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.

January is ... Build Skills in Communications!

This month we will be working on activities to complete the Build Skills in Communication section of the program as well as work on the Business Communications and Postal Badges.

At our January 8th Meeting, we created collages about Communications and explored Communication through the Arts. Two of the activities we did were Mirroring and Pictures & Patterns:

Mirroring

Two players stand facing each other. One player begins moving and the second player tries to become a mirror image of her movements.

Hint: Slower movements are easier to mirror.

Pictures & Patterns

Materials: Scrap paper, pencils or markers (use ¼ pieces of newsprint)

Two people sit back-to-back. Each player has a sheet of paper and a marker or pencil. The first player draws a picture on her paper. She then describes her picture to the other player so that they can draw it. The second player cannot see the first player’s drawing and cannot ask questions. She must draw what she thinks is being described. Now, look at both drawings—how alike are they? How could you have made it easier?

Try this a second time, but this time the second player can ask questions.

On January 22nd we worked on the Postal Badge. Each girl made mini books about postal rates, special services, and the location of the local post office. Later, we had learned how to properly address an envelope or package and held a parcel wrapping relay race to see which patrol could wrap and label a box correctly the quickest.

The final part of the meeting was spent working on advertising. We talked about different types of advertising and where they can be found, as well as the messages that ads can convey. Each girl then had to create an advertisement of some sort (i.e. a poster, flyer, bookmark, commercial) to communicate a message.

January 29th was our last scheduled meeting on Communications. Girls completed their postal badge mini-booklets when they arrived. We played Kim's game with a tray of assorted objects to complete the Naturalist badge (see Winter Camp post) and also to show how observation is important in communication. The girls had to work as a patrol to try to remember as many items as possible, which provoked a few disagreements as girls were certain they saw different things! (High Score: 21.5 out of 25) Our final activity was tangram puzzles, where each patrol had a puzzle set and was challenged to work together to create a square out of the pieces.