For our final meeting of 2018, we decided to try the Chocolatiers Instant Meeting on the Girls First Platform. This challenge was a lot of fun - and very tasty!
We started with our usual opening, followed by an active game - Everybody's It Tag.
Our first activity was Chocolate Transformations, where we learned about the chocolate making process. The group was divided into five groups and each group was given a slip of paper with the description of part of the process - harvesting, fermenting, roasting and winnowing, grinding, and tempering and moulding. Each group had to come up with a way to act out the process described and then the rest of the group tried to guess it. A print-out for this activity can be found on the Girls First Platform.
We then moved on to If I Were A Chocolatier... and decorated our own chocolate "cakes". For the cakes, we used peanut and dairy-free chocolate brownies and provided icing, sprinkles, small candies, chocolates, and similar decorating supplies. Before starting, everyone was asked to think about what they wanted their "cake" to look like and which supplies they would need. The end results were very creative and we sent them home to be eaten later.
As people finished their decorating, they moved on to Chocolate Redesign and envisioned their perfect chocolate bar. They were then asked to design a wrapper and explain why their chocolate bar was the perfect one.
The final activity was Chocolate Taste Test, which was a bit of a challenge as we have a peanut allergy and finding unique peanut-free chocolate was harder than we thought. We ended up using Aero bars, Kit Kats and Smarties. All are peanut-free and the mini-bars came in packs of 10, so each person had their own personal bars to sample. we used the tasting sheet provided on the Girls First platform and had everyone work in Patrols to test each chocolate for look, snap, texture and taste. We all came back together at the end and voted on the best flavour - Kit Kats won and Smarties were surprisingly unpopular!
We ended our meeting with goodbyes for the holidays, reminders about camp in January and closed with Taps.
This week we visited the Caledonia and District Food Bank as part of the Take Action program area.
We met at the Church as usual and then walked to the Food Bank, where we were met by Dorette and Anne.
First we learned a bit about the services provided by the Food Bank and how it operates. They are open for service every Friday and people can
access food, hygiene supplies, clothing, and find out about other community resources.
When a person arrives at the Food Bank, they take a form and a number. The form asks for some basic information (number of people in the family, male/female, ages of children) and then has a section where people can circle the items that they need. Another section at the bottom has other items that they can request. They put their number on the form, hand it in and wait to be called. While they are waiting, they can visit 'Linda's Closet'. Linda's Closet is a clothing closet that has all sorts of different items, including winter clothing and prom
dresses. They also run a Backpack program in the fall so that children have the supplies they need to go back to school.
If there are school-age children in the family, each child receives a supply of snacks for school, which could include drinking boxes, yogurt,
pudding cups, cheese strings, granola bars, apples, gold fish crackers, and/or individual hot chocolate packets. For infants, items such as formula, food, cereal and diapers are available. The Food Bank also runs a Christmas Hamper program where families receive a turkey, a food basket, fresh veggies (potatoes, carrots and onions), toiletries, hats and mitts, and a gift for each member of the family.
Some of the girls had brought donations, so we visited the scale and weighed our donations (25 pounds). Donation amounts are recorded along with the name of the group or individual donor.
During our visit, we were able to help out with two tasks.
One area has been set aside for breaking down larger packages into smaller amounts - such as flour, sugar, rice, powdered milk, and pet food. The girls worked on dividing up large bags of dog food into smaller bags. They had to scoop food, trying to get as little as possible on the ground, and fill the bags with approximately the same amount.
The second task was to assemble toiletries bags for the Christmas Hampers. The girls used sheets with the ages and sexes of family members to make up packages for various families. When the sheet was given to the group, they had to record the family's number on the bag, then add items according to the age/sex of each family member. Each family
received a bottle of shampoo, a bar of soap and a tube of toothpaste, then each person received a toothbrush and teens and adults received deodorant and razors.
At the end of the visit, we thanked Dorette and Anne and walked back to the Church for pick-up.
On Friday night, 10 Guides and 4 Second-Year Brownies got together for an evening of STEM-themed fun! We had four stations available and girls moved through them in any order they chose, spending as much or as little on each activity as they wished. Everyone had a good time designing, creating and building. We had a snack of pizza, veggies and dip before saying good-bye to our Brownie friends.
Build a Rocket Car
Our first station - and probably the most popular! - was to build a balloon-powered rocket car. The original plan was to use paper towel rolls for the body of the cars, but we soon found that they were too heavy, so we experimented and came up with some creative designs using alternate materials. Supplies provided were paper towel rolls, styrofoam cups, straws, sponges, skewers, balloons, tape, rulers and scissors.
