Welcome To Spring! Seasons and Weather

It's April and that means that it's Spring! Here in Toronto it's been rainy, sunny, snowy - all sorts of weather changes. We are currently working on our "Key to the Living World" and thought it would be really fun to work in the Weather Tracker Interest badge. 

I find the "Weather Tracker" badge one of the more challenging badges to do because it requires a tiny bit of work, everyday, over the course of a week. As such we did our best to set the girls up for success by creating weather trackers in the meeting that they could take home during the week and go weather watching. 

After our opening circle we talked a little about the weather and the changing seasons. Then it was outside to play a game of Brown Squirrel/Grey Squirrel. This is a game that I learned at a recent OAL training. and this is how you play. 

Brown Squirrel/Grey Squirrel

Divide your group into 2 teams, half are red squirrels and the other grey squirrels. Give each girls the same amount of "food" about 10 pieces. I like to use glass gems from the dollar store so if some get lost/left behind its not bad for the environment. 

Talk to the girls about hibernation and storing food for winter/spring. My Brownies seemed very knowledgeable about this. Tell them that Grey squirrels will hide their food for winter in many different places. This is good because its more protected from predators but with so many stores they can forget where its hidden. Red squirrels on the other hand hide all of their food in one spot. Good because they know where it is but bad because it could all get eaten up by predators. 

Give the girls a few minutes to go store their food. then call them back. Tell them its now spring and they have to go out and bring back 2 pieces of food. The food can come from anywhere but if they aren't back by the time you count down from 15 they might not last the winter. 

As the game goes on it will be harder and harder to find food and get back. Girls who don't make it back can become bluejays. They steal food from squirrel's hiding places but only have to bring back 1 food each time. Continue until there is 1 squirrel left or the game peters out. 

The girls LOVE this game and since its so active it really gets their energy out!

After the squirrel game we went back inside to make rain gauges and create our weather trackers! Using small glass jars and cut down rulers from the dollar store we were able to make really cute rain gauges that the girls could use throughout the next week to look at the rain fall. 

The Weather trackers we made out of file folders. This was a simple paper craft, lots of cutting and pasting to make a weather tracker that looked at temperature, clouds and precipitation. We took some time to fill out the first day's weather at the meeting and then the girls were able to watch the weather through out the week. Once they brought back their completed weather tracker they were awarded with their interest badge!