Thursday, October 27, 2011

Meeting #5: Halloween Party! And Enrollment!

You in Guiding: Understanding the Promise and Law (YiG1)

Beyond You: Try New Things (BY3)

We had our Halloween party with the Sparks unit down the hall, and then had our enrollment after the Sparks left. Unfortunately, that meant the girls got enrolled in their costumes!

Arrival (10 min): The girls oohed and aahed over their costumes as everyone arrived.

Icebreaker (15 min): We played Circle to Square, a cooperative game the Guiders learned at conference a few weeks ago. First, the girls had to line up in alphabetical order. With older girls, you ask them to do this without talking, but since they were helping the Sparks get organized, we allowed it. Again, I'm getting used to working with quiet, reserved unit this year, and it took some work to get them all lined up in order. We're starting to see some leaders emerge though.

Once they're in order, form them into a circle, and then find four corners and make the circle a square (hence the name). Then the leader stands in the center and tells them to remember who they're standing beside and which part of you they are facing--front, back, left, or right. I held a pumpkin in one hand and a black cat in the other, to help them remember left and right. Then they all spread out, walk around, and get generally mixed up. The leader then yells "Circle to Square" and the girls have to line themselves back up again. The trick is that the leader can rotate 90° and the girls need to realize that they have to get back to facing the proper side of the leader's body, not to the exact spot they were standing originally.

The game went okay. There were 35 girls to organize and without a strong leader emerging from the Guides, a number of them were sort of lost at sea when they were alphabetizing themselves. It confused them when I rotated, but they eventually figured it out. This would probably work better with a smaller group, but it did help everyone get to introduce themselves and get the names out.

Grim Reaper game (5 min): A Guide and a Spark were picked to be It. Everyone else was to lie down on the floor and pretend to be dead, which meant no moving. The Its walked around and if they saw someone moving, they touched them and were out and then helped look for girls who were moving. Some of the girls were really good at lying still!

Crafts (15 min): We had three crafts set up. We paired each Guide up with a Spark, and the Guides were tasked with helping the Sparks make their crafts and providing any assistance that was needed. (BY3 #5)

Craft #1: Ghost Lollipops These were really cute. The Guides had to help the Sparks tie the string around the neck.

Craft #2: Halloween Witches Hat
Ingredients: 1 chocolate mint cookie, icing (a tube of gel icing works well and is quick and easy), Hershey Chocolate Kiss – unwrapped
The Process: Stick the Hershey Chocolate Kiss on top of the cookie with a small dab of icing to make the peak of the hat.

Again, very easy, and a great way to use up any Chocolatey Mint Cookies you have left!

Craft #3: Foam Halloween shapes (bats & pumpkins), googly eyes, sticky magnet strips. The Guides used a glue gun to help the Spark glue the eyes on and they drew the rest of the face on and put a magnet on the back.

Snack (10 min): We had a veggie tray (carrots and cucumber with dip), a bag of Halloween sized chips, and cupcakes for the girls. The Guides stayed with their Sparks and helped them get their snack and sat with them at the tables. They all  did a really good job of helping the Sparks all night.

Enrollment (YiG1#6)
After the Sparks left, we began our enrollment. As we're planning to do a lot of hiking this year to complete the Hiking Challenge, we thought this Girl Scout Gorp Ceremony would be fitting.

We assembled all of the ingredients. Kix aren't available in Canada, so we used Corn Pops and my fellow Guider printed off the Kix box from the internet so it looked like we had Kix! I rewrote the ceremony to make it work for Girl Guides. GORP Enrollment (Word doc)

We started with Horseshoe and the Promise, and then we moved on to the ceremony. We have three returning girls and 13 new girls, so the returning girls took turns reading each paragraph and then each new girl got to dump an ingredient into the bowl and then receive her enrollment pin and patrol badge. 

When we finished, we mixed it all and bagged it up for our hike on Saturday.

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