Create a Kaleidoscope
The second station focused on physics and girls were able to create a working kaleidoscope. We used the heavier tubes from industrial paper towels for the basis of the kaleidoscopes. The eye piece is created by cutting out a circle of cardstock and punching a hole in the centre, then using packing tape to attach it to one end of the tube. Next, a pre-measured and scored piece of cardboard is folded to make a triangle. The inside of the triangle is covered with tinfoil (using silver cardboard would have been better), then the triangle is taped together and inserted into the tube. We then used tri-beads and salad dressing containers (small) attached to the open end of the tube to finish things off. When painted towards a light source and turned, the light passes through the coloured beads and refracts off the foil surface to create the coloured designs!
Design a Pencil Case
The third station challenged girls to upcycle two plastic cups into a pencil case, treasure box, bug catcher, or anything else their imagination could come up with! We provided cups, velcro for attaching the cups to each other, glue and decorating supplies.
Crack a Code
The fourth station was all about cryptography and codes. The girls had a chance to try out different types of codes, including a Caesar Cipher Wheel, Pigpen Cipher, Morse Code, Scytale Cipher, and creating their own Secret Code.
After the Brownies left, we cleaned up and then the
Guides played board games, read and chatted before going to bed.
Saturday morning was busy with clean-up, breakfast, packing and
good-byes before heading home.
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In honour of Giving Tuesday, we spend the evening assembling and making gifts for others.
We began with our usual opening ceremony, followed by an active game.
Our main activity for the evening was creating and decorating a Card, Gift Bag, Canvas Tile Magnet and Bath Salt Ball to give to someone special in their lives. While many of the cards had a Christmas theme, the gift bags were move eclectic! The canvas tiles were painted with a variety of designs and colours and plastic ornament balls decorated ready to hold the bath salts. The bath salt receipe we used was vary simple, using equal amounts of fine sea salt and Epsom salts (4 cups of each made enough to fill 13 ornament balls with a bit left over).
Our service project over the past month was collecting items for The Shoeboxes for Shelters Project. This program collects shoeboxes filled with high quality items as gifts for women in shelters. Boxes are collected and distributed locally and each is intended to have a value of approximately $50. We were able to collect enough items to fill 3 Shoeboxes and are very excited that our boxes will be going to young women aged 15 to 18 living in transitional housing in Brantford.
We ended our meeting with reminders about our sleepover on Friday and visit to the Food Bank next week, then closed with Taps.
Tonight we explored our creativity with the help of one of our Guiders who studied Fine Arts.
We began with our usual opening ceremony and an active game, then moved right into our activities for the evening.
We started our with Still Life Drawing and Perspective Drawing using a display of teddy bears and flowers. These were challenging activities for the Guides, and also something most hadn't tried before. The next activity was from the Girls First platform called "Draw, Don't Stop" where the girls created drawings without lifting their pencils from the paper.
Our next activity was Clay Pictionary. We made the easy clay recipe on the Girls First platform (mix 1 cup flour, 3/4 cup salt and 3 oz hot water together and knead into a dough-y clay). Each Patrol had a glob of clay, a plate to make their pictures and a set of cards. As they played, the Guides discovered it's much harder to work with clay rather than markers in this game!
We ended the evening with time for free drawing and sculpting, resulting in some really neat creations.
After cleaning up, we ended with reminders for next week and closed with Taps.
This week we didn't have access to our regular meeting space, so we headed out to a local park for some outdoor fun!
The Pathfinders and Rangers had planned the evening and led us in a Glowstick Scavenger Hunt, Glowstick Tag, Sardines, and Flashlight Tag. Before heading back to the church for pick-up, we had some time to play on the swings, teeter-totters, slide and play structure. Everyone had a great time - and running around helped us all stay warm!
This week we dabbled in the My Mighty Mind theme by talking a bit about stress and positive ways of handling it, including being creative, mindfulness and yoga.
As everyone arrived, the Patrols marked attendance and collected dues. We had our regular opening with horseshoe formation and then played an active game.
Our first activity was a Discussion About Stress. We used the information that GGC put out for National Mental Health Week in 2016 (see link at the bottom). The girls who wished to had an opportunity to share about times they have felt stressed, how it made them feel and what they did to work through it.
We then moved on to creativity as a way of handling stress by Painting Tiles. We had gotten cheap tiles form the Habitat Reuse Store and provided paints and brushes so that the girls could create their own designs and/or messages.
After cleaning up from painting, we did a mindfulness exercise using the Chocolate Meditation using peanut-free mini Aero bars. The script is in the GGC National Mental Health Week 2016 package (see link below). This was a lot of fun, as well as being tasty!
Our final activity was Yoga, again using some of the suggestions from the GGC National Mental Health Week 2016 package (see link below). We have a fairly large meeting space, so everyone was able to spread out and have their own area.
We closed with reminders for next week (Outdoors Night) and Taps.
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