Brownies Winter Holiday Party!

This Fall our Brownies have done a TON. We've been to camp, done service projects, written to pen pals, gone to a badge day, sold cookies, done 3 challenge badges, and much much more! Its been a super start to the year. When coming up with the plan for the final meeting, my fellow guiders and I thought it would be super fun to just have a big party. Ask the girls what they want to do, plan around that and have a big, fun event. 

This year we came up with a new plan for selling cookies. Of the $12.25 of profit we got per case we split up the funds like so: $5 goes back to the girl who sold the case in the form of a camp credit, $5 goes to the unit to go towards things like craft supplies, $2.25 is put into the hands of the girls to decide as a group what to do with. When we asked the girls what they wanted to do for their party we brought up their cookie sales. Our unit sold 24 cases of fall cookies which translated into $54 for them to decide what to do with. We told the girls they could choose between: Ordering a Fun Crest for each girl from the Guide Store, doing a "Bigger" craft at the holiday party, saving their money for later or putting it towards off setting the costs of something like a movie day. Overwhelmingly the girls wanted to do a Bigger craft at the holiday party so we guiders put our heads together to come up with something awesome. 

We decided that we would make the Holiday party a sort of family open house event. Each girl was invited to bring a guest (Mom, dad, grandparent, older sibling, etc.) of any gender to be their partner for the night. With the additional adults we were able to do some more complex crafts as well as partner games and dances!

The girls LOVED having their guests at Brownies. They joined us for fairy circle time, opening and closing. The girls got to show their guests their fairy circle songs and how they go around the toadstool and put their dues in the dues box. All of the Brownies  were smiling ear to ear. 

The first craft was a no-sew rainbow scarf. Each girl got a bag with the required materials for the scarf and worked with their guest to cut out the shapes they needed and assemble their scarf. This was a more complex craft but the girls all did a great job. Even though they got the same materials many changed up the pattern/colours of their scarves so they were all unique!

Following the scarf craft our guider Snowy Owl led the girls in a craft to create holiday plant arrangements. Snowy owl did a short lesson on the different kinds of coniferous trees the branches she brought came from and then let the girls explore and experiment with different branch types and glitter decorations to make their arrangements.

This was something that none of the girls had done before and they all really enjoyed it. All of the arrangements turned out beautifully!

After the crafts we wanted to get up and more around a bit. We learned and danced a partner dance called the "Jingle Bells Dance". It was tons of fun to see the girls dancing with their guests laughing and having a great time! Once we were tired of dancing we taught our girls' guests the Obiswana game that they had learned the week before. Everyone seemed to like the variety of activities.

Obiswana Game

Jingle Bells Dance

 Snowy Owl was able to take some videos of the Jingle Bells Dance and the Obiswana song. She was only able to get a portion of the dance but even in this small clip you can see how much fun the girls are having!

After the games and dances we did our Secret Friend handmade gift exchange! The girls also got to take home the badges that they had earned over the past few weeks. What an awesome night!

What a great Start to the Guiding year. Cant wait for more fun in 2017!

Sparks Celebrate the Holidays!

Today was our last Sparks meeting of the year. It's getting snowy, school is winding down and Guiders Jellybean and Glimmer are looking for a well deserved break! We finished up the requirements of the girls "Being Me" keepers last week so we decided that this meeting we would just do some things that were fun. 

We had a Brownie named Niah from our Monday night unit who wanted to come and do her Helping Sparks badge so she came in to read the girls a story, learn their names and then run some songs. 

After Niah's activities we planned an activity that the girls could give as a gift for someone in their family - Cookies in a Jar! Working with the guiders and two brownie helpers, the Sparks measured and bottled the ingredients needed for their cookie jar gift. They cut out fabric for the top of their jars and decorated tags of instructions. 

It was a great meeting and an awesome way to finish off the 2016 year. Looking forward to more fun with the Sparlks in 2017!

Badge Testing Night #2, My Space and Special Thoughts Interest Badges

With just a few meetings left in the year we wanted to get another badge testing night in for the girls. It's taken me several years to get a system put together for Individual Interest Badge Testing that I like, but after much trial and error I'm please with this new way. This is our 2nd Badge testing night and I've already handed out over 20 badges earned by the girls at home. I do my best to keep some of all the badges on hand so they get them the same night. We also do a little badge presentation of some stellar badge work that the girls have brought in to inspire others with some ideas of what they could try out at home.

