As our fourth meeting of April fell on April 22nd, we had a meeting to celebrate Earth Day - in the dark!When the Guides arrived, their first task was to work in Patrols to create a list of ways they can be a conservationist at home. Ideas included turning off the tap while brushing their teeth, turning off lights when leaving a room, putting on a sweater instead of turning up the heat, and using fans instead of air conditioning.
After our opening, we went outside to participate in Pitch-In by cleaning up the parking lot and grassy areas around the church where we meet.
Once we had finished our clean-up, we came inside and turned on our flashlights. Our first activity was The Endangered Hoppit Game (follow the link for complete instructions). In this game, the girls take on the role of Hoppits, imaginary creatures that hop around gathering materials from the ground (food, water, items to build shelter). Through the course of the game, their survival becomes more difficult - Bad weather strikes and decreases their food supply (Hoppits can only hop on one leg) and humans build a shopping mall on their home (Hoppits no longer have a home where they can stop and rest). We then discussed how changes to an environment impacts the creatures that live there and what we can do to help.
The next part of the meeting was spent completing an Energy and Accessibility Audit as part of the Operation: Earth Action Challenge. The girls worked in patrols and went around the church using flashlights to checkout the various categories on the audit form. For the Energy Audit, they were asked to look at lighting, drafts around windows and doors, water flow, major appliances, and themostats. The Accessibility Audit asked the girls to describe the building itself, to look for entry ramps, designated parking spaces, buttons for opening doors, ways to move between the different levels of the building, features that could help people with different needs (i.e. wheelchair user, visually impaired, cane or walker user), and finally what accessibility features they would include if they were designing a building.The last activity of the evening was about water conservation. We did two active quizzes about water facts and water conservation - the walls of the room were labeled A-D and True/False, girls ran to the one they thought was the correct answer. There were then two puzzle pages, one involved coded messages about surface water and groundwater, and the other involved a word wheel and tips about using water wisely.
