Girl Guides Go Galactic!

This week we belatedly celebrated World Space Week. It was also one of those meetings where we had a plan, but changed it based on what the girls wanted to do.

We started out by practicing the horseshoe and working on learning the Guide Marching Song. (We still need a bit of practice!)

Our first activity was a trivia relay race to learn about the different planets in the solar system. The Guides lined up in their Patrols and a series of clues were read out. Once the Patrol figured out which planet was being described, one person ran to the other end of the room to find the planet itself and bring it back to the Patrol. Once each Patrol had all of the planets, they were challenged to put them in order from nearest to furthest from the sun.



We then played an active game to look at how planets orbit the sun. One girl was the sun and had a beach ball. The other girls chose their planets and walked or ran in a circle around the sun. The challenge - the sun kept moving! This was a great activity for using up some excess energy.

Our final big activity was intended to be origami alien bookmarks, but became a lengthy session of origami in general. The girls made bookmarks, cootie catchers, and other folded creations!

As a final game, we played Planets, a fruit salad-type game using different planets instead of fruit. We ended with a couple of songs, reminders for next week (no meeting) and Taps.

Downloads:

• Planet Trivia Facts

Guiding Traditions

This week we had our annual Guiding Traditions (or Guiding History) night. We borrowed one of the Heritage Boxes from Ontario Council and used some of the activities, along with some of our own.

As the girls arrived they each made two Semaphore Flags using white cardstock, blue construction paper and straws. (Heritage Box). These were put aside for use later on. We then spent some time learning and practicing how to form a horseshoe and singing the Guide Marching Song. (I was prepared this year and had the words to the song written out on a sheet of Bristol board!)

Next up was a game from a 1922 issue of The Guide magazine called "Pork and Green Peas". This game is very similar to "Darling If You Love Me" - and can have hilarious results depending on the questions asked. Players sit in a circle and one person is 'It'. 'It' goes up to a player and asks her a question - any question she wishes. The questioned player must answer "pork and green peas", no matter what she has been asked, without smiling or laughing. If she is successful, 'It' moves on to another player. If she smiles or laughs, she trades places with 'It'.

We have been having some difficulty getting the girls attention, so we tried some of the hand and whistle signals from an older Guide Handbook (not that old - it was mine!). I don't particularly like using a whistle, but it was certainly effective! We tried signals for stop, look. listen; come here; scatter; form two lines; form a circle; and never mind.

Next up, we split into Patrols and did a round robin of three activities:

Name That Badge!
For this activity, girls explored a camp blanket (mine) containing Brownie, Guide and Pathfinder Badge Sashes, as well as numerous crests and patches from all over. They were challenged to identify some of the different badges and to find the crests from 1 Territory and 8 Provinces.

Be Prepared Card Game
Using the Memory Game Cards (Heritage Box) we had the girls play a game like "Go Fish". There were 28 cards in the deck, with two of each card. Each girl was dealt 4 cards to start and the remainder were placed face down in a pile in the centre. They played by taking turns asking another player if they had a matching card (i.e. compass, fire lighting, throwing a life line). If the asked player had the card, they gave it to the other player, who placed the pair on the floor in front of her. If the asked player didn't have the card, they said 'Be Prepared' and the asking player had to draw a card from the pile in the centre. The winner was the player with the most pairs.



Semaphore
Each girl used the semaphore flags she had made at the beginning of the meeting and the replica Semaphore cards from the 1950s (Heritage Box). They practiced signaling the alphabet, their names, and 'Be Prepared'.



After cleaning up, we played a team game - Bean Bag Toss (Heritage Box).


Our final activity involved skits and a potted history of Guiding. Each Patrol was assigned a theme for their skit and we interspersed them with bits of Guiding history. The skit themes were Cookies, Camping, and Helping Others.

