Elizabeth's Guiding Corner

 A couple of weeks ago was the first year anniversary of  me starting this blog! I created it with the intention of sharing the at-home activity books that I'd created for my Brownie Unit, and it has been a great place for me to share all my ideas and the resources I've created. I've loved hearing from other Guiders and Girl Assistants that my blog is useful and a great place to come for ideas. Some fun facts: This blog has been viewed 9.7 thousand times This is the 54th post I've made The month with the most views was January 2021, with 2341 views The browser that this blog was viewed from the most was Google Chrome The operating system that this blog was viewed from the most was the iPhone operating system The top nine countries that this blog was viewed from were:  Canada United States United Kingdom Australia France Russia Bulgaria Portugal New Zealand  I never imagined when I started this blog that it would have a global reach, but I am so happy that you have al...

 I've created this activity sheet for Sparks and Brownies about diversity and how our differences make us unique. Each pizza topping represents a different trait or interest, and the girls create their pizza slice based on the instructions for each topping. Diversity Pizza Activity Sheet

 This week we learned about First Aid and emergency preparedness. We learned about what Paramedics do, when you should call 911, and how to apply a bandaid.  7:00pm - Welcome and Opening 7:10pm - Peel Paramedics Virtual Tour Peel Paramedic Service has put together a series of virtual tours for different age groups. We watched the one aimed at grades 3-5, and in it a paramedic gives a tour of the ambulance, talked about what paramedics do, and gave some safety tips.  7:25pm - How to Apply a Bandaid We went through the steps of how to clean a small cut and put on a bandaid on a stuffed animal. 7:35pm - When to Call 911 We used this  Slideshow  by Anna Cole to talk about when to call 911. The slideshow has a series of scenarios, and we worked as a group to decide what to do in each one. We also talked about what to do if you accidentally call 911 .  7:55pm - Closing This meeting was a lot of fun, and it was a great way to finish off the How To theme.

  This week we combined science and the arts to learn about the science of sound! 7:00pm - Opening and Welcome 7:15pm - Sound Waves We looked at some diagrams of sound waves (From this  slide deck ) and talked about how echoes work, and why small instruments make high sounds and big instruments make low sounds. 7:25pm - Videos We were going to watch some videos of people playing boom whackers and glass bottles (in the slide deck), but to be honest I completely forgot about them. We had some technical difficulties that resulted in the meeting starting a few minutes late, and the girls were ready to start experimenting so we just went straight to that. 7:30pm - Experimenting Once we were done with all the talking, we sent the girls off to experiment. They all brought cups and they filled them with water to make different pitches. I also suggested that they try tapping the cups with different objects to see if they could make different sounds. Then we all shared the songs we...

 Last week we took a virtual trip to the Toronto Zoo. I picked some videos from their YouTube channel ahead of time and put them in a presentation for the girls to vote on. 7:00pm: Welcome and Opening 7:10pm: Virtual "Tour" Here is the presentation  with the videos. There are two videos on each slide, and the girls voted on which one they wanted to watch. We had some extra time so we went back and watched some of the videos that we didn't watch the first time around. My favourite is the penguin video. 7:45pm: Animal Add-On Add-on was one of my favourite drawing games in elementary school, and the great thing about it is that you can play it with pretty much any theme. Here's how to play: The person leading the game picks the starting shape (in the case of an animal theme this would be the shape of the body) The person leading the game then picks other players to add the other parts of the animal (head, ears, eyes, arms, legs, fins, etc). If you have more people that b...

 This week we learned about animal scat! Most of the activities we did were from the lesson plan made by Left Brain Crafts. 7:00pm - Welcome and Opening 7:10pm - Animal poop video We watched a video from the Shedd Aquarium about different kinds of animal poop and why they look the way they do:  Sea Curious: What Does Animal Poop Look Like 7:20pm - Animal poop shapes (from the lesson plan) We used playdoh to make different types of animal poop, and talked about the diets of the animals.  7:30pm - More animal poop facts (from the lesson plan) 7:35pm - Animal poop word search (from the lesson plan) The plan was to put the word search on the screen and have everyone work on it together using the annotate feature, but it didn't work for a lot of the girls so we just went straight to the campfire songs. 7:40pm - Campfire songs! These activities didn't take very long so we sang some of our favourite campfire songs! We sang Fire's Burning, The More We Get Together, 40 Years on a...

 This week was my first week back after a long break, and we did the Shining Rights activity from the World Stage theme. We started by reviewing the difference between needs and wants. What are things that are nice to have and make our life more fun and exciting, and what are things that we need need. Some of the wants were toys and watching TV, and some of the needs were clothes and food. Next we moved onto the Shining Rights activity from the platform. We talked about the Rights of the Child (Food, shelter, play/rest, education, safety), and what they look like in our lives.  If you'd like a template for making the star, you can find it in the World Stage activity book  that I posted last year.