Messy Night

Our final regular meeting of the year was our annual Messy Night! This is a night where everyone gets wet and messy with paint, shaving cream, water and anything else we happen to include!


The way Messy Night works is we provide a variety of activities, and the Guides, Pathfinders and Rangers choose which ones they want to try. The main rule of the evening is that you cannot get someone else wet/messy without their consent - meaning those who want to stay dry are able to do so. 

As it was somewhat cooler this May than in past years, we were unable to do some of our favourite activities, such as Paint Twister and the Paint-Water-Shaving Cream Slip 'n' Slide. This year's activities included:

• Shaving Cream Marbling
• Face Painting
• Sidewalk Chalk
• Hair Chalk
• Shave the Balloon
• Bubbles  
• "Pie" Eating (Whipped Cream)
• Finger Painting

Links:

• Marbled Paper From Shaving Cream

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!

Art-Tastic! Drawing & Sculpting

Tonight we explored our creativity with the help of one of our Guiders who studied Fine Arts. 

We began with our usual opening ceremony and an active game, then moved right into our activities for the evening. 

We started our with Still Life Drawing and Perspective Drawing using a display of teddy bears and flowers. These were challenging activities for the Guides, and also something most hadn't tried before. The next activity was from the Girls First platform called "Draw, Don't Stop" where the girls created drawings without lifting their pencils from the paper. 
   
Our next activity was Clay Pictionary. We made the easy clay recipe on the Girls First platform (mix 1 cup flour, 3/4 cup salt and 3 oz hot water together and knead into a dough-y clay). Each Patrol had a glob of clay, a plate to make their pictures and a set of cards. As they played, the Guides discovered it's much harder to work with clay rather than markers in this game! 

We ended the evening with time for free drawing and sculpting, resulting in some really neat creations. 
After cleaning up, we ended with reminders for next week and closed with Taps.

"I Want To Be... (Career Awareness for Guides)

For our first meeting after March Break, we learned about careers and explored the skills needed for different types of jobs.

The first 30 minutes of the meeting were Patrol Time, and each patrol started working on the activities they had planned out before March Break.

• Trillium Patrol - "Rap Around the Clock" - made up raps and songs about safety
• Rose Patrol - "Running" - did timed sprints and blocks of running
• Pansy Patrol - "Time Travel" - looked at photographs from camps in the 1930s-60s and designed their own futuristic campsites
• Daffodil Patrol - "Scrunchies" - measured and cut out fabric to make scrunchies and started sewing

We then had our usual opening and moved into our program. Each girl was given a worksheet and had to complete 3 activities:

• I Could Be... - Girls explored 11 posters about different careers and choose two that interested them to learn more about. They also had the option of adding a different career, and had to explain why they were interested in that particular path. (Posters were created based on interests expressed by the Guides!)
• My Resume - Girls filled out a simplified resume to highlight their talents and abilities. 
• Getting the Job - Girls worked in pairs to answer sample interview questions.

They were then able to choose from a variety of different skill activities, grouped into 4 categories: Law, Arts, Animals and Working With People.

• Exploring ... the Law - Here the girls could choose to test their knowledge of the Law or create a short exercise routine.
• Exploring ... the Arts - This station offered a wide variety of activities grouped as Design, Drama & Dance, and Writing & Composing.
• Exploring ... Animals - At this station, the girls had a chose of three different activities - making field notes, creating an activity to teach others about animals, or testing their knowledge with the "Creature Quiz"
• Exploring ... Working With People - We had two options here, getting to know another Guide and learning some basic signs and finger spelling.

After cleaning up, girls were able to present their skits, posters and research. We then played an active game and closed with reminders for next week and Taps.

DOWNLOADS

• Career Awareness Worksheet
• Career Posters
• Exploring ... the Law
• Exploring ... the Arts
• Exploring ... Animals (The "Creature Quiz" can be found in GFI: Animal Active as "Know Your Animals")
• Exploring ... Working With People 

While the Guides were learning about Careers, our Pathfinders & Rangers cleaned out the supply cupboard - that hasn't been emptied in many years...

