This workshop has evolved over the years. A number of years ago, some leaders would hold a 2 night camp for girls working on their LBP award. Our first year doing this, there was a one-night Spark camp on a Saturday, so we took the Friday night for our LBP girls. The next year, we booked a grocery store community room for a Saturday, and we really liked how that worked out. There's a kitchen, so we can have lunch, and we get about the same amount of time as the overnight, but it's much easier. And the Community Room is free!
We use the workshop to do a Major Community Project (#4) and Learn about Lady Baden-Powell (#2). It's also when we can talk to them about what they have left to do and give them ideas about how they can complete it.
We have 8 third-years so we opened it up to them (whether they were planning to do LBP or not), plus the one third year in the other Guide unit in our District. We only had 4 confirm, so then we opened it up to our 9 2nd years as well. We ended up with 8 girls attending, which is a nice number.
As leaders, we came up with the idea for the project, which the other Guide unit had done in previous years. It's an activity kit for the emergency waiting room. In the Guide unit's case, they had a grant for doing community projects, so they bought all of the supplies and the girls just assembled them. We were concerned about the rule that you can't buy things to donate (but you can buy things to make something to donate), so we thought if we booked a Community Room that was next to a dollar store and had the girls bring money from home to buy the supplies, that would cover it. Though most of the supplies we did "transform" in some way. :)
We started the morning by explaining the project to the girls, showing them a couple of examples, and then we had them brainstorm what they wanted to put in them. Then we went through the list and determined how much each thing would cost and how many bags each thing would make (i.e. a 24-pack of crayons cost $1.25, and if we were putting 3 crayons in each bag, we could make 8 bags from each package).
Then we found a common multiple (in our case it was 48) and figured out how many of each thing we would need to buy. We added that up and rethought some of the things (do we need crayons and coloured pencils and markers?) so that the cost per bag was about $1. We determined we could probably make 96 bags. Then we divided up the items between the girls, knowing they each had $10 to spend and factoring in tax--each girl could buy $8.50 worth of supplies.
I really had fun teaching the girls this part--how to budget and plan. They complained a little (math on a Saturday?!) but they definitely felt ownership of the project.
Now everyone took their list and we walked over to the dollar store and they had a lot of fun shopping and picking out the right stickers and colouring books and pencils.
Back in our meeting space, they got to work dividing everything up--crayons dumped into a bowl, colouring books separated into sheets, construction paper cut in half, pencils sharpened. We had Girl Guide stickers from Guide House (our Provincial office) and we made stickers that said "Get well soon from Hammonds Plains Girl Guides" (or something like that), so some girls put those onto the ziploc bags. 
Then they got busy filling the bags! We put a list on the board to remind everyone what to put in each bag. I forgot to take a picture, but it was great to see the 90 activity kits they made to donate.
Once the bags were completed, we took a break for lunch. The shopping plaza we were at had a pizza place in it, so we ordered pizzas. Yum! Plus we bought some carrots and cucumbers at the grocery store.
After lunch, we worked on some Lady Baden-Powell information. We have a folder of information that we photocopy for them each year which has some worksheets and LBP information. There is also a skit that requires props. We divided the 8 girls into 2 groups, and each group worked on creating a set of props for the skit. They will present the skits to the unit in the coming weeks.
We also talked to them about the other parts of the Award that they need to complete and how to complete it. Since it was Thinking Day, we finished our workshop with cupcakes and sang Happy Birthday, and then Taps. Then it was time to go. They did a great job and worked diligently for the 6 hours we were together.
For our third-year girls who couldn't attend but still want to earn their LBP, we gave them information on how to complete the service project and gave them 3 weeks to return 10 bags to us before we donate everything to the hospital. We gave them the folders of LBP information, and asked them to create posters about LBP for our Thinking Day skating party instead of doing the skit.
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