What Have the Pathfinders & Rangers Been Up To?

Although they haven't featured much this year, we do have an active Pathfinder/Ranger Unit of 4 girls! Our Unit is unique in that their meetings are held without a Guider in constant attendance. The girls head off to a separate room from the Guides and run their own meetings with a Guider popping in occasionally to see that there are no problems. Meetings are planned by Guiders and girls, but are run by the girls themselves. Our Rangers make sure things go smoothly and takes on key leadership roles, while helping the Pathfinders to develop their own leadership skills. Although this arrangement was born of necessity due to a lack of Guiders, turning things over to the girls has been mostly successful!

September

Tuesday, September 11th - Welcome to Girls First!
For our first meeting of the year, everyone took part in sample activities for the new Girls First program. Afterwards, the Pathfinders and Rangers worked on planning and identifying activities that they would like to do this year. Read all about our meeting here - Welcome to Girls First!

Tuesday, September 18th - Program Planning
The Pathfinders and Rangers headed off armed with the Unit's Program Area Cards, the Idea Cards from last week and lots of planning materials to work on coming up with a plan for what they would like to do this year.

Thursday, September 20th - WE Day Toronto 2018
WE Day was AWESOME! This was the second time we attended, and though we were small in numbers we had a great time. Read all about the event here - WE Day Toronto 2018

Tuesday, September 25th - Program Planning
Program planning continued and a plan for October to December arranged.  

October

Tuesday, October 2nd - Community Scavenger Hunt
This year's annual scavenger hunt was "The Community Scavenger Hunt". The girls are sent out around town to find - and photograph - as many of the items on the list as they can, including their team members!

Tuesday, October 9th - Hamilton City Hall Campfire 2018
One Pathfinder joined the Guides for a Campfire and completed the Sing Ontario Sing 2018 Challenge! Read about the event here - Hamilton City Hall Campfire 2018

Tuesday, October 16th - International Day of the Girl
For the International Day of the Girl we worked on the WAGGGS #TeamGirl 2018 Challenge. This year, we learned about diversity, gender equality, gender power and being our own superheroes! Read all about our meeting here - International Day of the Girl 2018

Tuesday, October 23rd - Promise, Law & Planning
The Pathfinders joined the Guides for some Promise and Law activities, voting on options for the new uniform, finalizing the details of their Hallowe'en party and discussing The Shoebox Project for Shelters as a possible project for this fall. Read about this meeting here - Promise, Law & Planning.

Tuesday, October 30th - Hallowe'en Party
Hallowe'en was celebrated by dressing up in costumes, eating candy and watching a movie. 

November

Tuesday, November 6th - Social Time
This week we took a break and had a social session and clarified the details of some up-coming meetings as the Pathfinders and Rangers will be leading outdoor games for the Guides and having an arts meeting this month. 

Tuesday, November 13th - Leading Outdoor Games with Guides
Tonight we didn't have access to our regular meeting space, so we all headed off to the park and the Pathfinders and Rangers led a series of outdoor games and activities for the Guides. Read about our meeting here - Outdoor Games Night
 
Tuesday, November 21st - Art-Tastic
Tonight was all about creativity. The planned project was to melt crayons onto canvases, but instead the girls raided the cupboard and used up some of our excess craft supplies. They made floral headbands, decorative items, and some Christmas ornaments instead.

Tuesday, November 27th - Baking Brownies
We tried our first Build Skills activity tonight by baking brownies. We have done quite a bit of baking in the past, but this particular group of girls hasn't done as much and has run into problems following recipes in the past. They were also responsible for cleaning up the kitchen - something that is sometimes neglected, but was very well done this time. Tonight's recipe was a great success and the brownies were delicious!

December

Tuesday, December 4th - Food Bank Visit
As part of the Take Action program area, we visited the local Food Bank and learned about the services they offer and how they operated. We also assisted with two jobs - packing toiletry bags for the Christmas hampers and repackaging dry pet food into smaller bags. Read about our meeting here - Food Bank Visit.



Tuesday, December 11th - Chocolatiers
We all ended the hear with the Chocolatiers Instant Meeting from the Girls First Platform. Creating, designing, envisioning and tasting of chocolate were all involved. Read about our meeting here - Chocolatiers!
Tuesday, December 18th - Holiday Party
Tonight was our final activity of 2018. We ate enjoyed appetizers and desert, along with a gift game. Appetizers included pineapple-chicken-bacon skewers, garlic Parmesan rolls, spring rolls and plum sauce, honey garlic sausage bites, and mini mozzarella pizzas. Desert was personal apple pieces (apple, brown sugar and cinnamon in crescent rolls) with vanilla ice cream. Instead of a gift exchange, we played the 'parcel game'. Small treats and gifts are wrapped in many layers and newspaper liberally held in place with packing tape. Girls take turns rolling large dice and when they rolled a 7, they got to work on unpackaging as much as they could until someone else rolled a 7 and then the package was passed to the new person. Everyone received chocolate, crests, pins and pencils. It was quite a challenge to get into the parcel and it was funny to watch each other working on it!

Chocolatiers!

For our final meeting of 2018, we decided to try the Chocolatiers Instant Meeting on the Girls First Platform. This challenge was a lot of fun - and very tasty!

We started with our usual opening, followed by an active game - Everybody's It Tag. 

Our first activity was Chocolate Transformations, where we learned about the chocolate making process. The group was divided into five groups and each group was given a slip of paper with the description of part of the process - harvesting, fermenting, roasting and winnowing, grinding, and tempering and moulding. Each group had to come up with a way to act out the process described and then the rest of the group tried to guess it. A print-out for this activity can be found on the Girls First Platform. 