This week while the girls we're being pulled for badge testing we offered a craft, 2 interest badges the girls could work on and eventually a group song/game. Its often tricky to find activities we can do with the whole group while girls get pulled away for their badge testing. We need interesting activities that can keep the girls engaged, but one that you can leave and come back to. 

The girls worked on creating their very own Special thoughts journals. In these books I had put badge earning pages for the My Space and Special Thoughts badges. The idea was that after they had made their journals they could work on these badges and hopefully earn something that night, even if they hadn't prepared something before coming to the meeting. Having their special journal was also handy because it gave them a book in which to "Keep a word or picture journal for two weeks. Write or draw what happens and how you feel about it." which was a badge requirement for the Special Thoughts badge. We figured with the holiday break coming up the girls could work on their journals and bring it back to receive their badges when we got back.

We had some amazing badge earning done during this meeting. I got to hear all about a robotics competition that one of our Brownies Kaylan is involved in. She brought in some videos of her team and the robot they use for their competition.

Antonia built her own musical instrument, creating a guitar out of recycled materials. She evern wrote and performed some songs for us. 

Lastly Jazmin brought in some of her artwork and Rainbow Loom creations which have been her hobbies for many months. She was able to show us some amazing creations and the girls were all really engaged. 

After these girls shared some of their badge work we joined together to play a rhythm/passing game called Obwisana. The game is originally from Ghana and is a great challenge for this age group. After learning the words and tune each girl was given a glass rock. As the tune is sung the girls all pass their rocks around the circle in rhythm. This is actually harder said then done! After we tried the easy version of just passing the rocks we gave each girl two rocks and added in a pass, tap the rocks together and pass motion. Very Challenging! You can see us trying our the game below!

*Edit I included the video of when we did this game again at our Holiday Party (Hence why there are parent guests there). My original film had clear shots of one of my girls who does not have an image release formed signed. This is the same passing game, just the second time they played it. 

Sparks Prepare for Winter!

Its starting to snow here in Canada and we were looking for a fun winter activity that we could do with our Sparks. When surfing one of the Canadian Girl Guides Facebook pages we saw an amazing idea by a guider who sewed simple tassel hats with her sparks. We LOVED this idea and new we had to try it out. 



Guider Alison did all the prep for this meeting - Bless her. She sewed the hats so all the girls had to do was cut the tassels and tie them together. She also made up some scarves that the girls could add tassels to as well. 


At first the girls were skeptical of this whole thing. None of them thought that they could actually make a wearable winter hat by themselves. It was so wonderful to see their faces when they stuck with it and were able to go home with their very own hats and scarves!

After the girls finished their hats they decided to do some colouring in their Sparks Memory Books. They have decided in the last few weeks that they prefer working on their books in the middle in the meeting space floor instead of at the craft tables. Whatever works I guess?

We had such a great time with this craft and so glad to have found the original post on Facebook. Love it when we can all share ideas!

Brownies Unite to Complete Girls United Challenge!

This fall my Brownie unit has been working on the "Key to Me" part of our Programming. We were looking into some challenge badges that would nicely accompany this badge and discovered the new Be You as well as the challenge Girls United!

Girls United! is not a new challenge but if you've never looked at it I highly recommend that you do. I found that there was lots of choice and the activities were all really interesting. 

The challenge is described as: Girls today need to know how to get along with others, how to build strong connections with each other, how to be a support for each other and how to build strong rewarding friendships. “I Believe in We!” is a list of 26 activities that Girl Guide units can use to promote healthy relationships and prevent bullying. These activities highlight the negative impact of social aggression and bullying and create a sense of caring, belonging and mutual responsibility between all girls (Girls United Challenge Pack) 

We had been having some issues with fighting and unkind words in our unit since September. While the Fall camp helped some of our girls to bond and make new friendships some of our new and returning girls hadn't quite found their groove in our unit. This challenge provided us a great opportunity to look at the impact our words have, how to treat others as we would like to be treated and how we can all be a little more kind to one another. 

Below are some of the activities that worked really well with our unit.

One of the first thing things we discussed was what the difference was between Bullying and mean behaviour. The girls were pretty well versed in this because they had talked a lot about it in school. We talked about the importance of being an "Active Bystander" and that in order to help you don't have to actually stand up to the bully.

The girls were really interested that 2 other great ways to help someone being bullied is to console the victim - take the person being bullied somewhere else, offer to go play something different, etc. OR  go get help from a teacher, parent, older child, etc. When we discussed ways that they could help without actually confronting someone they seemed more willing to step up.

