February ended with our second "By Guides, For Guides" night. We started out with our usual opening ceremony, then the Thistles led the first half of the meeting on the theme of Pets and Animals, followed by Daisies and their Culture Night.
The Thistle Patrol had planned three activities about Pets and Animals for their half of the evening:
- Big Dog Tag - In this game, "It" is the "Big Dog". The Big Dog chases other players, if someone is tagged, they sit on the floor with their legs out in front of them. In order to be un-tagged, two other players have to come and sit on the floor as well, using their legs to make a T. After counting to 5, all three players rejoin the game. Players cannot be tagged if they are squatting or if they are sitting in a T.
- Lost Pet Skits - Guides were asked to form small groups and each group made up a skit about a losing and finding a pet.
- Twag - In this game, "It" is an Owl and everyone else is a mouse. When a mouse is tagged, they become a baby owl and go and sit in the Owl's nest (a corner or section of the playing area). One player is an "Eagle" who turned the baby owls back into mice.
The Daisy Patrol had chosen Culture Night as their theme and had four activities:
- Facts About the Philippines - One Guide shared some information about the Philippines.
- Scotland Trip - One Guide shared pictures and told about her trip to Scotland to visit family.
- Luksong Tinik - We then played a traditional game from the Philippines. Two players sit on the ground with their legs out and soles of their feet touching. The other players jump over their feet. One of the seated players then places her foot on top of the other players foot, heel to toe, and the other players jump over this increased height. The height in the centre continues to be raised using feet and then hands until other players are unable to jump over it. For better instructions, visit Filipino Games.
- Tinikling - We tried Tinikling, a traditional folk dance
from the Philippines. We have lots of bamboo poles for gadget making, so
were able to split up into groups of 3-4 Guides. Two people kept the rhythm with the poles, going slowly, and the
remaining girls learned to dance in and out of the poles without
getting their feet caught! Download the instructions and watch a video
under "Downloads" at the bottom of this post.
- Food! - The final activity was a taste test with Licorice All-Sorts from Scotland and Sausage and a Fruit and Milk Salad from the Philippines - all very yummy!
Everyone had done a great job preparing their activities and had a lot of fun trying some new activities. We ended with reminders for next week and closed with Taps.
Downloads:
This week the Sparks, Brownies, Guides, Pathfinders and Rangers in Caledonia got together for our annual World Thinking Day Event. The program was planned and run by the Pathfinders and Rangers, assisted by the 3rd Year Guides.
As everyone arrived, they were directed to the appropriate part of the room for their Unit. We provided colouring sheets and wordsearches, as well as supplies for Guiders to make name tags dividing their Unit into three groups. Each Unit performed their usual opening ceremony, followed by a brief introduction to the theme of Leadership. We had four activities and each group worked through them with a Pathfinder/Ranger and 3rd Year Guide leading.
Dance With Your Past
In this activity, each person is asked to think of their favourite song and dance while singing in their head. They are then asked to talk about how easy or hard they found the experience and if they would have done the same thing two years ago.
Hey, That's Not Right!
It's 1908 and your brother just got a new book for his birthday called Scouting for Boys. It's about learning life skills, camping and making new friends. It sounds really fun and you want to take part, but people say that camping and adventure are only for boys. You don't agree and get together with some of your friends to let people know that girls can do anything!"
Each group split up into smaller groups of mixed Sparks, Brownies and Guides to create posters about all the amazing things girls can do!
Spot the Leader at Kusafiri
"Kusafiri World Centre held an event in 2017 called Arts4Change in Madagascar. Participants explored ways to use creativity to build leadership skills. Leadership doesn't always have to be seen or heard, sometimes it can just be felt!"
Players stand in a circle. One person leaves the room and another is secretly chosen to be the leader. The leader makes an action, sound or movement and everyone else in the circle has to copy them. The leader can change their actions at any time. The person outside comes back into the room and stands in the centre of the circle. As the rest of the group continues following the leader, the person in the centre has three chances to guess who is the leader.
In 2119, Can You Imagine?
For our fourth activity, we asked everyone to think about what it might be like to be a Girl Guide in 2119, 100 years from now by drawing a 22nd Century Guide. The twist to this activity was that each drawing would be completed by three people. The first person drew the head and neck, then folded their part over and let the next person draw the torso and arms, this part is also folded over so only the bottom third of the page is showing and the third person draws the legs and feet.
Lost in Time Activities
As each group completed the activities on their own within the time frame of the meeting, we also planned some no-equipment activities from the Lost in Time section of the Activity Pack.
- You've encountered some Scouts from the past on their way to Brownsea Island, teach them a song for their campfire.
- Can you name the 5 World Centres? (Pax Lodge, Sangam, Our Chalet, Our Cabana, Kusafiri)
- You meet a group of Girl Guides from the future who speak a language you don't recognize. Find a way to say "Happy World Thinking Day" without using words.
- Try to say the Spark Promise backwards. (Friend A Be and Share to Promise I)
- You meet some Girl Guides from the future. What is one thing you want to know about Guiding in the future?
- Name one country you'd like to learn more about and why.
- Say a tongue twister.
- When you do something which inspires other people you're practicing leadership. Ask if anyone can share something they did in the last week which inspired someone.
- Who can come up with the most inventive upgrade for their time machine?
- If you were given one wish to change your community for the better, what would it be?
We ended with Spark Closing, Brownie Closing, and Taps, before saying goodnight to everyone.
Links:
This week we did our pre-Thinking Day activity and learned about memes with the Forget-Me-Not Patrol.
We started with our usual opening ceremony, and then moved straight into our three activities for the evening. First up, each Patrol had to finalize their plans for their "meetings" (each Patrol will be running half a meeting or about 45-60 minutes of activities for the rest of the Unit).
Our second activity was to make time machines for Thinking Day! Each girl has been given a cassette case and a template to make a mini-girl to put inside the case. We used sharpies to decorate the time machines.
Finally, at 7.30pm, we turned the meeting over to the Forget-Me-Not Patrol and their Memes and Glow-in-the-Dark Meeting. The Patrol had planned four activities for their meeting, which filled up the second hour of the meeting.
- Meme Tiles - Each Guide created her own meme using markers on a half-sheet of cardstock.
- Manhunt - In their version, two players are it and the game is played with the lights off. (Basically a big game of tag as we were indoors, the game is usually played in a wooded area where there are lots of places to hide and outfox the players who are it.)
- Mama Bear - A game made up by the Patrol: One player is the bear and they hide in the dark. Everyone else waits for the bear to hide and then comes into the room and say "I'm not scared of bears tonight; my daddy got them all last night". They then try to find the bear in the dark and when someone finds her, they say "Beep" and run to the door. Play continues until most/all of the players have found the bear.
- Charades: Meme Edition - The Patrol came up with some different memes and the slips of paper were drawn by small groups and used to create a charade for the rest of the group to guess.
Everyone had fun and the Forget-Me-Nots did a great job leading their activities!. We ended with reminders for next week (Pets/animals with the Thistles and Culture Night with the Daisies) and closed with Taps.
February ended with our second "By Guides, For Guides" night. We started out with our usual opening ceremony, then the Thistles led the first half of the meeting on the theme of Pets and Animals, followed by Daisies and their Culture Night. 
