Elizabeth's Guiding Corner

We've done a lot of crafts and arts activities so far this year, so we decided to mix it up a bit with an engineering challenge. As I suggested to my co-Guiders, "Let's launch some stuff!". Before we got into designing and building, I showed them what a catapult is and how they work. We looked at some homemade designs and discussed what items would make a good base, and what we could use as the arm of the catapult. At first I got a lot of blank stares, but they slowly started to come up with some ideas. I put the pictures in a slide deck, which you can find here (the pictures of home made catapults were found on Google Images, they are not my own.):  Catapult Presentation Next we got to building. Everyone started with the same basic supplies that my co-Guider delivered in a supplies drop-off a few weeks earlier. They each got some wooden blocks, rubber bands, popsicle sticks, toothpicks, and some small pieces of foam packaging that we suggested they use as the project

This year for Remembrance day we learned about how Girl Guides contributed to the war effort, and we made poppies. The Dad of one of our Brownies is in the Army, so he came and spoke briefly about what he does and why he joined the Army. For some of the Brownies this was their first time seeing a soldier in "real life" (through a computer screen), and I think it helped them better understand what remembrance day is all about. Next we moved on to what Girl Guides did during the wars. I showed them some pictures of Girl Guides doing first aid, handing out clothing to displaced families, making supplies for soldiers, and acting as messengers. I took the photos from this blog post and put them into a slideshow:  https://owl-and-toadstool.blogspot.com/search?q=remembrance+day . When we were looking at the photo of the air ambulance I asked the Brownies how much they thought an airplane costs, and one of them said "Probably a lot, like twenty dollars!". Finally we moved o