District Thinking Day: Connecting

Posted on March 2, 2016 by Carissa

February 27th Burnaby Mountain District came together to celebrate World Thinking Day. Following the lead from the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts (WAGGGS) we took a “Connect” theme and decided to connect as a district while also connecting with the community. The focus of the event was a food bank drive for the Greater Vancouver Food Bank done in the style of a can art construction competition.

Thinking Day 2016 2

Each unit had been working for the past few months on collecting non-perishable foods, mostly in cans, in preparation for the event. Girls took time to consider their donations and to plan a sculpture that took into consideration a Guiding theme (so we could also connect with worldwide Guiding!). At Saturday’s event, the girls worked together, showing great cooperation, to assemble their sculptures.

Thinking Day 2016 (4 of 16)

Sparks, Brownies, and Guides had a great time building with the canned goods. Older girls got involved in other ways. One Ranger took the lead coordinating the donation drop off with the food bank and lead a team of dedicated Pathfinders and Rangers in tasks like assembling and filling the boxes, and arranging to have the goods dropped off at the local fire department, which would hold the donations until the Food Bank could arrange pickup on Monday morning.

Frames

Pathfinders and Rangers also helped to run the bake sale, which was a fundraiser for the upcoming district camp, and also the WAGGGS inspired “Connect” picture frame activity, which helped some units complete their WAGGGS Thinking Day 2016 Challenge.

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Congratulations to the 49th Guides who won the sculpture competition with their trefoil-inspired piece. The unit won some funds for unit activities and each girl got a small prize.

Thinking Day 2016 1

The real winner, of course, was the Greater Vancouver Food Bank which got a donation of more than 800 cans and other items (including a good number of Girl Guide Cookies!). Thank you to everyone who donated, and who helped to pack and move the boxes. We also want to thank the City of Burnaby, which donated cool prize packs for every participant including a pin, pencil, and chocolate treat.

District Bowling FUNdraiser

Posted on January 25, 2016 by Carissa

Back in December, girls and their families from Burnaby Mountain District gathered together for a day that put the “fun” into fundraising: a district bowling fundraiser! The district rented Old Orchard Lanes on Kingsway and families signed up for a game of bowling. There was also pizza and snacks available for purchase, plus a silent auction with lots of cool stuff.

GG Glo-Bowling (2 of 6)

Everybody had a really great time. It was so fun to see so many people come together to engage in fun, physical activity for a great cause. What was the cause, you ask? The district was raising funds for its district camp in June. Specifically, we’re aiming to be able to have the funds for district to cover the cost of buses that will take girls all the way to camp from Stoney Creek School and back again — no driving out to Horseshoe Bay!

GG Glo-Bowling (6 of 6)

We’re thrilled to report that the fundraiser was a big success. In addition to all of the fun that was had, we are able to report the following stats:

The 3-hour event included a total of 196 bowlers
They consumed 30 large pizzas
We made a net profit of approximately $700

GG Glo-Bowling (4 of 6)

Way to go, girls and families! Thank you to the leaders who helped to plan and run the event. And a HUGE thank you to the staff at Old Orchard who went above and beyond in helping us run a successful fundraiser. They were such a pleasure to work with and we highly recommend their bowling lanes as a great place to have some fun.

Cookie Day Fall 2015

Posted on October 4, 2015 by Carissa

It’s that time of year again! Burnaby Mountain Girl Guides were out in full force today selling delicious Chocolatey Mint Girl Guide Cookies. Girls from our various units could been seen selling at Save On Foods, Independent Grocers, Nestor’s Market, WalMart, and the Dollar Tree.

It was a beautiful day to be out in the community. Girls sold lots of cookies to support their fun and engaging programming. Lots of boxes were bought to support the local food bank as well. Thank you to everyone out in the community who supported our sales!

Guiders Planning for a New Exciting Year!

