Monthly Archives: February 2016

Happy Thinking Day!

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Today is World Thinking Day. February 22nd is celebrated as the joint birthdays of Lord and Lady Baden-Powell and has become a day for our 10 million members to think about each other and our history and all the amazing things that we do for girls worldwide.

This year, the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts (WAGGGS) decided we should celebrate Thinking Day with a theme of “Connect” — connect with ourselves, connect with our friends, connect with WAGGGS, and connect with the world. Many of our units are working on the World Thinking Day Challenge this week and will be earning a special crest.

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Three Brownies and a Guider wearing the uniforms to school

To encourage us to connect with our communities, the WAGGGS challenge and West Coast Area have both challenged us to proudly wear our Guiding uniforms out in the community, to school, or to work.

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District Commissioner Bethany in uniform at work

Burnaby Mountain District will be hosting a special World Thinking Day celebration this coming Saturday which will include a massive food bank service project. Units will be engaging in friendly competition, building can art sculptures on a Guiding theme and then donating their collected goods to the local food bank.

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Stay tuned to find out how that event goes — we’re pretty excited about it. Some girls, such as the 2nd Sparks above, have been hard at work practicing the can art sculptures.

Happy World Thinking Day from Burnaby Mountain District!

 

Brownies at the Orchestra

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At the vehement request of the girls, the 54th Burnaby Mountain Brownies did a reprise of one of their favourite outings from last year  — to the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra at the Orpheum theatre in downtown Vancouver. The symphony’s kids koncert series is a great hit with the girls who love everything from the live music, fancy location, instrument fair, and stage theatrics. This time, the show was called “The Mozart Experience” and introduced the girls to some of the greatest classical music of all time.

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The show itself was great fun. Girls especially enjoyed the mimes from the Magic Circle Mime Company performing alongside the music.

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One of the things that makes this experience very special is the chance for girls to try real symphony instruments hands on. The instrument fair allows kids to try out instruments they may have never had the chance to touch in real life. Musicians were on site to give them pointers. It is very exciting to watch them trying new things.

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The leaders were pretty pleased to learn that this was one of the returning girls’ favourite Brownie memories from last year. The girls seem to love getting involved in arts in the community, and as part of our girl-centred programming philosophy, the leaders are thrilled to help them do just that. Perhaps they’ll be back next year as well.

Dance Workshop for Sparks

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The girls in the 1st Burnaby Mountain Sparks recently visited local Art Space Children’s Art Centre to partake in a physical, creative dance workshop put on by one of their talented instructors.

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The interactive workshop included lots of creative expression as well as working on a group routine that they could show to their parents at the end of the session.

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According to the Art Space website, “Children instinctively communicate ideas and express their emotions to others through movement. As children explore the creativity of movement through dance at artspace, they will develop coordination and endurance,
and strengthen their growing bodies.”

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Girls had a great time learning dance skills like coordination, movement, and technique. For some girls, this was their very first formal dance instruction — for others, they have been involved in dance for a long time. Either way, all the girls had a great time dancing with their Sparks friends.

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Thank you to the staff at Art Space for helping us organize this. It was a lot of fun.

Brownies take over Science World

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UPDATE: We’ve added a few more photos to this post as another one of the leaders sent some in and we just had to share. Enjoy! – Feb 9, 2016.

This weekend more than 400 Brownies and their leaders from all around West Coast Area gathered at Science World in Vancouver for an overnight event of fun, friendship, and science! Our 54th Burnaby Mountain Brownies were thrilled to be part of the excitement.

Highlights of the night included an Omnimax movie about Humpback Whales, an engineering demo and experiment time with KEVA planks, science shows, and exploring all the great exhibits with hundreds of other Brownies. trex

Sleeping among the exhibits is one of the coolest parts of this sleepover. Our Brownies got to sleep in a most exciting spot: next to the hollowed out tree and right next to Mr. T-Rex!

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The KEVA blocks were a really cool way to learn about building and engineering in a hands on way. The science world staff had girls help knock down a giant KEVA tower and girls had plenty of time to build their own creations.

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Towers are great to build with friends — a great tower can be built with great teamwork. Alternatively, some girls decided to get creative and build animals with the KEVA blocks, including some who made meerkats!

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The event wasn’t all about science — girls got in some classic Girl Guide fun, including a huge campfire in the omnimax theatre, made extra exciting with the use of glow sticks. Brownies love singing in big groups like this.

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The science exhibits in the galleries are always a lot of fun. Science World is a great place for hands-on learning. Here are some girls trying their hand at working a flying machine.

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Science shows are always a lot of fun. Demonstrations are a great way to learn new things. And its always fun to hang out with friends in the audience.

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Thank you to all the Guiders who worked hard to plan and execute an event of this size. These girls had a blast. Thank you as well to all of the wonderful Science World staff who made the event possible. Large scale sleepovers like this one with hundreds of Guiding friends are some of the memories that we make that last a lifetime.