Guiding began in Canada in 1910. Early groups formed in Toronto, St. Catharines, Moose Jaw, Sardis (BC), Vancouver, Winnipeg, and even Dawson City in the Yukon! Girls were excited to try new activities and learn about first aid, tracking, woodcraft, outdoor cooking and camping. The first Guides chose a uniform of a loose white blouse and long navy blue skirt. This changed into a dark blue dress in the 1920s and, with slight changes in shade and style, this would remain the uniform for nearly 80 years.

Did you know that Girl Guides have been selling cookies since 1927? That's 90 years! The first cookies were baked by Christina Riepsame of Regina and sold by the 4th Regina Guides.

Cookie Skit

We have been selling chocolate and vanilla cookies for over 60 years and chocolately mint cookies for over 20 years. One of the things cookies help pay for is camping. Guides have been camping since 1911 - over 100 years!

Camping Skit

Every few years a National Camp is held with girls from across Canada and around the world. The last National Camp was Guiding Mosaic in 2016, which was held at Sandy Lake, Alberta. These large camps always involve a service project of some sort.

Helping Others Skit

Service and helping others has been a part of Guiding since the beginning. During the First World War, only 4 years after Guiding began, Canadian Guides gave service by working factories and government offices, volunteering in hospitals, knitting socks, making dressings and bandages, and collecting supplies and donations for the war effort. Today, Guides take part in service projects around the themes of Community, Environment and International.

We then ended with reminders for next week and closed with Taps.


Downloads:

• List of Activities in the GGC Ontario Council Heritage Box for Guides
• Link to GGC-Ontario Council Heritage Boxes

Nighthawk Goes to Platform 9 3/4

This weekend we traveled to Camp Conestogo for Nighthawk, a camp for Pathfinders and Rangers. At this camp, activities take place all night Friday until 6amSaturday, and begin again Saturday afternoon. The theme for this year's camp was Harry Potter! A huge THANK YOU to the organizers for a great event and for keeping things going despite the rain and mud!!

Friday night started out with drop-in activities. We adopted our owls at Eeylops Owl Emporium, played name games in Hogsmeade, gathered firewood and played Wizards, Giants and Elves in Knockturn Alley, and got our wands at Ollivanders.

The Sorting Ceremony was held at Hogwarts at 11pm, with all the participants being divided between the four Houses - we were in Hufflepuff! Each House then separated to decorate their House Banners, to be displayed proudly at Hogwarts throughout the weekend. We were also given the weekend challenge of finding all of Dobby's socks hidden around the camp (each sock gained a House Point!).

Midnight found the girls heading into the Forbidden Forest for a game similar to Capture the Flag. Houses had to guard their own tealight and try to capture those belonging to other Houses. This was followed by Potions Class (making lip balm) and Charms Class (making bookmarks).

A hot snack and drink followed, and then everyone entered into the QuadWizard Tournament. Activities included dance, drama, trivia contest and Pin-the-Scar-on-Harry". A Campfire and pre-bed snack ended the night and everyone still up headed off to bed.

For early risers on Saturday, breakfast was served between 8.30 and 10.30am and quiet activities - cards, games, colouring, word searches, and crafts were available. All snacks and meals were served at the Leaky Cauldron, and Saturday afternoon's activities started off with lunch at 1pm. Most of the afternoon was spent playing in a Quidditch tournament. The rain started during the final match, but play still continued! During the down time before dinner, girls took part in crafts, quiet activities, and, of course, dressing for dinner in the costumes they had brought with them. Dinner was a banquet eaten in the Hogwarts Great Hall, after which everyone settled in for an evening of movies (Harry Potter I and Hocus Pocus) and staying out of the rain.

Sunday morning was wet and muddy, but the rain had stopped overnight. We packed, folded up the tents and piled our gear under the building shelters before heading over for breakfast. A final activity, Dragon Hunt, was held before closing with the song "I Am One Voice" followed by Taps. We all headed home, tired and muddy, but with good memories and plans to return next year!


