Random End of Year Musings....

Last week the Sparks visited the Brownies and the Brownies visited the Guides.  Since my daughter is a second year Brownie, I went with the Brownies to Guides to keep ratio.  

At Guides, the girls did half of the Guide science badge.  They made a polymer, a lava lamp, and started a seed gestating.

I got home after the Guide meeting, and a long week, to find a present in my mailbox from Girl Guides Alberta - a key ring with two removable coins for shopping carts.  It brightened my whole day and I decided to pay that forward.

Our unit's Brown Owl has a hard time finding a tuque that fits - so using the pattern from the Fall 2015 Canadian Guider - I made her a hat!  I made it quite a bit bigger than the original pattern - and I also added the words Brown Owl after the trefoil design.

Backwards Camp

Our Brownie Camp this year is Backwards Camp!

When we broke the girls up into their groups for camp chores, we had them pick Palindrome names.  Palindromes are phrases or words that are the same backwards and forwards.

The group names we gave the girls to pick from are as follows -

TACO CAT  -  CAMP MAC  -  DR AWKWARD  -  EVIL OLIVE  -  GO DOG  -  I DID DID I?  -  KAYAK  -  LLAMA MALL  -  NURSES RUN  -  RACECAR  -  STAR RATS  -  TOP SPOT  -  TUNA NUT  -  WE FEW

The girls chose Top Spot and Go Dog as their team names.

Friday night we had campfire, mug up and went off to bed.

Saturday we - set up a 28 sign trail signs course for the girls and had them complete it in pairs (it was through the woods, so each pair had a leader following them to make sure they were ok), practiced our knots (slip knot, bow, reef, half hitch and sheetshank), made suncatchers by melting plastic pony beads in metal cookie cutters, practiced our lashings, and then make a weaving out of them and wove in feathers and grass from camp, made memory bags on a sewing machine, had an egg hunt, wrote messages backwards on paper for a partner, made our own dinner and snack, had two campfires (one run by our Guide helper so she could get her campfire leader badge), and had two flag ceremonies!

Since it was backwards/break the rules camp the girls got to have their dessert first for every meal, and we also had breakfast for dinner and dinner for breakfast.

With the suncatchers, we had each girl make two - one to keep and one to give away.  We're dropping off the suncatchers at meals on wheels in our community to drop off when they drop the meals off.

Our suncatchers - use an old cookie tray, they leave bits of plastic behind!

Weaving and Lashing

Another weaving and lashing - the girls could choose three sticks or four.

Our campfire!

We had the best weather!  Oftentimes Alberta in April is either rainy or snowy, which ends up giving the girls a bit of cabin fever!  It was +19 on Saturday, so we spent 90% of our time outdoors soaking up the fresh air and sunshine!