December Camp 2016
On December 2nd, the Guides, Pathfinders and Rangers headed to Camp Teka in Paris for a weekend camp. We were joined by two Guiders and one Guide from the 1st New Dundee Guides, making our total numbers 11 Guides, 1 Pathfinder, 1 Ranger, and 4 Guiders. Our program was very relaxed, but we still managed to work on the Alberta Camp Challenge - Fall Segment, Camp-Out Emblem, Explore the Outdoors and Nature and the Outdoor Cooking Badge.
Once all the girls had arrived on Friday night, we sat down to decorate Warm Fuzzy bags. These are paper bags that the girls put their name on (and decorate) and leave on a table for the weekend. The challenge is for each girl to put something nice - a "warm fuzzy" - into the bag of every other girl over the course of the weekend. The bags also make a handy place to store drawings, activity sheets, friendship bracelets, crafts, etc. We reviewed the rules for the weekend, discussed how to stay safe at camp, why we do head counts, and what to do in the event of a fire. Snack was bagel cheese pizzas with veggies and dip. Afterwards, the girls spent the rest of the evening playing card games, drawing and colouring, and talking.
Saturday morning started late due to a late night beforehand, and we started the day off with a breakfast of waffles, fruit, scrambled eggs, blueberry muffins and yogurt. After breakfast, the girls tackled their camp chores - washing dishes, sweeping floors, wiping tables, replacing toilet paper rolls, etc, and then we were ready to move on to our program. We started the morning off with a craft - clothespin candle holders. We made ours with small round cardboard boxes from Michaels, clothespins, battery operated tealights and paint. They turned out very well - and apparently double as hats...
The remainder of the morning was spent building a massive chair and blanket fort in the middle of the room.
Before lunch, our Ranger and one Guider showed the girls how to make a box oven and how one works. They removed all of the old tinfoil and duct tape from the box and rebuilt it ready to use to make brownies!
Lunch involved outdoor cooking. The girls were sent off to find tinder, kindling and wood for our fire, practiced separating the wood (although it was a rather scattered woodpile...), lit the fire and kept it burning. They also learned how to operate and light a camp stove, which we used to cook Chicken Noodle Soup. Once the fire was burning well, everyone cooked hot dogs, and once it burnt down, we were able to toast marshmallows and make S'mores! After we finished eating, the box oven was set up to bake the brownies for after supper. We all cleaned up the cooking supplies, washed dishes, and went back inside for quiet time. The fort building continued, along with colouring, drawing, card games, and working on challenges. Later in the afternoon, our Ranger and one Guider took the majority of the girls on a hike before supper.
Supper was the ever-popular taco salad (tortilla chips, meat, lettuce, tomatoes, cheese, salsa and sour cream). The evening was spent with more activities chosen by the girls, and also an enrolment ceremony. We enrolled both our Pathfinder and Ranger into their respective branches by candlelight.
We had our "Worms and Dirt" (Brownies, chocolate pudding and gummy worms) as a nighttime snack, about 10pm, before getting ready for bed. Although we had bedding out and pyjamas on, it was closer to midnight before we actually went to bed!
Sunday morning was busy, with packing and cleaning. We had leftovers, fruit, chocolate chip muffin cake and toast for breakfast (who would have thought tacos for breakfast would be so popular?) Our Ranger and one Guider did camp evaluation while the other Guiders worked on checking off the cleaning tasks on the list so that we would all be ready to leave once all the girls had been picked up.
