Our first meeting was spent brainstorming ideas over a pizza dinner that we won for coming up with the winning suggestion for the tag line for the new National Service Project (our suggestion was Girl GREENness Starts Here!). One of the first things we decided to do was attend River Crossing in Sombra, Ontario for the first time. Our second meeting was dedicated to making SWAPS for River Crossing. This was a lot of fun and involved going through totes of craft supplies and coming up with unique ideas. We started working on program at our third meeting by looking at Challenge #10 Working Together in the Celebrate Guiding section. This challenge is all about the Twinning projects. We learned about past projects and looked into our new twinning partner countries, Grenada and Curacao. At the end of the month we attended River Crossing - we got lost on the way there, but finally made it. Unfortunately we didn't have the proper paperwork to go across the border to the Michican side of the river - if we go again, we would make sure we could do this!
We started off in October by working on the Twinning Challenges. The girls split into two groups and one group took Curacao and the other took Grenada. Both groups will share what they've learned at our Twinning meeting later in the month. At this meeting we also made foam flowers, which are really pretty - I can't find a pattern at the moment, but I will post one in the future. I wasn't available the following week, so the girls got together at one person's house and started working on the World Guiding Badge from Venezuela as well as picking out program challenges they would like to work on this year. Cookie Selling at Sears came next, where we sold 14 cases of chocolatey mint cookies. Our next meeting was our Twinning Challenge night. We learned about life and Guiding in Grenada and Curacao and tried making fried bananas and nutmeg ice cream. The fried bananas were ok (better with syrup!) - I wonder how they would have been if we could have deep fried them instead of just using a frying pan. For the ice cream, we made ziplock bag ice cream and sprinkled on nutmeg. We had a hike planned for the last weekend of the month, but had to cancel it as it was cold, windy and raining. (This was a very proud moment for me as a Guider, as the Rangers contacted me to tell me they were cancelling the hike instead of my having to make the decision and contact them!)
At the beginning of November two Rangers and I attended Ranger Round-Up at Doe Lake (this was a provincial Ranger weekend with girls from all over Ontario). The girls enjoyed the sessions and activities, the food was great, and the service project really worthwhile. The service project consisted of cutting out and sewing reuseable sanitary pads for girls in Africa.
Our first meeting of the month was spent making Toothbrush bracelets - this went over really well, although we found it is easier to shape the brushes by holding them in a towel rather than using pliers as the instructions suggested. The rest of the meeting was spent planning meetings, our sleepover, and our Christmas party. Our next meeting was spent completing the World Guiding Badge from Venezuela, including making large World Flag puzzles for the Guides to use. In the middle of the month we volunteered at the Christmas House Tour and Bazaar hosted by the United Church Women. We made sandwiches and served soup and sandwiches, cleared dishes, refilled coffee and tea urns, milk jugs and relish dishes.
The next week we visited the Hamilton-Burlington SPCA to find out about the work they do and about what volunteer opportunities are avaialble for teenagers. We ended the month with a sleepover with the Pathfinders and joined in making 19 dozen cookies for the Out of the Cold Program. The girls ate pizza, talked, danced, listened to music and generally relaxed.
We only had one meeting in December due to the semi-formal dance at the high school and the holidays. The girls gathered at my house to watch a movie and eat Chinese food (always a popular choice!). The movie they chose was The Polar Express.
