Birthdays Around the World

Over the summer we received several packages of badges and challenges from our UK Pen Pals. Over the course of the year our leadership team did their best to combine our Canadian Girl Guide programming with the badges from abroad so the girls could complete everything and have a ton of fun in the process. Over this one meeting we completed parts of the:

- Key to Active Living

- Key to my Community

- BC Colour Me Healthy

- Brownie Interest Badge: Your Day

- UK Birthday Badge

We started off the meeting by looking at healthy and non-healthy foods. The girls created healthy and unhealthy meals using various cards and then we turned it into a game. While wearing oven mitts and carrying the cards on wooden spoons, the girls had to gather their food cards one at a time and recreate their meals on the table on the other side of the room. They had to do this relay race style, rotating so everyone got a turn. 

This was HILARIOUS. The girls loved it and had so much fun! the oven mitts really make it a challenge!

After we talked about healthy and non-healthy food we talked about different celebrations and what each of the girl's traditionally do to celebrate their birthdays. Lots of things were similar - they have a party, open presents, have cake. We talked about how they thought kids in other parts of the world might celebrate too. In the UK, in China, etc. We have girls from many diverse backgrounds so it was really neat to hear about some of the traditions they knew. 

We then explored some tasty birthday treats from Austrailia. We learned about the special birthday treat "fairy bread" which I thought was very appropriate for Brownies. Essentially Fairy Bread is white bread covered in butter or icing and then dipped in tiny rainbow sprinkles. Obviously my children went nuts over this. 

We decided to do a fairy bread taste test. Each girl got a piece of bread which we cut into 4. One at a time we tried out butter, vanilla icing, chocolate icing and cream cheese icing along with lots and lots of sprinkles. They had the best time and many said that they would love to go live in Australia if this is what they can look forward too on their birthday. 

Have you ever done a Birthday Meeting? What kinds of things did you do to celebrate?