Rally Day 2014

Guiding in Ontario held a Rally at Canada's Wonderland on May 31, 2014, with over 8,000 Members in attendance. Activities included swapping with other units, dancing, curling, reptiles, giant gadgets, weaving milk bag mats, wheelchair basketball, netball, abilities awareness, the Rally Day: One Voice presentation on the main stage, a drumming circle, and crafts.

 Curling

 Adding to the Giant Beast (giant gadgets)

 Working on the milk bag mats

 Playing Wheelchair Basketball

 Part of the Crowd in the Kingswood Theatre

 Drumming Circle

While the Rally ended at 4pm, the Pathfinders and Rangers stayed at the park until 10pm. At the end of the night, we enrolled Lynsey as a Pathfinder and Ocean-Lee as a Ranger in front of the fountain.

Advancement & Awards

We ended our Guiding year with our annual Advancement & Awards Ceremony. In the first part of the ceremony, we recognized all of the Guides, Pathfinders and Rangers present with the badges and challenges they have earned in the last part of the year.

We then performed a ceremony based on 'Keys' to say goodbye to our advancing Guides as they moved up to Pathfinders.

The final part of the ceremony was to present Ocean-Lee with her Chief Commissioner's Bronze Award. Ocean-Lee is a Junior Leader with the Guide unit, so this was an appropriate time to recognize her achievement.

We ended the evening with cake and juice, while parents looked at the work we had displayed around the room and watched a PowerPoint presentation of our year's activities.

Arts & Crafts & Scrapbooking

Our last meeting in April and last meeting in May before Advancement were spend working

on the UK Guide Craft Badge, the Art Production Badge, and making Paper Bag Scrapbooks as a memory of the year.

April 29th
After our opening and an active game, we moved onto stamping, calligraphy and scrapbooking.

For stamping, the girls made their own stamps using fun foam and bottle lids. Each girl was given a foam trefoil to make a stamp, and then created their own - including hearts, stars, swirls, paw prints, and diamonds. Different coloured ink pads were provided so they could decorate their scrapbooks.

For calligraphy, we had samples of alphabets in different lettering styles and the girls choose a style and wrote their name on a card. Some of the girls took this further and used the lettering for titles and descriptions in their scrapbooks.

The majority of the meeting was spend working on the paper bag scrapbooks we started back in September. Each girl was given pages of printed photographs and clipart, and we had stickers, markers, coloured paper, etc. for them to use.

For instructions on making a paper bag scrapbook, visit the Owl & Toadstool Blog.

May 20th
Most of the meeting was spent working on the paper bag scrapbooks and making SWAPS for Rally Day.

As the girls finished, they were given a choice of activities:

• Making Friendship Bracelets
• Creating a work of art based on a dream or something from their imagination
• Mixing colours to make new colours and shades
• Designing a new box for Girl Guide Cookies or packaging for another product

World Guiding Goes to Hong Kong

The 35th World Conference is being held this July in Hong Kong. To celebrate, we decided to work on the World Guiding Goes to Hong Kong Challenge at our second meeting in May. The challenge has 3 required sections - Welcome to Hong Kong, Welcome to WAGGGS, and Welcome to the World Conference, and one optional section - Welcome to the Commonwealth Chief Commissioners' Conference (which is being held in Malaysia this summer).

As the girls arrived, they looked at a display board with information about Guiding in Hong Kong and chose an interesting fact to share with the rest of the Unit.

Welcome to Hong Kong
For this section, we played two outdoor games.
Chase the Dragon's Tail is played with all of the girls in a line, holding onto the waist or shoulders of the player in front of them. The girl at the front of the line is the Head and the girl at the end is the Tail. The Head chases the Tail and tries to catch her. If she catches her, both the Head and the Tail join the line in the centre, leaving new players as both the Head and Tail.

Catch the Broom is a game played by Brownies and Guides. All of the girls stand in a circle and are given a number. One girl is chosen to stand in the middle and hold the broomstick. She calls out a number and lets go of the broom. The girl with that number runs to catch the broom before it hits the ground. If she catches the broom, she returns to the circle, if she doesn't, she changes places with the girl in the centre.

