Swimming

This week we wanted to finish up our Camping Keeper with style.

Instead of a boring old "water safety" lecture to the girls, we decided to go to the pool!

We're very lucky in our town, that there is a pool to begin with!  Along with the larger pool, there is also a hot tub and a training pool.  The training pool goes from .6 meters to .9 meters, so it's great for all those non-swimmers in your unit.  We spent about 20 minutes getting some brief pool and lake safety from a lifeguard.  Then we got the pool's small training canoe out and the girls paddled that around the pool in pairs.  Then we just let them go a little nuts and pay around for a half hour.

We stopped them twice from free playing to break up the time a bit with some actual games.  We tossed a ball around a circle, as well as playing "what time is it Ms. Shark?"

The girls had a great time!  Next week we're working on our WAGGGS 5 regions Challenge - Africa Region.  Should be a blast!  We're studying Kenya!

Camp Blankets

We made up our camp blankets today.

We cut two pieces of fleece for each girl.  One in Sparks Pink and one in Girl Guide Blue.  We took the blue side to an embroiderer and had their names embroidered on with gold thread.  Then we sewed around the outside, then cut the outside into strips (for the girls to tie together).

It creates a great place to sew on all those fun crests that the girls get, and on the other side, a great place to sew on their sashes, so that they don't get lost after their Sparks year.  It's a great way to keep everything together.

We had some great mom helpers today - it made tying go so much faster!  It let us have enough time to pull out our campfire inside and sing some campfire songs.

A Night at the Observatory

So what do you do on a Friday night with a whole bunch of Girl Guides?

If you're me, you organize a night at your local university, so that you can look through the telescope.

We went to the university, and took a walk out to their telescope right after school, where we were even allowed to climb inside of it.  There was a small hatch on the side, about two feet by one, and the girls climbed in to take a look at the telescope and the camera mounting behind it.

Then we went back to the university and took over one of their rooms for a little while - we looked up Roberta Bondar, learned about the Canadarm, read a story about constellations, did a craft about constellations, ate our dinner, and then it was finally dark enough to look through the telescope.

We saw a couple of videos about the Aurora Borealis, about the ISS, and then spent some time moving the telescope around to look at some of the stars that would be quite bright.

It was pretty awesome.  What was even more awesome was that all the Sparks, Brownies and Guides were there - it was a fabulous unit visit as well!

Dreamcatchers

My coleader and I decided to go for the Alberta Arts Challenge this year.  One of the requirements is that the kids do a craft from Native Canadian culture.  Beading a moccasin, building a drum, or weaving a dreamcatcher.

We chose the Dreamcatcher.  But how to create an interesting craft that's attainable for 5 and 6 year olds, while still remaining true and respectful to Native culture?

This craft and story took the full hour to complete.

First we read a story that I found in my compendium of Native stories about the history of the dreamcatcher and the story of the weaving of the first one.

We used a paper plate, cut out the center then punched holes around the inside, one on the top, for the hook, and three on the bottom.  We had the girls take a pre-cut length of string to weave in the center, as well as some plastic beads to string onto the yarn.  We had them attach pony beads and feathers to the bottom and put a dab of glue on each one to keep them on.

Here are some of our masterpieces, starting with the example, which I made.

Saying Thank You

We started a new small segment in our Sparks group tonight - sharing time.  Since when the girls go up to Brownies they'll be asked to share the badges and other projects they'll be working on with the other girls.  We brought in a talking stick and had the girls tell us stories of their winter vacations.  We'll be asking them more questions over the next few weeks and then start having them do a kind of show and tell.

Then we did another of the Being Healthy Keeper activities and moved to the beat.  I had about twenty different things that they could do around the room and they got to choose then switch about every twenty seconds or so.  We had hula hoops, bean bags, jump ropes, exercise balls, tons of different balls to play with etc.  We went for about ten minutes.  That got the girls all nice and tired out.

Then we made thank you cards.  We broke out the bin of stamps, ink, stickers, crayons and markers.  This was for their Mouse Around the House challenge.  We asked that they make one thank you card for sparks, then one for whomever they wished.