Odds & Ends

Occasionally, in place of a regular meeting, we have an 'Odds & Ends' night. This means there is no single theme for the evening, and we do a variety of different activities!

As the girls arrived, they were introduced to their new Patrol Notebooks. These books will be used for arrival activities and gathering ideas and information from each Patrol. This week's activities were to write down some ideas for different careers/jobs they were interested in for our Career Awareness night later in March, and to come up with some ideas for when the 2nd Year Brownies visit us at the end of March. Some patrols were more successful at this than others, but we will keep working at it.

After opening, we moved into our first activity - the Postal Badge. Information signs were put up around the room with details about postage rates, package weights, and special services. Each Patrol was given a worksheet (from Bluenose Guider) and was challenged to find the answers to a variety of questions. Their final task was to address an envelop to themselves. While we waited for everyone to finish, the girls worked on making birthday postcards to send to the UK for the Rainbow 30th Birthday Celebrations. We then played a game - Everybody's It Tag. 

Our Pathfinder led the next activity, a service project to make Birthday Boxes for the local Food Bank. Each Patrol had to wrap their box to finish up the Postal Badge, and to also make a nice container for their birthday supplies. The boxes were filled with the supplies needed for a child's birthday party - cake pan, cake mix, frosting, candles, balloons, streamers, plates, and napkins.

The remainder of the meeting was spent working on the Learn How to Plan section of the program. As the Patrols finished making their Birthday Boxes, they were given a list of activity themes with descriptions (Go For It's! from Girlguiding UK). Each Patrol choose a theme and was given the Go For It! pack that matched. They were then asked to choose 4 activities that could be done as a Patrol, each activity to take about 20 minutes. A calendar was provided in their notebooks, and the Patrols scheduled each activity over a 4-week period, made a list of supplies needed and decided who would be responsible for each item.The Patrols will have the first 20 minutes of each meeting from March 21st to April 11th to do these activities.

The Daffodils decided to try Go For It! Lifewise. "You’ll find out about ways to keep happy and healthy, to stay safe and be independent.If you’ve ever fancied living on your own or making more decisions for yourself, this is the Go For It! for you.By the end, you’ll be cool, calm and able to deal with anything (well, almost anything!), and to look out for your friends, too."
The Pansies will be working on Go For It! Camp Out. "Sample the fun of camp without leaving your meeting place! Go For It! Camp out features a great range of activities, from wide games to camp cooking and useful things to make.A great way to enjoy the fun of camp all year round or share your camp adventures with others in your patrol."
The Roses chose Go For It! Fitness. "You all know it’s important to keep fit. Go For It! fitness will give you a go at all sorts of different activities.Whether you do loads of fitness activities already or try to avoid them, there is fun to be had with this Go For It!"
The Trilliums picked Go For It! I Will Survive. "Survival isn’t just about using your shoelaces as a belt or eating raw worms for dinner! Whether you’re rural rascals or urban urchins, there are more important things to sort out. Go For It! I will survive shows you how."

The meeting closed with Campfire, Announcements and Taps.

Happy World Thinking Day!

On Tuesday evening, the Caledonia Sparks, Brownies, Guides, Pathfinders and Rangers got together to celebrate World Thinking Day 2017! We took part in the Youth Uplift Challenge, the National Service Project: Action on Poverty, and earned the WAGGGS World Thinking Day 2017 Crest.

As part of the National Service Project: Action on Poverty, everyone had been asked to bring donations for our local food bank. As a group, we collected and donated over 100lbs of food and supplies!

While the girls were arriving, each Unit was provided with handprints for each girl to colour and decorate with positive messages and images. The Youth Uplift Challenge asks groups to make and decorate paper hands to raise funds for Save the Children's Youth Education and Training Programs in Nicaragua and Indonesia. For every hand we make, the Bezos Family Foundation will donate $1.90 to Save the Children. The goal is to raise $500,000 through this challenge, and young people around the world are taking part! More information can be found on the Student's Rebuild Website. We made 70 hands, which raises $133.00!


After a short opening to introduce the "Grow" theme, and to explain about the Youth Uplift Challenge, we divided up into three mixed age groups for a round robin of activities. One station was run by one of the Guide Guiders, while the other two were run by 3 of our 3rd Year Guides and our Pathfinder.

