Sunday, December 28, 2014

Ice Lanterns

Happy Holidays!

My coleader and I have a sleepover planned for New Year's Eve (and I'll post about that in the new year - should be cool though!) but I thought I'd share with you the ice lantern I made as an example for my Pathfinders.  We are doing the Winter Wonderland badge first thing in January, and they chose lanterns. 

So I have been saving my cans for them for a while now.  I recently filled one with water and set it outside to freeze solid.  Personally, I think that with a little coaching a Spark could do this craft as well!

So here's what you need - frozen ice in a can, a hammer (I chose a rubber mallet - less chance of crushed fingers) and some nails (I have 2" ones).


I then held the nail over the outside edge, hit it carefully with the hammer (I used a towel underneath to prevent rolling).  The trick is to make a hit nail pattern.  The second photo is of my daughter (brownie age) having a turn.



Then you run the can under hot water until it releases the ice, and put a lit tea candle in.


I'm going to bring enough cans for each girl to try their hand at three.  I think they look awesome!




Tuesday, December 9, 2014

Serving Tea and Cookies

So last night we went as a group to serve tea and cookies at our local senior's residence.  We called about a month ago, and arranged to come in for our regular meeting time (which is awesome, that way you don't have to ask families to spend more time at Sparks).

The elderly at the senior's residence are almost always happy to see a gaggle of Sparks arrive.  Some always ask the question - the "is this the level BEFORE Brownies?" Question.  The risk of having a level that has only been around for less than 30 years, right?  All the girls wore their uniforms.

Some things we did to help out the Sparks!
-we practised walking around with a teacup in a saucer for a few minutes (follow the leader style) so the girls could get used to walking with one (most didn't know what a saucer was!).
- we only filled the cups 1/3 of the way up, so even if someone fell/spilled there wasn't a lot to clean up (and no one did fall!  Yay!)
-we brought out Guide helper, who filled the cups and handed them out to the Sparks, and refilled plates of cookies, which allowed one Guider to have an eye in both rooms and the other helping direct the kids to different tables to drop off cookies and tea.
-we had the girls clean up and pick up teacups from the tables and bring them back as well.

We had about 10 minutes left over, so we played telephone and musical chairs!  Thankfully Emerald is a lot better at corralling them for a game than I am!

We gave out a fun crest and their Camping Keeper at the end.  Who knew they had a fun crest specifically for serving tea?



Here's the link if you'd like to get one!

Sunday, December 7, 2014

Flashback - Enrollment night

So we did enrollment at the end of October again.

We had the ceremony about the same way we went last year.

But, since we also had a new Guider, we thought we'd enroll her as well!

Before we started, I passed my small point-and-shoot camera to one of the parents we had from last year, and asked her to take a few pictures of me enrolling our new Guider.  She said yes!  Thanks!

So then we proceed with our ceremony.  One by one the new Sparks walked over the rainbow, gave the Spark sign while shaking my hand and reciting their promise, turned for a picture for mom and dad and sat on their designated cloud.  Then we called up our returning Sparks to renew their promise and get their badges from our first few meetings (their cookie badge, mostly), and they returned to their clouds.

When we were done, I called Emerald up.  She looked a bit shocked, but crossed the rainbow anyways!

I gave her a vintage leader's scarf I found on etsy, then we shook hands with the Guide sign and she recited the Girl Guide promise (after me - I hadn't given her the heads-up to memorize it).  I then pinned her with her Spark Guider appointment pin and got her to give a smile for our parent photographer.

I think sometimes we remember the girls far before our leaders.  It's so important to recognize the contribution of our parent volunteers in Girl Guides.  Without them, we'd have no program!

Thank you Emerald!  And here's to many Guiding years ahead of you!

Spark Guider Appointment Pin


Vintage scarf

Baking Night!

Last week we had a baking night!

We divided the girls up according to their circles (we bought circle patches from epatches for this - 10 is just too many Sparks, KWIM?).  The thistles started in the kitchen with Emerald and our Guide helper making cookies, and the Raindrops started with me in the regular meeting room making fridge magnets, singing camp songs and playing a few games.

Here's an example of the magnets we made -


The girls were encouraged to colour them in using markers (I found the wood cut-outs at our local dollar store).  We then attached two magnets to each backing using hot glue.

For songs I taught them Barges, we sang Black Socks and our unit favourite - Bringing Home a Baby Bumblebee.

With Emerald, the girls were rolling out Joe Froggers and then making a few Ginger Sparkles.  (Get it... Sparkles?  Don't worry.  The girls didn't laugh either.)  The Joe Froggers are for our event next week at our local senior's home, where we will be serving tea and cookies.  I felt it was totally unfair to have five and six year olds toil to make cookies, then not get any, so they were able to put together some Sparkles for themselves.

We stopped about five minutes before our end time to sit and have a cookie with a glass of water and just chat.

I chose Froggers and Sparkles because they bake for the same time, at the same temperature, so you can put them in the same oven on the same baking sheet without worrying.  The Froggers have an awesome dough.  Easy to roll out, smells great, dairy and egg free and very forgiving.  You can have several different thicknesses without them burning on one and raw on the other, and roll it out ten or more times before it falls apart on you.  The only tricky part is that you MUST start the dough a full 24 hours before you roll it out.  So it takes some forethought.

Here are the recipes.  My family Joe Frogger recipe (at least 100 years old) and my Dad's Ginger Sparkle recipe.


Joe Froggers

Ingredients:
1/2 cup shortening
1 cup white sugar
1/2 cup warm water
4 cups white flour
1 cup dark molasses
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp soda
1 1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp cloves
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp allspice

In a large bowl, cream the shortening and sugar together.  Mix in molasses and water.  Sift together flour, salt, baking soda, ginger, cloves, nutmeg and allspice.  Blend into the shortening mixture.  Chill for 24 hours.

Preheat oven to 375F, roll out cookie dough approx. 1/4" thick, cut with cutters.

Bake until cookies are set up and very lightly browned.  10-12 minutes.  Leave on sheet for 2 minutes or they'll break apart.



Ginger Sparkles

Ingredients:
2 cups flour
2 tsp soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp cloves
1 cup brown sugar (the darker the better)
3/4 cup butter (softened)
1 egg
1/4 cup molasses
-extra granulated white sugar for rolling.

Preheat oven to 375F.  Blend dry ingredients.  Cream together brown sugar, butter, molasses and egg.  Add flour mixture to creamed mix and mix well.  Shape dough into 1" balls, roll in sugar and place 2" apart on cookie sheet.  Make 10-12 minutes.  Cool slightly before removing.