Getting to Know You

This week we spent some time getting to know each other, practicing the Guide Horseshoe and Marching Song, and wound up setting up our Patrols for the year!

As the girls arrived, everyone was given a cloth bag to decorate. We had lots of fabric markers and the girls got really creative. We hope the bags will be used to carry their things back and forth to meetings, so we don't wind up with a mess of ties, sashes, water bottles and miscellaneous items left behind at the end of the night.  

We then moved on to a trial run of the Guide Horseshoe. We split the girls up into three groups, with a Guide who remembered how to form the horseshoe as the Patrol Leader. We sang the Guide Marching Song as we marched - it was "80 years or more" when I was a Guide, and now we sing "100 years of more"!.

• Patrol Leaders fall in (Patrol Leaders line up single file facing the Guiders.)
• Patrols fall in (Patrol members line up beside their Patrol Leader, on their left-hand side. The Patrol Second is on the opposite end of the Patrol to the Patrol Leader.)
• Patrol Leaders forward (Patrol Leaders file up and stand in front of the Patrols. Each hands in their attendance/dues bag and tells us if anyone is away.)
• Patrol Leaders return to your Patrols (Patrol Leaders return to their Patrols.)
• Right Turn (Everyone turns to their right.)
• Horseshoe formation, forward march (First Patrol leads off, followed by the other Patrols. Guides make a larger U, then march back down the centre of the U, splitting at the bottom, and coming back up to the top. The first Patrol goes to the left, the second to the right, and so on. If there are an uneven number of Patrols, the last Patrol splits with girls alternating direction.)
• Company Halt (Guides stamp their feet 1, 2 and stop)
  

Next we got everyone to sit in a circle and introduce themselves, along with something they like starting with the same letter as their name. This evolved into something as a group effort as when anyone had difficulty coming up with something they like, there were lots of helpful suggestions!

Our next activity was a discussion about Patrols. We started out by asking what Patrols do, and got the basics of working together, taking attendance, recording dues, and participating. With some prompting, we added selling cookies, planning activities, choosing and leading games, picking and leading songs, and running a meeting to the list of things Patrols can do within the Unit. We asked the girls if they would rather have three smaller Patrols or two large ones (the vote was for smaller Patrols), and although we didn't intend to form Patrols tonight, that's what happened!

In our Unit, any enrolled Guide is eligible to run for election as a Patrol Leader. Nine girls decided they would like to run, and each stood up and gave a short speech about why she would make a good Patrol Leader. Each girl was then given a piece of paper and a pencil and asked to write down the names of the three girls they felt would make the best Patrol Leaders. The girls went off to continue working on their bags while the Guiders tallied the votes. Once we had determined the Patrol Leaders, those three girls were called over and asked to pick their Second (again, the requirement was that they be an enrolled Guide). Everyone else was then called over and the Patrol Leader/Second pairs announced. The other girls were then given slips of paper with the names of the pairs and asked to rank them in terms of preference. From these, we formed Patrols and, amazingly, every Guide was able to have her first choice of Patrol Leader/Second!

The first task for the newly formed Patrols was to choose a Patrol Emblem. Much thought went into this, but all three Patrols eventually chose flower emblems. We now have the Forget-Me-Not Patrol, the Daisy Patrol, and the Thistle Patrol.


Our final activity was a Patrol activity, with each group asked to make up a skit about good cookie selling practices. We then closed with reminders for next week (Caterpillars!) and Taps.

Links:

• Guide Horseshoe Video - This video is very similar to how we form the horseshoe. The main difference for us is that we collect the attendance/dues bags after the Patrols have fallen in, and the following command is 'Right Turn' rather than 'Left'.  

Outdoors Night (in 30+ degree weather...)

Each year we try to spend at least one meeting outside in September while it is still light out during out meetings. This
year, we ran into extremely hot weather and had to improvise a bit!

Once everyone had arrived, we headed out for a leisurely walk to a local park close to our meeting place. The Guides made a beeline for the play structure and spent some time playing Grounders - although they did pause long enough for me to get our first group photo of the year!

We strolled over to the creek that borders the park and took a short walk across the bridge and along a trail through some wild raspberry bushes. Coming back, we had another game of Grounders before starting our walk back to our meeting place.

In total, we spent about an hour outside and everyone was happy to head inside where it was cooler and have a drink of water.

We had everyone sit down and had each 2nd/3rd Year Guide who was interested in being a Patrol Leader introduce themselves and tell the others why they wanted to be a Patrol Leader and why they would be good at the job. We then handed out ballots and each girl was able to vote for the 3 Guides they thought would be the best Patrol Leaders. Our Guides also have an opportunity at this point to let us know who they would like to be in a Patrol with, and also if there is anyone they would rather not be with. We tell them at the beginning that while we will take their preferences into consideration, there are no promises.

While the votes were counted and Patrols formed, the Guides were challenged to build a boat using only straws, plastic wrap and duct tape that would float and support as many pennies as possible. There were some great designs and our record was 41 pennies!

Once the Patrols were announced, we had each one try to pass a ball around without using their hands, followed by games with a beach ball. We ended with reminders for next week and closed with Taps.

Resources

• PBS Design Squad - Build A Watercraft

Be An Inventor!

This week the Guides used their creativity to make their own inventions as part of the Inventing Badge!

The evening started out with 30 minutes of  Patrol Time, and each patrol worked on a different activity:

• Trillium Patrol - "Starry, Starry Night" - realized that it wasn't dark enough to go stargazing and substituted an activity on finding directions using the sun and shadows
• Rose Patrol - "Stretching" - did individual and group stretching and yoga exercises
• Pansy Patrol - "Poptastic" - attempted to pop popcorn in tinfoil dishes over tealights (they were unsuccessful - but we popped the popcorn in a paper bag in the microwave later on)
• Daffodil Patrol - "Quizzes" and "Fashionista" - worked on quizzes about health and laundry, and then created their own newspaper fashions

The main part of the meeting started with our usual opening, followed by a game of "Rose Tag" - invented last week by the Rose Patrol.

Our first activity was the Inventing Jeopardy Game from the Quebec Inventing Badge Instant Meeting. The game has questions in four categories - Inventors, Communication, Travel and Other. We had fun playing the game and the questions had a good balance of easy to more difficulty - some of them really challenged the girls to think!

The remainder of the meeting was spent inventing and building prototypes! The girls were provided with a variety of craft supplies, recyclable materials, newspaper, tape, scissors, rulers and markers, and let their imaginations go! At the end of the evening, the girls shared their prototypes with the rest of the group. We closed with reminders and Taps.

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.