After this conversation we did a little exercise to help the girls know who they can talk to if they are being bullied or know someone who is. Each girl traces their hand on a piece of coloured paper and wrote the name of an adult ally on each finger. Each person was someone they could talk to if they were having issues with someone at school, home, etc. 

I think that girls know who they can talk to if they are having trouble with others but it was really telling when we asked the girls to come up with 5 people they could seek help from and some girls could only come up with 2. After some more discussion all girls were able to come up with 5 allies they could get help from if needed.

After this activity we played a Four Corners type game where i read out situations and the girls had to make a decision of what they would do (Source).  An example of one of the situations was:

You notice one of your friends is teasing and making fun of the younger children in the summer camp. Your friend has started taking things from them as well. What should you do?

1. Tell the camp leaders what is happening without letting your friend know.
2. Help your friend in taking things from the younger children in case he/she starts to take things from you.
3. Tell your friend that you think that what he/she’s doing is wrong and that they should leave the younger children alone.
4. Something else (Open corner).

We went through 4-5 scenes and the girls had some great answers/ actions they would do to solve the problem. 

Our girls are BIG crafters and so we wanted to work in a craft to this Challenge. We tried out the activity Pinwheels for Peace (Source) which an organization that looks at peace and kindness between people. We had the girls think of one or more ways that they could be kinder, maybe at home or school, with friends or family and write it on the inside of their paper. Their kindness promise would then be folded to be on the inside of their pinwheel which they would take home as a reminder to be a little more kind. The girls loved this activity and many took a lot of time to think of the ways they could be kinder to others. 


The last thing we did with the girls to finish off this challenge was a Secret Friend gift exchange. In this activity girls picked a name out of a hat and without revealing who they got had to do nice things for that person over the next two weeks. We culminated the secret friend experience with a handmade gift exchange at our upcoming holiday party. This was a nice way for the girls to think about other people and doing nice things without spending money. 

I am happy to say that by completing the Be You! and Girls United! challenges our unit has become much more cohesive. I think that all my girls have become more comfortable with one another and when unkind words are said we have some shared experiences to look back on. The girls have learned a lot this fall about themselves and working with others. Its great to see them working so well as a team!

Sparks Complete NSP Challenge - Action on Poverty

This year a new National Service Project was released by Girl Guides of Canada. This year the NSP is looking at the problem of Poverty. The aim of the project is to make our members (from Sparks - Leaders) aware of what poverty is, why it happens and what we can do to combat the problems that poverty causes.

This is a big topic to tackle with Sparks. At first we were skeptical as to how we could get the girls to understand the issue of poverty and connect the actions they do to helping eliminate the problem of poverty.

To teach the girls what poverty is we did an activity to talk abuot children's hunger. We discovered that in North America 1 in 5 children experience hunger, not getting enough to eat on a regular basis. We talked abuot what its like when your hungry at home or school. Its hard to concentrate, sometimes you get grumpy and its not very fun.

In our unit of 15 we counted off 1- 5 and realized that potentially 3 of our group members would be not getting enough to eat. To make this idea more concrete we did an activity featuring something Sparks really love. Snacks!

For this activity we gave each girl a number between 1 and 5. Then we showed them several bowls of snacks. There were two large bowls of cereal (cheerios and Shred

dies), two medium bowls (gummy snacks and pretzels and two small bowls of candy (smarties and rockets). We told them that the cereal represented breakfast, lunch and dinner - foods you need to have to grow up healthy and strong. The pretzels and gummys represented snacks - foods that are good but not essential. The candy were treats - extra special things we get sometimes. Each girl was given a dixie cup and then we called up numbers.

Girls with numbers 1 and 2 could take food from every bowl. They all had to take some cereal as it represented meals but could then fill freely from the other bowls.

Girls with numbers 3 and 4 could take what they wanted from the cereal and snacks bowls but couldn't take any treats.

Girls with number 5 could only take from the cereal bowl and they were only allowed to fill their cups 1/2 way full.

After all of the girls got their snacks we brought them back to the circle and talked about the experience. What was it like to get everything you wanted vs. only getting cereal. Was it fair? What would it be like if you never got to have treats?

The girls really seemed to understand the importance of food for all. They didn't like hunger was reality for many kids and they wanted to figure out some ways to help.

After our discussion girls who didn't get any treats or snacks got to go up and fill their cups. We then enjoyed our snacks and moved onto some games and songs.