Monday, February 23, 2015

Thinking Day 2015 - Guiding Lights

So the theme for this year's Thinking Day (according to the Canadian Girl Guides) is Guiding Light.  I decided to run with the theme, so here's what we did to celebrate Thinking Day 2015!


When we arrived, I gave the girls page 58 out of the Spark book and asked them to imagine themselves as A BROWNIE and to draw what they thought they'd look like.  Several had rainbows across their shirts - very cute.  Since we opened our doors and had some Brownies attending, they drew themselves as Guides.




Then I told them the story of Lord Baden Powell and Lady Baden Powell from the Spark Leader's guide.  It's the story of those very first Girl Scouts who showed up at the Crystal Palace Jambouree.  One of the Sparks asked me if it was a real story or made up.  :-)

Then it was time for our craft.  We made our own little Guiding Lights to shine around the world.  For this craft I went onto Ebay and bought 500 random world stamps.  There are dealers who will just ship you 500 for about $5, shipping included.  These are really rare or valuable stamps, but we got a good selection of stamps (the mess of stamps below).  There were stamps from all the different continents!


Then I passed out modge podge and paint brushes, and let the kids pick out their own stamps.  The trick is to put the glue on the glass, add the stamp, then paint over the whole thing with more glue.  The Brownies loved this (they were also earning their terrific trash badge), and we asked the girls other ways they could recycle stuff in their homes.  Some had great ideas like painting a chipped plate so it was more like a painting and hanging it up, to composting.  

Here are some pictures of the process.





Oh, then we added glitter on top of the stamps and glue - because everything is better with glitter.
The light is one of the flickering battery-operated tea lights from the dollar store.

Then we sang a Guiding Light song - to be perfectly honest, it was "this little light of mine", but with the words changed to be "This Guiding Light of Mine".

Finally, since the Brownies were there, they showed us their puppet play, for their badge, since they'd completed the rest of it the previous meeting at Brownies.  They showed us the Guides of New Zealand climbing a mountain to light the first campfire of Thinking Day, starting the light of Guiding as it moves around the world.



Monday, February 9, 2015

Our Cabana & Lord and Lady Baden-Powell

Tonight we had a half Lady Baden-Powell and half Our Cabana meeting.  We started by going around the circle.  We asked the girls what they'd liked the best about Sparks so far.  We also looked at some pictures of Our Cabana. 

Then we made quesadillas.  We gave all the kids a half tortilla, and had them add their own toppings.  Most chose a bit of salsa, cheese and some black beans.  While we were waiting the 10 minutes or so for the quesadillas to cook, we read the kids the story of the Baden-Powells, and the Night Walk story from the Go Sparks Go book.

After we ate, we split the girls into two groups.  We have two Brownies with our Sparks this year.  The time for Brownies just didn't work for them.  Next year they'll spend their year with the Guides, then stay with Guides until they're ready for Pathfinders.

So the Sparks went with Emerald and I and made Paper Bag Ponchos out of grocery store paper bags cut up the sides and a hole for the head.  Then they made God's Eyes.  I'm always on the lookout for ways to make traditional Guide crafts easier for our smallest members.  For the God's Eyes, I bought large popsicle sticks and hot glued them together.  I also found a type of chenille-yarn for them to use for their God's Eyes.  Here's some examples.




For the Brownies, we decided to do the puppet play badge, so today they made a theatre for their puppets, painted some toilet paper rolls orange for their marionettes, and made some finger puppets.

Finally, for our next meeting (which is the 23rd), we asked the girls to bring in a recycled glass jar.

Thursday, February 5, 2015

A great idea

So, like many great ideas, I had this one in the dollar store.  I was trying to think of a way to have Sparks do sculpture without clay/plasticine/salt dough.  So take a block of something and whittle it down.

Before I share this with you - though a great idea, Sparks just don't have the wrist strength for this - Brownies and up would definitely be able to though, and it's totally safe.

So you need a bar of soap and a paper scorer.  My local dollar store sells them in the scrapbooking aisle.

Use the scorer to carve into the soap.  The scorer is dull, and won't hurt them if they miss or accidentally hack at themselves with it..  Soap, however can crack along lines in the bar itself, and if a girl has a hard time because their sculpture is cracking, she should try a negative image (carve out a shape in the centre, leaving soap around the outside edges).

Here's my daughter's sculpture - she's 1st year Brownie.


We put down a paper towel so that the bits of soap didn't go everywhere.


She put a heart in it.  :)

Wednesday, February 4, 2015

Girl Guides in Belize

We ran into a circle, then went around, asking where everyone was from.  We then scooted over to our trusty World Map (please, find a map that isn't a Mercator Map).  We marked where all the girls came from, the four world centres, our town, and the country we'd be studying today - Belize!

Belize is awesome.  It's tiny, with a great set of Girl Guides who work there.  We showed the girls pictures of the coast of Belize, as well as pictures of Girl Guides there.

We then set up the girls at a table, gave them five rocks each and handed out glitter glue - they were going to make their own set of the Five Marias Game - it's a pretty common game in Central America.  A player gets five small rocks.  They throw the first in the air, pick up a rock from the ground and then catch the falling rock.  Continue until you're throwing four and picking up the fifth.  The girls decorated theirs with glitter glue, then picked up five stones and a partner to try the game out!

While Emerald was supervising the glittering of rocks, I made some more Fry Jacks.  We had these at our New Year's sleepover this year, and they were a great hit.

After the girls had eaten their snack, we cleaned up, and then I set up two logs in the middle of our meeting place.  The girls took turns, two at a time, to move the boards from one side to another.



We had time at the end, so we played a make believe you are an animal in the rainforest of Belize game.  Jaguars, monkeys, toucans, iguanas and butterflies roamed our meeting room until it was time to get home!