Link Meet Up - Board Games Night!

What do you do in GGC after you turn 18? This is a common question for those who have gone through the Girl Guides of Canada program. What do you do after high school to stay involved in GGC? You are possibly off at college/university, maybe don't want to lead a unit but still want to stay involved with the community.

Enter GGC LINK

Created for women 18-30 LINK provides an open and flexible space for GGC women to stay involved with their community and do awesome, fun stuff. We even have a LINK Program now *Including Badges* that focuses on figuring out who you are and what paths are available to you in the areas of: Health and Wellness, Active Citizenship, Personal and Professional Development & Outdoors and Adventure. 

In Toronto we've been trying to get young guiders together to create a vibrant LINK group. Most recently we've had a great night of board games to get to know people in our community! If you are a GGC member between 18-30 consider joining LINK and come have a great time with us!

Girls First Test Activities: All About Art!

This year we were so excited to be picked as a test unit for some of the new Girl's First Activities. I LOVE the new program and am taking every opportunity to jump in and share the new stuff with my Brownies. This year we were completing our "Key to the Arts" so of course we were delighted when the test activity we were sent aligned with our planned out meeting focus. 

The Girls First activity we were reviewing looked at art and creativity. Each girl was given paper, markers and a sticker. Using the sticker and their imagination they had to create a picture/scene. After a few minutes they were surprised by given a second sticker that they would have to incorporate into their drawing. And then a third sticker! 

At first I was skeptical of this activity. I didn't think it would be exciting enough to interest the girls. However I have to admit I was so, so wrong on this one. The Brownies LOVED this activity. They liked the novelty of being given new stickers to work with and I think it really stretched their thinking. It also provided a unique activity for sharing. Since no one had done something like this before there was a more relaxed feel. The girls didn't compare their art work to others in a judgemental way of seeing which was "best". They just love to see what everyone came up with. 

After this warm up activity we moved onto the main test activity which was marbling paper with shaving cream and food colouring. This was a cool science experiment/art activity and the girls had a great time working in teams to marble the paper every which way. 

We had a bit of time left at the end of this meeting so we pulled out the glue guns and bits and pieces from the craft cupboard and let the girls make SWAPS! They LOVE making and trading crafts and its so nice to have no "end product" in mind. Just make whatever you want to make. 

This was a super fun meeting and I really hope that these activities make it into the new Girls First program!

Thinking Day 2018

Happy Thinking Day Everyone!

This year our local Sparks, Brownies, Guides, Pathfinders and Rangers all came together to celebrate and learn about Mexico! Bridging together for thinking day is one of the highlights of our community's guiding year. Its a great opportunity for the girls to work with each other across age groups and for our older girls to take charge of some leadership opportunities. 

New this year! We decided to take part in the BC CWFF Pizza Party Challenge. Bringing together 90 girls and their guiders for a pizza party was a lot of work but a ton of fun. I think we are going to make it an annual event!

The Awesomeness of Resuable Dishes!

Just a short post to talk about my newfound love of reusable dishes - primarily my IKEA plates/cups/bowls & cutlery. 

We have at least 3 potluck/celebrations a year - Enrollment, Halloween Party and Advancement. Every year I disposable plates and every year the plates are huge, the girls eat so much junk and there is so much waste. My guider friend Cathy has had the same set of IKEA plates for her guide unit for years and I asked her reasoning behind it - mainly is it worth all of the washing? I came to the conclusion that for the cost of disposable plates for 3 events I could get 30 plates/cups/bowls & cutlery which would serve us for years. They are a good size for kids (not gigantic), don't fold under the weight of food, don't get knocked over as easily and most importantly we are helping the environment by not throwing out one use dishes. 

So now after each event my dishwasher is a sea of rainbow plastic. Its really not that hard to take home a plastic bag of dirty plates and they store quite nicely in my basement. 

I'm glad we've switched over to reusable and I'm hoping I can encourage some other units to give it a try as well!

SWAPS!

I'm a guider who loves to craft. I love crafting tiny little things at meetings and camp to add to hats and backpacks. Making and trading crafts is a big thing in our guiding circles. Any little thing you can make and trade is called a SWAPS (Small, Watch-a-ma-call-it, Affectionally, Pinned, Somewhere). 

Every year we teach the girls about this guiding tradition and they are so eager to make things to trade with their friends and girls in other groups. A few big thing we stress with SWAPS are:

1. You never say no to a trade - everyone has different crafting skills but we want everyone to be included. We trade with everybody - sparks through to rangers.
2. Always use your manners
3. Make LOTS! Its heartbreaking for girls to get to an event and see everyone is Swapping and they have nothing to trade. If you make lots giving a handfuls of traders to a friend is no big deal and then everyone can participate. 

We've always had an amazing time with SWAPS. Do you do them in your Unit?

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?

Winter Holiday Party!

Every year we finish up our Brownies meetings for the year around the second week of December. The winter season is so, so busy with family events, school concerts and preparing for a variety of holiday celebrations. 

Last year we tried something different. Instead of having a party just for the girls we decided to have a parent/child event where our families could come in and see just what Brownies is all about. We also took this oppertunity to rifle through the craft cupboard and see what we could make and do for limited purchasing. We've been talking to the girls about the importance of buying only what we need, but more importantly using what we already have. 

We started off the meeting with our opening song. The girls loved sharing with their parents everything they had learned so far about their opening, fairy song and circles. After that we split into patrols and had everyone start at one of three different stations. 

This year we had several stations for the girl's and their parents to enjoy. The first was making some sweet treats - snow-flower cupcakes. This awesome idea was shared with me by my guider friend Nikki. If you cut marshmallows diagonally and stick the stick side in coloured sprinkle-sugar you are able to create a marshmallow petal. If you slowly work these around the edge of a frosted cupcake in circles you get rows and rows of petals which eventually look like a marshmallow flowers. We specifically used blue, white, purple and pink sugar to give the cupcakes a winter/frozen feel to them. 

The second station that was set up was building winter houses. I was gifted these amazing winter felt kits from another guider last summer (Thanks Michelle Gilcrest!) and I knew we just ahd to use them at the holiday party. My girls LOVE using the glue guns so I know it was going to be a hit.


The last station was where the girls created fleece winter hats and scarves to donate to our local women's shelter. A HUGE thanks to snowy owl who prepped all of these in advance so the girls could easily cut, tie and put together without doing too much sewing. In the end of an hour the girls created 15 hats and 20 scarves to donate. I took them over to the shelter later that week and in January we received a lovely letter thanking the unit for their efforts. The hats and scarves were given out around the Christmas holiday and all were well received. 

We finished off the party with a few songs and our group closing. What a wonderful way to finish off the fall guiding term.