Posted on August 31, 2015 by Carissa

Guiders from Burnaby Mountain District recently had “cookies on the mind” at their district planning session. In this team building game, our adult volunteers raced around a hallway corridor balancing a classic Girl Guide Cookie on their forehead. The winner of the race won a unit’s portion of profit from a case of Girl Guide Cookies for her unit!

As always, the ladies had a good time coming up with fun activities for the upcoming year. The nearest events include a uniform exchange day, another district cookie blitz day, and a reprisal of last year’s successful bowling day. All three of these are fundraisers for bigger events to be announced later in the Guiding year.

We’re always looking for enthusiastic volunteers to work with our units. Come out to meet representatives from Burnaby Mountain at Lougheed Town Centre this coming Saturday and Sunday. We’ll answer any questions about getting involved as either a girl or an adult in our organization!

District Space Centre Sleepover: Guiding Reaches for the Stars!

Posted on May 21, 2015 by Carissa

Last weekend Burnaby Mountain District took over the HR MacMillan Space Centre for an amazing sleepover! More than 100 participants got to learn all about space including astronauts, the universe, rockets, and more.

Girls were divided into groups to take part in different activities. One of the stations took place in the observatory where girls got to learn about the giant telescope and how astronomers study space. SC 2

Everyone got a chance to explore the cosmic courtyard, which featured lots of hands-on activities. Girls got to touch a moon rock, feel different spacecraft materials, design rovers out of lego, and consider the possibility of alien life forms.

Another station was a presentation by Space Centre staff about what it’s like to be an astronaut. Girls got answers to all kinds of interesting questions: How to astronauts wash their hair? What do they eat? Where do they sleep? How do they go to the bathroom?

Finally, everyone got to see a show in the planetarium theatre before bed, showing us just how small we really are in the universe. They learned about planets, stars, and galaxies, and got to spot constellations and find out why Pluto is no longer classed as a planet.

It was a really successful event and everybody had a great time. Space Centre staff were impressed with how well behaved the girls were and how organized the leaders were. They were also impressed that we knew more songs about space than just “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star!” SC 7

In the morning, girls got to launch the bottle rockets that they constructed the night before. Everyone was impressed with how high the rockets actually flew.

This is another great example of how Guiding includes STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) into programming for girls of all ages. We learned a tonne, and had a great time doing it. A HUGE thank you goes out to the incredible Space Centre staff for leading such an exciting program as well as to all the Guiders who volunteered their time to make the night a success.

Classic Cookie Blitz Day

Posted on April 12, 2015 by Carissa

The Spring cookie campaign is well under way in Burnaby Mountain. Many units have already sold all their cookies, and even District is running low on its supply!

Yesterday girls from most units in the district came out to sell cookie in a true blitz style throughout the district. It would have been hard to be out in public yesterday in Burnaby Mountain District and not have come across our girls. Units were selling from 10:00-4:00 at Save-On-Foods North Road, Wal-Mart Lougheed Mall, Independent Foods North Road, Sears Outlet on Lougheed, Dollar Tree at Cameron, and Nestor’s Market at SFU.

Cookies sold really well across the campaign and it was great to have our girls out and about being seen. The weather mostly cooperated though it was chilly and blustery for part of the day.

Thank you to all the girls who came to sell, to the leaders who organized and supervised them, and to the local businesses who supported Girl Guides by letting us sell outside your stores.

Thinking Day 2015 – Healthy Living

Posted on March 14, 2015 by Carissa

In February, Girl Guides around the world celebrate the joint birthdays of Lord and Lady Baden-Powell, the founders of our organization, in Thinking Day celebrations. This year, Burnaby Mountain District hosted its annual celebration on February 21 at Charles Rummel Hall.

Approximately 75 girls came out with their families to celebrate Guiding. The event was planned and delivered by the 12th Rangers with help from the 14th Pathfinders. The girls did a wonderful job hosting the event, showing exemplary leadership skills.

The theme of this year’s event was healthy living, and the Rangers planned stations for the girls to visit round-robin style that contributed towards the new provincial program Colour Me Healthy challenges. By the end of the day, all girls present were well on their way to earning the challenges which may be completed in their units.

