By Guides, For Guides: Leading Ladies & Dark Night

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.

By Guides, For Guides: Unicorns & Starburst

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:

• Accessibility Audit Form

Girls Count!

This week we worked on the Girls Count Challenge! To earn this challenge, girls need to take part in activities about Currency Awareness, Purchasing Power, and Money Management. All the activities we used can be found in the Guide and Pathfinder Challenge packs (see the link at the bottom).

The Guides finished part of the Learn How to Plan section of the program while learning about different forms of payment, spending habits and money management. The Pathfinders completed the Moneywise module and learned about borrowing, global currencies, and how to budget for camp!

As the girls arrived, the Guides worked with their Patrols to complete a quiz about payment and banking terminology (adapted from the "Word Scramble Relay" activity) and create a skit about one spending type. The Pathfinders and Rangers talked about earning and spending money, then created skits about borrowing and what to do when you don't have enough money for something you want.

We had our usual opening, quickly took up the Guide Quiz and then moved onto the skits. The Guide skits used the descriptions of different types of spenders ("What Kind of Spender Are You?" activity) - Hey Big Spender (a girl who loves to spend her money as soon as she earns it), Future Planner (a girl who balances saving and spending) and Money Avoider (a girl who doesn't care about money and lets her parents take care of everything). The Pathfinder skits were both scenarios where a girl didn't have enough money for something she wanted ("How Much Can I Borrow? How Much Can I Buy?" activity). In Skit #1 the girl babysits but gets paid on Mondays and wants to buy a new top before her friend's party on Friday - the girls resolved this by having the girl rake leaves and do other odd jobs to earn some extra money. In Skit #2 the girl walks a neighbour's dog when he has to work late, but she never knows how often she will walk the dog and needs $25 more to buy the running shoes she wants - the solution was to borrow the $25 from her parents and pay them back as she earns money dog walking.

After our skits, the groups separated with the Guides staying in the main hall and the Pathfinders and Rangers heading upstairs.

GUIDES
The Guides started off with a relay game adapted from the "Playing With Payments" activity. Each Patrol was give 6 labeled cards - Credit Card, Debit Card, Gift Card, Cheque, Cash, and Interac e-Transfer. They Patrols lined up at one end of the room and the Guiders stood at the other end and read out the scenarios one at a time. When a scenario was read out, the Patrols had to decide what methods of payment they could use and send a runner to the Guiders with the appropriate cards.

We then moved on to the "Money-opoly" game and played it with a few modifications. Each girl was given a plate with 50 beads to represent money. They had to decide how they wanted to divide their $50 between Spend, Save and Share. Once this was done, we explained that Share funds could only be used to make donations and that Save funds could only be used once all of their Spend funds were gone. Two plates with extra beads were placed in the middle. We had the girls sit in their Patrol and as each card was read out, one Patrol had to follow the instructions. We pre-stacked the deck of cards to ensure that each Patrol had a variety of expenses, earnings, donations and free activities. We also spent time throughout the game reassuring the girls that it was OK if they had to use funds from their Save pile. The discussion after the game was good and the girls left with a much better understanding of how money works - and that although it would be great to put all of our money into Save and/or Share, life costs money so we always need something in the Spend pile!

As we still had a bit of time, we had the girls work in Patrols to create a business. They had to come up with a name, decide on their product or service, determine how much they would charge, and design some advertising for their new business.

PATHFINDERS/RANGERS
The Pathfinders and Rangers found out about some of the different types of currency used around the world - and some World Guiding trivia with the "World Currency Trivia" game. We printed out the World Region maps with the pictures of different currency in colour for reference. The game is played like Jeopardy, with teams taking turns choosing the category and question value. Scores are recorded on a separate sheet.

The second activity was "Budgeting For Camp" which was a great eye-opener about the costs of going to camp, and also the challenges we have as a small Unit. The whole group worked together to make budgets for a winter camp and a spring camp. We did have to explain to the girls that the costs are based on averages and some of our costs are very different, including the cost of renting a building or campsite and transportation. The challenge pack provides options for the girls to choose from and a budgeting sheet to do their calculations. Categories are:

• Where will they go? (Facility Rental)
• How will they get there? (Transportation)
• What will they eat? (Food)
• What will they do there? (Equipment, Crafts)
• What other supplies will they need? (Gear, First Aid Supplies, Crests)

The girls gained a much better understanding of the costs associated with their activities and why things cost what they do!

We all came back together at the end of evening and closed with reminders for next week and Taps.

Links

• Girls Count Challenge Program (Girl Guides of Canada) - external link

Odds & Ends

Occasionally, in place of a regular meeting, we have an 'Odds & Ends' night. This means there is no single theme for the evening, and we do a variety of different activities!

As the girls arrived, they were introduced to their new Patrol Notebooks. These books will be used for arrival activities and gathering ideas and information from each Patrol. This week's activities were to write down some ideas for different careers/jobs they were interested in for our Career Awareness night later in March, and to come up with some ideas for when the 2nd Year Brownies visit us at the end of March. Some patrols were more successful at this than others, but we will keep working at it.

After opening, we moved into our first activity - the Postal Badge. Information signs were put up around the room with details about postage rates, package weights, and special services. Each Patrol was given a worksheet (from Bluenose Guider) and was challenged to find the answers to a variety of questions. Their final task was to address an envelop to themselves. While we waited for everyone to finish, the girls worked on making birthday postcards to send to the UK for the Rainbow 30th Birthday Celebrations. We then played a game - Everybody's It Tag. 

Our Pathfinder led the next activity, a service project to make Birthday Boxes for the local Food Bank. Each Patrol had to wrap their box to finish up the Postal Badge, and to also make a nice container for their birthday supplies. The boxes were filled with the supplies needed for a child's birthday party - cake pan, cake mix, frosting, candles, balloons, streamers, plates, and napkins.

The remainder of the meeting was spent working on the Learn How to Plan section of the program. As the Patrols finished making their Birthday Boxes, they were given a list of activity themes with descriptions (Go For It's! from Girlguiding UK). Each Patrol choose a theme and was given the Go For It! pack that matched. They were then asked to choose 4 activities that could be done as a Patrol, each activity to take about 20 minutes. A calendar was provided in their notebooks, and the Patrols scheduled each activity over a 4-week period, made a list of supplies needed and decided who would be responsible for each item.The Patrols will have the first 20 minutes of each meeting from March 21st to April 11th to do these activities.

The Daffodils decided to try Go For It! Lifewise. "You’ll find out about ways to keep happy and healthy, to stay safe and be independent.If you’ve ever fancied living on your own or making more decisions for yourself, this is the Go For It! for you.By the end, you’ll be cool, calm and able to deal with anything (well, almost anything!), and to look out for your friends, too."
The Pansies will be working on Go For It! Camp Out. "Sample the fun of camp without leaving your meeting place! Go For It! Camp out features a great range of activities, from wide games to camp cooking and useful things to make.A great way to enjoy the fun of camp all year round or share your camp adventures with others in your patrol."
The Roses chose Go For It! Fitness. "You all know it’s important to keep fit. Go For It! fitness will give you a go at all sorts of different activities.Whether you do loads of fitness activities already or try to avoid them, there is fun to be had with this Go For It!"
The Trilliums picked Go For It! I Will Survive. "Survival isn’t just about using your shoelaces as a belt or eating raw worms for dinner! Whether you’re rural rascals or urban urchins, there are more important things to sort out. Go For It! I will survive shows you how."

The meeting closed with Campfire, Announcements and Taps.