Roots - Grow Our Cabana
At this station, we played the game outlined in the World Thinking Day Activity Pack. The players are divided into groups of three, with one person left on their own in the middle of the circle. In each group of three, two players stand facing each other, holding hands to form a roof - they are the Cabin. The third player stands between these two players, under the 'roof' - she is the Guest. The player in the middle is the Leader. The game starts with the Leader calling out 'Cabin', 'Guest', or 'Volcano'.

• If she calls Cabin, all the cabins, without breaking apart, must go and find another guest. Guests remain where they are.
• If she calls Guest, the guests have to leave their cabins and find another cabin. Cabins remain where they are.
• If she calls Volcano, the cabins will crumble and the guests have to escape. Everyone moves and forms new groups.

The goal of the Leader is to get a place as part of a cabin or as a guest. After calling out one of the three actions, she moves to find a new space as well. The player left without a spot becomes the new Leader. 


Trunk - Grow Your Commitment
We adapted this activity from the one in the World Thinking Day Activity Pack.The girls were divided into smaller groups, with a mix of Sparks, Brownies and Guides in each group. All of the girls were then asked to imagine that they were a team of Arctic Explorers trekking across the frozen tundra. A sudden blizzard hits and they must build an emergency shelter to protect their team from the storm!

Each group was then given a sponge character for each girl in the group and a supply of toothpicks, index cards, masking tape and modelling clay. They had to build a miniature shelter that would protect all of their sponges from the storm!


Branches - Grow Your Dance Moves
This activity also came from the World Thinking Day Activity Pack. The girls watched the YouTube video from the Arts4Change Session held at Sangam in 2016 and listened to "When We Shine". They were then challenged to create their own dance routines to part of the song (there wasn't time to do the whole song!). The dances were then performed at campfire.

• Watch the Arts4Change Video on YouTube
• Download "When We Shine" and read the lyrics at When We Shine (scroll to the bottom of the page)

Once the stations were completed, we all gathered back in the main room for our final activity - planting sunflower seeds! Each girl decorated a cup using Sharpies and we then added colourful aquarium gravel for drainage, soil, and seeds. Everyone was reminded to give their seeds a drink of water when they got home.

We then sang Tall Trees, and watched the dance performances from the "Grow Your Dance Moves" station. We ended with Spark Closing, Brownie Bells, and Taps.

WAGGGS Night

Tonight we celebrated World Guiding with a WAGGGS-themed evening! As the girls arrived, they worked on finishing their posters about their chosen countries and preparing to do their presentations and lead their chosen games.

We started with our usual opening and then moved right into our program.

First up, we had the Rose Patrol teach us about England and Guiding there, followed by the game "Witches Glue Pot", which is similar to Octopus.

Next, we visited Italy with the Trillium Patrol. Their game was called "Chicken Market" - and was a bit confusing, but involved lots of dramatics!

We paused for a bit in the middle of the evening and one of our Guiders gave a presentation about Our Chalet and Switzerland from her trip there in 2014.

Then it was time to travel to Mexico with the Pansy Patrol, including an active game of "Traffic Policeman".

Our final stop of the evening was the USA with the Daffodil Patrol. Here we played an interesting game called "Frog in the Sea".
The last activity of the night was a Fruit Salad-esque game created and led by our Pathfinder about the World Centres.  We ended our meeting with food - Nachos and Salsa, Cheese Pizza, and Chicken Wings. After eating and cleaning up, we closed with reminders for next week and Taps.

Cookies Rising

We started off February with our annual Cookie night to complete the Cookies Rising Badge.

As the girls arrived, they started working on a Cookie Banner (Financial - Goal Setting) with information about cookies and cookie sales and ideas for how we could use the money we earn from our cookie sales. We then had our usual opening ceremony and an active game before moving into the rest of our program for the evening.

Our first activity was to learn a bit about Girl Guide Cookie History (GGC - History of GGC Cookies). We learned that:

• Girl Guide Cookie Sales start when Christina Riepsamen and the 4th Regina Guide Company bake cookies to raise funds for camping. These cookies are sold for $0.10 per dozen.
• Cookie Sales started in Ontario in 1929. At first, cookies are baked by the girls and their mothers.
• Cookies in the 1930s are made with fruits, nuts and spices, but the recipe is lost when production stops due to the War
• Vanilla cream, maple cream and shortbread cookies are available in 1946, changing to a Scotch-crunch cookie in 1949. 
• The chocolate and vanilla cookies we love were first made in 1953, and became our annual spring cookie in 1966.
• We sold peanut butter cookies for one year only - 1988 (when M. was a Brownie!)
• Cholately Mint cookies came along in 1993 and we started having two cookie campaigns per year. 