Fun stations included fruit & veggie trivia, yoga, foot tag, and a fruit and veg tasting station. The afternoon was rounded out with a lively campfire.

In addition to the festivities, there was a bake sale that many families contributed to. So many tasty things! Proceeds from the bake sale are going towards the district’s year end event in June. Thanks for helping us raise the funds for that.

A huge thank you goes out to the Rangers and Pathfinders who worked so hard planning and leading this event. The girls all had a great time and hopefully learned a thing or two about healthy choices.

To our sisters around the world, Happy Thinking Day 2015!

District Planning and Cutthroat Kitchen

Posted on August 24, 2014 by Carissa

With September, the start of the Guiding year, just around the corner, Guiders from Burnaby Mountain district gathered yesterday for their annual planning day. The morning featured training sessions to help new Guiders understand how to run the Guide program and to give tips and tricks for running a unit including planning, communication, and conflict management. In the afternoon there was a planning session where topics such as cookies, fundraising, and district events were discussed — there’s a lot of fun stuff in the works for this year!

Of course we wouldn’t really be Girl Guides if we didn’t incorporate an element of real FUN into the day. Our mid-day activity was a team-building exercise based on the Food Network TV show Cutthroat Kitchen. Guiders were put into teams to cook a main dish, side dish, and dessert in just 45 minutes, with crazy challenges thrown in for extra chaos.

Cooking started out with a frenzied collecting of ingredients from the pantry. Teams quickly put together their plans and got to work. Throughout the event, however, the host (District Commissioner Gerry) would announce challenges that teams would bid on to inflict on another team to try to sabotage them. Challenges including having to pause to sing campfire songs, having to use a teeny tiny frying pan to cook your food, having to wear one oven mitt for the duration of the game, and having to be handcuffed to another teammate. SAM_2994 Above is one player cooking her meat in a tiny pan, and below are two players both handcuffed and oven mitted, attempting to plate their meal. SAM_2995 The event was judged by District co-treasurers Nikki and Chris, along with Area Commissioner Donna. The meals, shown plated below, showed great creativity and were remarkably tasty given the limited amount of time, single shared kitchen, and the challenges inflicted.

More than enough food was made for everyone to enjoy lunch out of their creations. Dishes included prawn stir fry, sloppy joes, chow mien noodles, spinach pasta salad, and peach tarts. Leaders had a great time being silly and competing against each other. In the end, leaders from three units split of the prize of $100 for their unit’s bank accounts.

District Safari Camp

Posted on June 28, 2014 by Carissa

June 13-15, girls from all branches gathered at the lovely Camp Olave on the sunshine coast for Burnaby Mountain’s district camp. Approximately 60 girls from 9 different units attended.

Ocean view and some local wildlife on the porch of a residential site at Camp Olave.

What make district camp different from a regular unit camp? Most often when girls go to camp they camp with their unit which means spending the weekend with the girls and leaders they see every week. It is a great way to deepen friendships and bond with people you already know. District camp is special because the girls get to make new friends and get a better sense of the sisterhood of Guiding. At this camp, all of the Sparks and Brownies were mixed together across three different residential camp sites. The Guides, Pathfinders and Rangers all camped together on a platform tent site. This was a new experience for many of the girls, but they rose to the challenge and enjoyed mixing with different girls their own age.

Girls from the lion and tiger patrols showing off their masks.

The theme for this camp was Safari. Girls had a blast going through activities in their animal-themed patrols. They did crafts like make binoculars, animal print change purses, and animal masks.

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Other highlights included camp classics like swimming in the ocean, singing around a campfire, and making s’mores.

HUGE thank yous to all of the leaders who came out to make this district camp a great success. Thanks especially to the core staff who worked throughout the year on promoting, planning, and running the camp — a huge amount of work goes into an event like this one, and girls loved every minute.

Burnaby Mountain District

Register today at www.girlguides.ca!

Category Archives: District Event