Arts in the Outdoors

This week we took advantage of the good weather to explore the arts in the outdoors. As the girls arrived, they played tag in the hall.

We started out by having another go at forming a horseshoe - much better this time! The girls who went to Fall Frolic on the weekend then shared what they enjoyed about the event, and the Guiders explained the plan for the evening. Outside, the Guides had a choice of a variety of different activities:

Leaf & Bark Rubbings
We provided paper and crayons and let the girls explore the different textures found in nature - leaves, bark, acorns, stones, etc.

Sketching
This was the most popular activity! We had pre-cut paper from a sketch pad into quarters and provided sharpened pencils, erasers, and clipboards as the girls went out to draw what they could see in nature.




Watercolour Painting
Painting proved a hit and we have some talented painters in our Unit! We pre-cut white cardstock into quarters and provided watercolour palettes, water, brushes and clipboards for the girls to create nature-inspired paintings.

Drama & Dance
For those girls looking for a more active way to express their creativity, we offered the option of creating nature inspired dances, using creative movement to recreate nature, or

Music & Creative Writing
Three groups wrote original songs about nature and one girl wrote a poem - and all were brave enough to perform them for the Unit!

Shortly before 8pm, we cleaned up and moved back indoors. One of the Guides led a game of Blob Tag and then the girls had an opportunity to share what they had been working on. We have some talented artists, singers, songwriters and poets!


To end the meeting, we learned two songs - Five Green and Speckled Frogs and Land of the Silver Birch - before closing with Taps.

November & December with the Pathfinders

We started November with a planning meeting. The girls present planed activities on different arts to share at the next meeting. We had activities covering Drama, Writing, Drawing and Art. We also did a challenge activity - list 10 body parts of 3 letters (this is harder than it sounds). The last part of the meeting was spent planning activities for our upcoming sleepover in December.

The second meeting in November was devoted to the Arts, with the girls leading activities that they had planned.

• Game with character cards, players have to interact according to the instructions on their card
• Two Truths and a Lie using character details
• Cooperative story where each person added one sentence at a time.
• Freeze - an improv game where two players start a scene and someone else calls out 'Freeze' and takes the place of one player and starts a new scene
• Bullying prevention skits
• Skits showing the best parts of Guiding
• One paragraph stories and skits

On November 19th, 5 Pathfinders joined the Guides at the McMaster Planetarium, earning the Galactic Adventures Badge - see Guide post here

Our last meeting in November was spent learning to crochet. The goal is to make a blanket that can be donated, but the first step was learning how to do it!

December started off with a meeting all about Animals. Everyone had been asked to choose and animal and bring 5 facts about it. Using the facts, the rest of the group tried to guess the animal. The chosen animals were Cat, Polar Bear, Penguin, Red Panda, Fox, Water Bear and Dog. The next activity was a memory game played with animal tracks. This was followed by animal charades and a game of Capture the Flag. The last activity of the evening was to create an animal cartoon character.

Our annual Pathfinder/Ranger Service Project Sleepover was held on the first Friday of December. We made 8 dozen cookies for the church to pack into boxes for people spending Christmas alone, 5 plates full of decorated sugar cookies for an assisted living facility, and Christmas cards for a group home. We ordered pizza and the girls had lots of time to play games, listen to music and socialize.

The second week of December was our Christmas Pot Luck Dinner. Everyone brought food and we spent the evening eating and ended by playing some active games to stay warm as the hall was very cold that night.


Our last meeting of the year was spent visiting the Hamilton-Burlington SPCA. We had a tour of the facility, learned about the work done by the SPCA, and got to visit with the therapy rabbits.

The Arts and Active Living

During the month of May, both Guide Guiders were out of the country for two weeks. The meeting on May 7th was run by the Pathfinders and the meeting on May 14th was cancelled due to a double-booking at the church.

The May 7th meeting was on the theme of "The Arts & Active Living".

The Pathfinders planned a Craft - Mother's Day, Friendship or Birthday Cards; Games - Colour Tag, Hide and Go Seek, Octopus; Dancing - Line Dancing, Cha Cha Slide, Skits and a Campfire.