To earn this badge, Guides need to do 6 activities. The activities we chose were to learn about how the body works; interview a medical worker about how they use Math & Science in their job; learn to take their own pulse; look at and explain how optical illusions work; take fingerprints; and find out how fat insulates against the cold. (Other activity options are finding out if you have flat feet or high arches and finding out about a health-related organization and doing a community service project.)
As the Guides arrived, each patrol was assigned a body system to make a skit about - stomach, heart, brain - to share at the end of meeting.
After our opening, we showed the girls how to find their pulse and put a sticker on the spot where they could feel it. We then played an active game and then everyone checked their pulse a second time. We had a brief discussion about why their pulse would be more rapid after physical activity.
One of our Guiders is a Nurse, so she talked to the girls about how she uses Math and Science in her work.
Next, we let the girls use a stethoscope to listen to their own heart beat. While the girls were waiting their turn, we took fingerprints from each girl using graphite from a pencil, packing tape and index cards.
The fingerprint game was a challenge to find your own fingerprint. An index card with a thumb print was put down in front of each girl. The girls looked at the card and if they thought it was their's remained sitting. If they thought it was someone else's, they stood up. The girls standing them moved clockwise to the next empty space and looked at that fingerprint. Once everyone was sitting in front of a fingerprint they turned the cards over to see if they were right and the fingerprint belonged to them.
Next, we did the fat as an insulator test. Each girl covered a finger on one hand in lard and then put that finger and the same finger on the other hand into a basin of cold water. The girls agreed that the finger without the fat covering got cold faster!
Our last activity was optical illusions. 6 cards with optical illusions on them were put up around the room and each girl was given an answer sheet with question about each illusion. The girls were then divided into groups and moved around the room visiting each illusion. Once everyone was done, we gathered everyone together and talked about what they had seen and what answers they had written down.
At the end of the evening the girls presented their skits and we learned the words and actions to "Forty Years on an Iceberg" (one of the Sing Ontario Sing songs for this year).
