As the girls arrived on Friday night, they spent time getting to know each other and made Warm Fuzzy Bags. Warm Fuzzy Bags (or envelopes) are often used at summer camp and the idea is that each girl has a bag and tries to put a nice, friendly note or drawing into everyone else's bag over the course of the camp. We had decided to have a very relaxed camp, so the girls were free to chat, make friendship bracelets, use the supplies on the activity table (activity sheets, books, craft supplies) for the rest of the evening.
We were all up bright and early on Saturday and after packing up all the bedding and stacking the mattresses, sat down to a breakfast of pancakes, bacon, eggs and fruit. Once the morning duties were finished, we headed outside. While the Rangers went geocaching, the Guides started off with two activities from the Alberta Polar Challenge. The first activity was called Polar Scientists. For this activity, the girls split up into smaller groups and chose an area of snow to examine - the coolest find was some tiny insects crawling in the snow near the flagpole. The second activity was a Polar Game called Animal Sounds. Cards with the names of animals and the sound they make were placed in the middle of the playing area. On a signal, the girls had to get a card and start making the animal sound until they found their partner. After these activities, it was time to go for a walk and tobogganing!Next up was lunch, so we headed inside and the cook patrol began preparing lunch - grilled cheese, soup, and veggies. After lunch and duties, we moved on to our main craft of the weekend - decoupage candle holders. We made these out of glass tumblers, and used modge podge to stick on tissue paper and provide a finish to everything. Battery-operated tealights were added later.
Once we were cleaned up from crafting, we started another activity from the Alberta Polar Challenge - Climate Change in Polar Regions. For this activity, we created an island out of clay on the base of a plastic cake pan lid and added some water. A line was drawn using a toothpick to show the water level, and then we added ice cubes to represent icebergs and left them to melt. While the ice cubes were melting, the Guides were taught the phonetic alphabet and finger spelling. We checked the progress of our island twice, drawing lines on the clay island to show the rising water levels as the icebergs melted, and talked briefly about why the melting of icebergs and polar ice caps is a concern. During this time, the Rangers headed outside again, this time to go cross-country skiing.Everyone then had some free time while dinner was prepared (tacos). After dinner we had more free time and then the Guides went outside to play a game of night eyes arranged earlier by the Rangers. The Rangers stayed inside, but went out tobogganing at midnight once the Guides were in bed.
Sunday morning was busy with breakfast, packing and cleaning up the building ready for pick-up. Everyone had a good time and girls were asking when we would do it again!