Downloads:

• Owl Key Chain Pattern
• Wand Making 101
• Quidditch Instructions 

International Day of the Girl 2017

At this week's meeting we celebrated the International Day of the Girl (October 11th) with the WAGGGS #TeamGirl Challenge and began making plans for this year's service projects!

Team Girl Gets Rights on Their Side
The first activity we did was aimed at helping the girls understand their right to an education and differentiating between needs and wants. We printed out 3 sets of the Needs/Wants Cards (see download below) and played a relay game. The cards were placed at the far end of the room and the members of each Patrol took turns to run up and get a card and decide if it was a Need or a Want. Once all the Patrols had sorted their cards out, we talked about a few of them to see if everyone agreed. As part of this discussion we noted that the basic needs for survival are food, water and shelter, but in order to thrive, we need other things as well.

Pathway to Education
This activity introduced the girls to some of the barriers to education that girls face, as well as a number of fun challenge activities! We used a slightly modified version of the game provided in the Challenge Pack and marked out a large gameboard on the floor with painter's tape. The girls played in Patrols and used water bottles and shoes as markers and large foam dice. The Patrols took turns rolling the dice and moving their counter around the board. Depending on where they landed, they had to complete tasks - sing a song, stay silent, name 7 countries starting with the letter B, name 10 different fruits, etc. It was very interesting to see which Patrols worked best together and how the Pathfinders interacted with the Guides.

At this point in the evening we separated, the Pathfinders and Rangers went upstairs and the Guides continued in the main room.

GUIDES

Get Set to Break Barriers
Our third activity further explored barriers to education, but also challenged the girls to start thinking of ways to overcome them. We chose three of the characters and scenarios from the Challenge Pack and gave a character to each Patrol. They had to come up with the character's back story - name, family, hobbies, feelings. They were then given a scenario that described a barrier to the character's education. Each Patrol then made up and presented a skit about their character and how the barrier affected her ability to get an education.

Team Girl Speaks Out
The final activity was about making a difference, so we asked each Patrol to make a list of issues they care about and any ideas they had for service projects. We had a variety of ideas and will be choosing some of them to work on later this year!

PATHFINDERS/RANGERS

Making a Difference
Our Ranger talked about her experiences at WE Day in September (it was awesome!!) and the group worked through some of the WE Resources to come up with a list of issues they care about and potential service projects. We will be putting their plans into action over the course of the year!

Universal Declaration of Human Rights - Article 26
(1) Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.
(2) Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the UN for the maintenance of peace.
(3) Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.

Convention on the Rights of the Child - Article 28
You have the right to a good quality education. You should be encouraged to go to school to the highest level you can.

Convention of the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women - Article 10 
Countries must end discrimination against women and girls and ensure equal rights in education. This includes equal access to education and vocational training at all levels. Women and girls must be provided with the same curricula, examinations, standards for teaching, access to scholarships, and equipment.

Downloads:

• Needs/Wants Cards
• Pathway to Education Game Board 
• #TeamGirl 2017 Challenge Pack (WAGGGS Website) 

Hamilton City Hall Campfire

For our meeting this week, we joined other Units at a Campfire at Hamilton City Hall. It was a great night and everyone had lots of fun! We heard from a member of the Ontario Girl Forum, got to spend time swapping with other Guiding members, and earned the Sing Ontario Sing Challenge.


Opening Songs

• Tall Trees
• Light the Wood
  

Gathering Songs

• Something to Sing About
• Rover
  

Round or Repeat Songs

• Make New Friends
• Tree Song
  

Rowdy Songs

• Brown Squirrel

Silly Action Songs

• 40 Years on an Iceberg
• The Beaver Song
• Big Buffalo
• The Moose Song
  

Slower Songs

• Barges

Reflective Songs

• Land of the Silver Birch/My Paddle
• Peace Like A River
• On My Honour
  

Closing Songs 

• Softly Falls
• Twinkle, Twinkle Little Spark
• Brownie Closing
• Taps