lunch, we moved onto a Games session where the girls took part in a relay race to complete various challenges and earn puzzle pieces. Once they had gathered all the puzzle pieces, they had to work as a team to put it together.

Our next stop was the Music session, where we sang Tall Trees, McDonald's, My Name is Flo, and played the Norwegian Number game - linking each song to a part of STEM. The girls also made up a STEM yell.

We ended the day with the Science session where the girls completed experiments in Chemistry and Physics. The Chemistry activity was chemical reactions, and the girls used baking soda and vinegar to power film canister rockets. This was hugely popular and the girls tried many times to see who's rocket would go the highest. The Physics activity was on centripetal force, which the girls tested by swinging yogurt containers about 1/4 full of water around on strings - and seeing for themselves that the container could be upside down, but the water stayed inside!

The day ended with a brief closing where we sang Make New Friends and Daylight Taps. We then walked back to the High School for pickup and the girls played on the play structure while we waited for parents to arrive.