We then moved on to If I Were A Chocolatier... and decorated our own chocolate "cakes". For the cakes, we used peanut and dairy-free chocolate brownies and provided icing, sprinkles, small candies, chocolates, and similar decorating supplies. Before starting, everyone was asked to think about what they wanted their "cake" to look like and which supplies they would need. The end results were very creative and we sent them home to be eaten later. 

As people finished their decorating, they moved on to Chocolate Redesign and envisioned their perfect chocolate bar. They were then asked to design a wrapper and explain why their chocolate bar was the perfect one. 

The final activity was Chocolate Taste Test, which was a bit of a challenge as we have a peanut allergy and finding unique peanut-free chocolate was harder than we thought. We ended up using Aero bars, Kit Kats and Smarties. All are peanut-free and the mini-bars came in packs of 10, so each person had their own personal bars to sample. we used the tasting sheet provided on the Girls First platform and had everyone work in Patrols to test each chocolate for look, snap, texture and taste. We all came back together at the end and voted on the best flavour - Kit Kats won and Smarties were surprisingly unpopular!

We ended our meeting with goodbyes for the holidays, reminders about camp in January and closed with Taps.

Food Bank Visit

This week we visited the Caledonia and District Food Bank as part of the Take Action program area. 

We met at the Church as usual and then walked to the Food Bank, where we were met by Dorette and Anne.

First we learned a bit about the services provided by the Food Bank and how it operates. They are open for service every Friday and people can access food, hygiene supplies, clothing, and find out about other community resources.

When a person arrives at the Food Bank, they take a form and a number. The form asks for some basic information (number of people in the family, male/female, ages of children) and then has a section where people can circle the items that they need. Another section at the bottom has other items that they can request. They put their number on the form, hand it in and wait to be called. While they are waiting, they can visit 'Linda's Closet'. Linda's Closet is a clothing closet that has all sorts of different items, including winter clothing and prom dresses. They also run a Backpack program in the fall so that children have the supplies they need to go back to school.

If there are school-age children in the family, each child receives a supply of snacks for school, which could include drinking boxes, yogurt, pudding cups, cheese strings, granola bars, apples, gold fish crackers, and/or individual hot chocolate packets. For infants, items such as formula, food, cereal and diapers are available. The Food Bank also runs a Christmas Hamper program where families receive a turkey, a food basket, fresh veggies (potatoes, carrots and onions), toiletries, hats and mitts, and a gift for each member of the family.

Some of the girls had brought donations, so we visited the scale and weighed our donations (25 pounds). Donation amounts are recorded along with the name of the group or individual donor. 

During our visit, we were able to help out with two tasks.

One area has been set aside for breaking down larger packages into smaller amounts - such as flour, sugar, rice, powdered milk, and pet food. The girls worked on dividing up large bags of dog food into smaller bags. They had to scoop food, trying to get as little as possible on the ground, and fill the bags with approximately the same amount.

The second task was to assemble toiletries bags for the Christmas Hampers. The girls used sheets with the ages and sexes of family members to make up packages for various families. When the sheet was given to the group, they had to record the family's number on the bag, then add items according to the age/sex of each family member. Each family received a bottle of shampoo, a bar of soap and a tube of toothpaste, then each person received a toothbrush and teens and adults received deodorant and razors.

At the end of the visit, we thanked Dorette and Anne and walked back to the Church for pick-up.

STEM Sleepover

On Friday night, 10 Guides and 4 Second-Year Brownies got together for an evening of STEM-themed fun! We had four stations available and girls moved through them in any order they chose, spending as much or as little on each activity as they wished. Everyone had a good time designing, creating and building. We had a snack of pizza, veggies and dip before saying good-bye to our Brownie friends.  

Build a Rocket Car
Our first station - and probably the most popular! - was to build a balloon-powered rocket car. The original plan was to use paper towel rolls for the body of the cars, but we soon found that they were too heavy, so we experimented and came up with some creative designs using alternate materials. Supplies provided were paper towel rolls, styrofoam cups, straws, sponges, skewers, balloons, tape, rulers and scissors. 

Create a Kaleidoscope
The second station focused on physics and girls were able to create a working kaleidoscope. We used the heavier tubes from industrial paper towels for the basis of the kaleidoscopes. The eye piece is created by cutting out a circle of cardstock and punching a hole in the centre, then using packing tape to attach it to one end of the tube. Next, a pre-measured and scored piece of cardboard is folded to make a triangle. The inside of the triangle is covered with tinfoil (using silver cardboard would have been better), then the triangle is taped together and inserted into the tube. We then used tri-beads and salad dressing containers (small) attached to the open end of the tube to finish things off. When painted towards a light source and turned, the light passes through the coloured beads and refracts off the foil surface to create the coloured designs!

Design a Pencil Case
The third station challenged girls to upcycle two plastic cups into a pencil case, treasure box, bug catcher, or anything else their imagination could come up with! We provided cups, velcro for attaching the cups to each other, glue and decorating supplies.

Crack a Code 
The fourth station was all about cryptography and codes. The girls had a chance to try out different types of codes, including a Caesar Cipher Wheel, Pigpen Cipher, Morse Code, Scytale Cipher, and creating their own Secret Code.
After the Brownies left, we cleaned up and then the Guides played board games, read and chatted before going to bed. Saturday morning was busy with clean-up, breakfast, packing and good-byes before heading home. 

Links and Downloads:

• Code and Cipher Sheets
• 3 Ways to Make a Kaleidoscope (external link)
• How to Make a Balloon Powered Car (external link)