Tag Archives: Brownies

Halloween Sleepover

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On Halloween weekend, Sparks and Brownies from four different units got together at Camp Capilano to enjoy some spooky fun and friendship at a super fun sleepover. The girls had a great time making new friends from the different groups, and everyone got along great. Everybody was kept busy with lots of fun activities.

The girls got to make a variety of crafts including their very own jack-o-lantern candle holder. These were made by gluing tissue paper to mason jars, and lighting them up with a battery operated tea light. This is a special keepsake that girls will be able to remember this sleepover with for a long time.

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Other crafts included pom-pom aliens, and a popular Halloween mask colouring station.

After a supper of mummy dogs and spooky veggies, the group was lucky enough to have nice weather for a wonderful campfire. They each got to take turns making s’mores. For some of the girls this was their first time roasting marshmallows over a campfire! They sang lots of fun campfire songs before going back to the cabin.

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Before bed the girls had a dance party featuring great Halloween music like “The Monster Mash” and theme songs from Ghostbusters and Spiderman. The common room was decorated with awesome Halloween decorations including the jack-o-lantern candle holders the girls had made earlier that night. The disco-style party lights made the atmosphere perfect for dancing.

The next morning early risers got to watch the movie Hotel Transylvania 2, and once everyone was up they all enjoyed a hearty breakfast of pancakes with turkey bacon. A few more festive activities, including the ever-popular pumpkin bowling, kept girls entertained until it was finally time to be picked up.

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Over all it was a very successful sleepover. The leaders were all impressed with how well the girls got along, and everybody was very well behaved. For most of the Sparks it was their first sleepover with Girl Guides, and everyone did great!

 

Skulls on Tour visits Highlands

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This week, the girls in the University Highlands Guiding Unit were thrilled to welcome a very special guest speaker to their meeting. The presenter’s name is Yvonne and her program is called Skulls on Tour. She has a large collection of natural science specimens including… you guessed it: skulls!

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In addition to the scientific learning opportunity the specimens provide, she talked about what it’s like to have a serious collection/hobby, and spoke about the community of other collectors that she’s become a part of. The girls and leaders found it informative on several levels.

The girls were very interested in checking out Yvonne’s collection. They got to get pretty close and even handle some of the specimens. It was a really neat chance to learn about animal physiology.

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Bones, horns, teeth, and fur were all included in the display. There was so much to look at, touch, and feel. Girls were very engaged and asked lots of questions. It was fascinating! Guest speakers are such a fun way to bring something new to a regular unit meeting.

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Yvonne is a Sparks leader in Vancouver and can customize her talk for any age group. For more information, or to inquire about booking Skulls on Tour for your own unit, check out her facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/skullsandoddities/.

District Camp Flower Power

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Burnaby Mountain District was thrilled to wrap up the 2015/2016 Guiding year with a District Camp at beautiful Camp Olave last weekend. Guiders have been busy planning and promoting this camp since February of this year — hosting a camp for 78 girls and 20 adults is a lot of work! But it was worth it. Camp Flower Power was a great success.

One of the great things about District Camp is it encourages girls to make new friends and experience the sisterhood of Guiding. Girls from all Burnaby Mountain units were mixed up on three sites (two for Sparks/Brownies and one for Guides/Pathfinders/Rangers) so they got to meet lots of new girls and leaders.

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Stay tuned for more posts about camp with lots of pictures from different activities — since most units are now done until September, we’ll be posting about camp a few times over the summer.

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Thank you so much to the hard working core staff volunteers who coordinated organization, transportation, accommodation, program activities, and health and safety for this camp. Thank you as well to all the hard working Guiders who worked as site Guiders, patrol Guiders, program leaders, and quartermasters all weekend. Girls had a great time!

District Science Day at SFU

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Last weekend Burnaby Mountain District partnered with SFU Let’s Talk Science to hold an all-ages interactive Science Day at Simon Fraser University!

Enthusiastic university volunteers led the girls through a variety of activities and demonstrations touching on several disciplines within STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math). Girls got to work together to try hands on science activities and had a lot of fun.

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Sparks learned about good bacteria and bad bacteria and got to to design their own cute bacteria buddies. They also learned about weather and clouds.

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Brownies enjoyed dissecting owl pellets to reassemble whole rodent skeletons — they thought it was a little bit gross, but really cool! They also explored physics by designing bottle-propelled rockets that they got to launch for an audience of Sparks.

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Guides and older girls tackled environmental science, considering problems like how oil spills and water pollution can be safely cleaned. They also rocked out with a variety of lasers, using problem solving skills to power high tech gadgets.

Over all it was a really educational and entertaining day. Girl Guides prides itself on being able to offer girls the chance to try new things, especially by helping them develop interest in areas like STEM where women are underrepresented in the professional fields. Thank you to Let’s Talk Science for hosting us!   We in Burnaby Mountain are very lucky to have SFU situated conveniently in our district. Many of our Guiders are SFU students and it is always great to take advantage of the opportunities that having a world class university in our district has to offer!

Brownie Flag Meeting

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Sometimes it is fun to catch up with one of our units during a “normal” meeting — that is, something that isn’t a special event like an outing, sleepover, or camp. At our regular weekly meetings, girls participate in all kinds of fun, hands-on programming. Recently, the 54th Burnaby Mountain Brownies had a meeting about flags and heritage. Jenn, one of the group’s leaders, describes the meeting below. 

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Tonight we worked on our Key to My Community which involved a flag ceremony and learning about Canada! Our circle leaders got to be in charge of the flags. We learned how to hold a flag, we learned they never touch the ground and we learned how to carefully roll our flags back up for storage. They loved seeing them (and do did I! We have a district flag? COOL) and learning about them all.


The last photo shows the girls together around their “where do we come from” map. The stones are decorated like a flag, some say “I love Canada”. They are all unique and each Brownie has marked where her family comes from to the best of her knowledge. (Note how many chose Canada)

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We also played a little basketball free throw tonight and learned a bit about the Canadian guy who invented it! Before we played, we had a lacrosse stick and a hockey stick and asked which one is our national sport? They all chose Hockey! Which is actually just the sport we are the best at, not our national sport. It was a good meeting and I know we sent home some tired Brownies tonight!

Thank you, Jenn, for sharing about your Brownie meeting. It sounds like the girls were really engaged and had a great time doing this GGC programming. 

Brownies tackle STEM

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One of the most popular program areas with our girls is STEM — Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. Getting the chance to explore these fascinating disciplines with hands-on activities in a really fun and girl-centred environment is a real a treat.

This year, the 54th Brownies have been going crazy with STEM. The girls just can’t get enough. Back in January, the unit had a blast at the West Coast Area Science World Sleepover.

They have also spent a bunch of time over a selection of meetings this winter and spring, exploring STEM topics to earn their Provincial STEM challenge crests. Check out these images from some of those meetings.

Some of the activities that they have tried include discovering ways to check whether an egg is raw or hard boiled, making music with water in stemware, studying fizzy water vs regular water under black light and then making their own Sparkling lemonade! Yum!! They have also learned about cyber safety, taken cellphones apart to get a look at the inside and made their own computers. And exploring engineering has given them the chance to build tall towers and to design shelters to keep their favourite stuffed critters safe from the elements.

Believe it or not, they’re not done yet! The 54th Brownies look forward to joining all the rest of the Burnaby Mountain girls at our next big district event: Science Day at SFU! At the end of April, girls of all branches will get a chance to explore science in real science labs with real science students. As you can imagine, these girls in particular are really excited about it!

District Thinking Day: Connecting

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

 

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.

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.