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 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.
This week we turned the Unit over to our third Patrol for the second half of the meeting for their planned activities, the theme? Dark!
As the girls arrived, they played an impromptu game of tag, checked their attendance books and collected dues. We started with our usual opening and then moved onto two activities from the Leading Ladies Challenge while we waited for it to get a bit darker outside.
For the first activity, we talked briefly about the first Guide Handbook, How Girls Can Help to Build Up the Empire (1912) by Agnes and Robert Baden-Powell and the upcoming changes for Guiding with the new Girls First program. One of the changes is that the program will be online rather than paper-based. Each Patrol was asked to Design a New Handbook and let us know what they think should be included in a Guide Handbook for 2018. Ideas ranged from links to Instagram and Snapchat, to details instructions for camp skills, to more information about WAGGGS.
Our next activity was inspired by an article in the most recent Canadian Guider about Summertime Unit Activities. We asked each Patrol to make a list of things they would like to do if Guides ran during the summer. While we haven't decided if this is something we'll try, we did get a great list of ideas for activities!
At this point, we turned the meeting over to the Daffodil Patrol for their "Dark Night"! Everyone had been asked to wear dark clothing and to bring a flashlight, so we turned out the lights and got started! The first game was Everybody's It Tag - when one girl tags another, they play 'Rock, Paper, Scissors' and the loser sits down until she is tapped by another player to rejoin the game. We then moved on to Graveyard - everyone finds a spot in the room and freezes in position while the person who is 'It' walks around. If she sees someone moving, she calls their name and they are our of the game. While her back is turned, the other players are expected to move and change positions. Our next game was Flashlight Tag - the person who is It tags other players by shining her flashlight on them and calling out their name. Next up was Flashlight Freeze Dance - with music provided by the voices of the Patrol themselves! Our final activity was Four Corners - a flashlight was placed in each corner, girls choose a corner to run to and the person in the center closes her eyes, spins around and points at a corner. Anyone in the corner that is pointed to is out.
To end, we turned the lights back out, handed out badges, talked about next week and closed with Taps.
About a month ago we asked each Patrol to pick a theme and plan activities for a meeting. This week, we turned the Unit over to the first two Patrols and had an evening of unicorn and starburst themed activities.
The first Patrol had picked a Unicorn theme and planned two activities. The first was Pin the Horn on the Unicorn. One girl had made a picture of a unicorn, a paper blindfold and a set of horns. She also brought the tape needed to hang the picture up and stick the horns on. Their second activity was Unicorn Musical Chairs - though I think it wound up being more of an action chairs game as there was no music and the chairs were scattered around the room (the girls had fun though!).
The second Patrol decided to plan activities around Starburst Candies and planned four activities. The first was to find out a bit about the History of Starburst Candies, researched by one girl in the Patrol and shared with the rest of the group. It turns out that Starburst were invented by the Mars Company in the UK, and were originally called Opal Fruits when they were first introduced in 1960. The original flavours were strawberry, lemon, orange and lime. For the next activity, they asked everyone to Design New Starburst by coming up with at least one new Starburst flavour and also designing a wrapper for their new flavour(s). Next up was Starburst Tag, a game invented by the Patrol where the two players who are 'It' have small soft balls (Starbursts) and they have to use them to tag other players by throwing them at their legs (some girls are very adept at jumping out of the way!). When a player is tagged, she sits down and has to be tagged by another player in order to rejoin the game. The final activity of this group was, of course, Eating Starburst!
We talked a bit about the activities, which most of the girls enjoyed, and about the planning process. There wasn't too much feedback about planning and leading, but the girls did realize just how much work goes into planning enough activities to fill a meeting!
As we had some time left at the end of the meeting, we split the girls up into their Patrols and had them do an Accessibility Audit of our meeting place. The Guides had to look for accessibility features in the parking lot, entrance, washrooms and overall building design. They were also challenged to find other features and suggest new features that would make a building more accessible to all. The girls were surprised to discover that the church we meet in had an elevator - in fact not everyone recognized it as one! They decided that while there were some additional accessibility features that could be added, overall the church is accessible, especially considering that the building is about 100 years old.
We closed our meeting with reminders for next week and Taps.
Downloads:
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. 
