UK Pen Pals

Last year our group decided to complete the Brownie Pen Pals interest badge. Since I'm a member of a few UK Girl Guiding Facebook pages I thought it would be great to find some pen pals to do a swap. In no time at all we had three units lined up for a swap. My unit made crafts, sent pictures and badges - they were really excited. 

Unfortunately, weeks then months passed and we heard nothing back from our pen pals. I tried to contact these units on Facebook and although they confirmed that they had received our packages they never ended up sending things back to us. My girls were really disappointed and I was frustrated as well. 

In the summer I posted the story onto one of these Facebook pages to see if there was any other way to contact these groups. I was then overwhelmed by the response of people who wanted to send us something to make up for these other units. 

We ended up receiving letters and parcels from 8 different groups containing all sorts of things from letters and photos of their groups to guiding teddy bears and UK badges for our girls to earn. I was simply overwhelmed by these guiders generosity. 

Since there was so much sent to us (8 groups after all) we split up the goodies between the girls from last year and our current group. Our current girls wrote back to these new pen pals and will be doing some of the challenge badges that they sent us. Our girls from last year got a lovely package of badges in the mail from the groups that wrote back. 

I'm so glad to know that the guiding sisterhood extends near, far and overseas and that we truly have friends where ever we go. A HUGE thank you to the UK Girl Guide groups that wrote back to us. We are so thankful that this story had a happy ending. 

Key to I Can - Cooking and Tool Skills

We're heading into December now and working to finish up our program area - Key to I Can. The girls have been super eager to try their hand at cooking and some wanted to work with tools so we thought we'd do a meeting that incorporated both. 

We decided that alongside the Key to I can we wanted to do the "Mouse around the House" challenge from Alberta. This challenge focuses on basic home skills, things like setting a table, cooking and woodworking - very "traditional" brownie skills. 

For this meeting Tanwy Owl took over the "tinkering" section of programming. She went over all sort of different tools with the girls and talked about their uses. Then using our fancy colour-changing unicorn night lights from camp she showed the girls how to change batteries using a screwdriver to remove the base plates. Also, bring the crafty leader that she is Tawny Owl taught the girls about different kinds of simple circuits taking apart and putting back together the night lights entirely. 

While half of the girls worked with tools, I did pizza and s'mores making with the other group.  The girls loved learning how to use the can opener and cut up all of the toppings for their pizza. Leader Tip: Before you put your girl's pizzas in the over have them take a picture with their creation. Then you can (hopefully) match up the pizza with its owner when it's finished cooking. 

After the pizza was done it was time to set the table. The 2nd year girls learned how to do this last year when we completed the "Girl Guides Gateway to our Past" challenge so happily took the lead to show the younger girls what to do. Once the table was set it was time to eat. 

The Girls Loved this meeting and were so happy to go home with some new badges for their sash and camp blanket. 

Brownies Enrollment - 2017

One of my favourite events in the fall is our annual Enrolment ceremony. Its so exciting to see the girls work so hard to learn everything Brownie. They take a lot of pride in their uniforms and sashes, knowing their Promise, Motto & Law and being a part of a fairy circle. 

This year we did a lot of work to prepare for the Enrolment Ceremony. The girls created lanterns for decorations and we created a whole introduction/setting up of the toadstool for the second year girls to get more involved. 

We were all ready to invite parents into our meeting space for the ceremony when there was a big issue. The church had double booked our space by accident and it appeared that the other group couldn't be moved into another space. The girls were a little worried about the ceremony and what was going to happen next but we assured them that Brownies are flexible and we would still have a great time. 

Cue the move across the hall to the church's storage room. Big enough for a very cozy Enrolment, our girls moved over and set up all of our props and chairs for our ceremony. In about 10 minutes things were back to normal and after a quick run through we were ready for family and friends. 

The girls did a wonderful job and were so proud of themselves. So happy to be a leader with this amazing group!

Emergency Preparedness

The second program key we are working on this year is the "Key to I Can". We decided to cover a large chunk of first aid and emergency preparedness tonight - covering what is and what is not an emergency. 




We had a great discussion with the girls, played some emergency preparedness running games and finished off with a plasticine craft about natural disasters. Below are some of the girls Emergency Preparedness artwork!