Read the blog post "Cookies in Canada" to learn more!

We then moved on to inventing Cookie Mascot Puppets (Social - Creativity). Each girl was asked to think of a character and create a puppet using construction paper, markers and coffee stirrers. The girls then got into groups to invent advertisements for cookies using their mascot puppets. (Business - Marketing)


The second half of our meeting was spent preparing for WAGGGS Night next week. Each Patrol had chosen a country and worked on creating a poster about the country and Guiding there, and choosing and practicing a game from their chosen country to teach to the rest of the Unit.

We ended with clean-up, announcements and Taps.

Winter Camp at Camp Teka

On the first weekend of February the 2nd Caledonia Guides and the 1st New Dundee Guides, joined by 2 Pathfinders, 2 Rangers and 4 Guiders headed to Camp Teka for a weekend of winter fun. The theme for the weekend was Performing Arts, but we also made lots of time for outdoor activities and completed the Alberta Camp Challenge Winter Segment.

On Friday evening, as the girls arrived, they decorated Warm Fuzzy Bags. They were then challenged to put a 'warm fuzzy' in very other girl's bag by the end of the weekend - a warm fuzzy is a nice message, picture, thank you, etc.

Our first craft was Masks. Each girl was given a mask to paint and decorate.While we waited for the paint to dry, we went outside for a Glow Stick Scavenger Hunt (over 40 glow sticks were hidden around the camp buildings and the Guides were divided into teams to find as many as they could!). We came back inside to a snack of oatmeal muffins and hot chocolate before finishing up our masks. The girls then played cards, talked, and crafted until bedtime.


Saturday morning got off to a good start with a pancake and sausage breakfast, followed by morning camp duties. Our first activity was Garbage Bag Skits. The girls divided into small groups and each group was given a garbage back with 8 random props. Their task was to create a skit using all of their group members and all of the props!


After the skits were performed, we headed outside for the rest of the morning. The 3rd Year Guides set out on a hike with one Guider and the 1st and 2nd Year Guides went off with two other Guiders. Both groups were challenged to use their senses while they walked and to look for signs of life in winter. The 1st and 2nd Year Guides had an unexpectedly adventurous hike when we ended up on the old rail line trail and had to climb over, under and around undergrowth, branches, and downed trees!


Returning to camp, we enjoyed tacos for lunch, followed by camp duties and free time. Later in the afternoon, the 3rd Year Guides headed out on another hike, and 4 younger Guides choose to stay inside and make simple marionette puppets while the remainder of the Guides went outside for some sledding. More free time was followed by a dinner of home-made pizza.

Our evening program started out with a series of drama games:

• Rag Doll Shake - In this activity, girls stand in a circle and relax one body part at a time (Head, neck, shoulders, elbows, wrists, arms, etc.). Once they have relaxed each body party, they flop forward at the waist with the arms and head hanging loosely.
• Moving Together - The whole group does this activity together. An instruction is given, and the group has to act it out. All instructions start with 'move as though you are moving through ...' and end with things such as a bowl of marbles, a roomful of feathers, a swamp of mosquitoes, a swimming pool of ice water, a bowl of lime jello.
• Without Your Voice - This activity challenges the girls to use their bodies to make short statements - no sounds or words allowed! Examples include: say "stop" with your palm, say "I don't understand" with your eyes, say "I smell fresh pie" with your tongue, say "I'm slipping" with your legs.
• Let's Pretend - Use your body to show how you would react if you were ... - stung by a bee, an elephant getting leaves from a tall tree, a cat following a mouse, leaping over a mud puddle
• Wax Candle Melt - We added Snowman as an option to this activity. Girls stood or sat in a relaxed position and imagined being a snowman or candle. They then acted out how they would melt.

After these games, it was time for our Art & Talent Show, which ended our program for the evening.

Sunday morning was busy as we packed, finished off the leftovers for breakfast, and cleaned the building. Our Pathfinders and Rangers planned and led a closing for us before every one went home.

Tall Trees

Land of the Silver Birch & My Paddle

Purple Stew

(Camp Likes & Dislikes)

Bananas

On My Honour

Barges

Daylight Taps

The discussion of what everyone liked and disliked about camp showed us that the girls loved the hikes and making new friends, followed closely by crafts, drama activities, and the food! Most girls would either change nothing about camp or add more "adventurous hikes"(!), while more crafts and more sleep were both suggested by others.