The third activity was Toe Drawing. Each patrol was given the name of an object (i.e. cake, chair) and each member of the patrol had to draw the object using a pencil held by their toes. The other patrols then tried to guess what the object was.

Welcome to WAGGGS
In this part, we talked about how many countries there are who are members of WAGGGS (145) and how Guide-age girls have different names in different countries. Each girl was then given a card with either a country or the name for 9-11 year old girls. They then had to find their partner. Once everyone had a partner, they called out the country and name. Pairs that were right sat down, everyone else tried again until we had all the pairs.

Argentina          Guia en Caravana (Caravan Guide)         age 10 to 12

Denmark           Juniorspejder (Junior Guide)                  age 10 to 12

Finland             Seikkailijat (Adventurer)                         age 10 to 12

Georgia            Tsi Tsi Natela (Firefly)                            age 10 to 13

Iceland              Falkaskatar (Falcon Scout)                    age 10 to 12

Israel                Nachschonim (Pioneer)                          age 10 to 11

Norway             Stifinnere (Pathfinder)                            age 10 to 12

Peru                 Guias de Luz (Light Guides)                   age 10 to 13

Portugal            Guia Aventura (Adventure Guide)            age 10 to 14

Sweden            Upptackarscout (Discoverer Scout)        age 10 to 12

The second activity was about Responsible Citizenship. We discussed how we all have rights and responsibilities. Each patrol then made a list of rights and the responsibilities that go along with them.
 
Welcome to the World Conference
In this part, we asked the girls to design their own logo for Guides or for a Guiding event. We discussed things to think about - words, special symbols, colours and then allowed the girls to create.

Welcome to the Chief Commissioners' Conference
For this section, we played Semut, Orang, Gajah, which is the Malaysian version of Rock, Paper, Scissors. The words mean Ant, Person, Elephant. Girls start in pairs, holding one hand behind their back, and on the count of three, show their hand making one of these actions:

• Semut (pronounced suh-MOOT) means ant. Girls point their little finger towards their partner. 
• Orang (pronounced orr-AHNG) means person. Girls point their index finger towards their partner. 
• Gajah (pronounced gha-jah) means elephant. Girls point their thumb towards their partner.

The semut (ant) beats the gajah (elephant) because the semut can crawl in the gajah’s ear and tickle him to drive hiem crazy. The orang (person) beats the semut (ant) because the orang can stomp on the semut and squash it. The gajah (elephant) beats the orang (person) because the orang can get trampled by the gajah.

CSI Challenge

Our first meeting in may was spent working on the BC CSI Challenge. As the girls arrived, they were asked to write the word 'Suspect' on two slips of paper, with their name on the back for an activity later in the evening.

To take advantage of the good weather, we went outside to play games at the beginning of the meeting. The first game was Crabs, Crows and Cranes. In this game, the girls are divided into two groups, one team is the crows and the other is the cranes. The teams line up facing each other and the game leader calls out 'Crows', 'Cranes' or 'Crabs'. On 'Crows', the Crow team chases the Crane team, on 'Cranes', the Crane team chases the Crow team, and on 'Crabs', everyone stays still. Anyone tagged, or caught moving on 'Crabs', joins the other team.

Our second game was a version of How Good a Witness Are You?. Girls lined up in pairs, facing each other. On a signal, the girls turned their backs and each girl changed three things about her appearance. When everyone was ready, the girls faced each other and tried to figure out what their partner had changed. We did this a few times as it was popular with the girls.

Going back inside, we started with Fingerprints. Each girl used talcum powder to put her thumbprint on a piece of black card and then covered it with clear tape. Using pictures, they identified if their print had loops, arches or whorls.

Next, we used the slips of paper the girls wrote on when the arrived for Handwriting Analysis. Each girl was given one two slips of paper and had to find the people who held the matching slips. This was more difficult than the girls thought it would be as many people's handwriting looked very similar.

Our final activity of the evening was to extract DNA from strawberries. The instructions for this activity can be found in the activity pack for this challenge. This is a really neat activity to do and the results are tangible.

Cookie Selling

Some of the Guides sold cookies at Sears in April.

We also spent the first Saturday in May selling cookies at our local LCBO store.