Tag Archives: SFU

Art Walk and Hike

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Last night some Brownies keen to finish their Key to the Community and Happy Hiking badges went on an adventure at local university, SFU.

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First the girls walked around campus checking out the awesome public art around campus. It was fun to see the large installments, some of which lend themselves to interactive enjoyment.

Did you know there’s a website where you can find a map of public art in the city of Burnaby? What a cool way to interact with our community! Check it out here: https://gis.burnaby.ca/storymaps/publicart/index.html

After the art walk, the group did a short hike along the Trans-Canada Trail, accessed from pretty much across the road from the SFU bus loop.

The girls really enjoyed the hike, enjoying salmonberries and huckleberries all along the way.

Enjoy your fancy new badges, girls!

Guides Look to the Stars

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Earlier this month, for one of their regular weekly meetings the girls from our 56th Burnaby Mountain Guides went on an outing to the Trottier Observatory at Simon Fraser University.

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This was a great opportunity to see some first rate astronomy equipment and learn all about the stars from a very knowledgeable tour guide. The observatory features a six-meter-diameter dome housing a 0.7-metre diameter reflector telescope that is capable of tracking distant galaxies billions of years old. Unfortunately, the girls were not able to look through the telescope due to cloud cover and high chance of rain — the very fancy telescope cannot get wet.

One highlight of the tour was when they got to press the button to turn the closed dome around – it was very cool! The tour guide showed them many images on the monitor that had been captured using the telescope – stars, planets, galaxies, nebulas. Some of these images captured by the telescope can be viewed on the observatory’s website, here.

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Other awesome things to enjoy at the observatory include the beautiful outdoor light displays of seasonal sky maps and the ROYGBIV light spectrum. The Guides were really interested in this event and had non-stop questions. Everyone learned a lot! It was an excellent hands-on STEM activity that tied directly into Guide program.

outside-observatory

Burnaby Mountain District is very lucky to have this world class university right on our doorstep. Many of our leaders are SFU students or alumni and are keen to share these opportunities with the girls. SFU also holds star parties that are open to the public — the Guides highly recommend this activity to anyone interested in learning more about the night sky. Check out the observatory website for more info.

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!

District Science Day @ SFU

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This March, Burnaby Mountain District partnered up with Simon Fraser University’s Let’s Talk Science to put on a fun-filled day of science at SFU campus.Feb 2014 017Volunteers from the various science disciplines lead girls through age-appropriate science activities. Younger girls learned about bacteria and fingerprinting, while older girls did things like extract DNA from fruit.

Feb 2014 008In the afternoon girls participated in a science challenge. Above are some Guides building parachutes to help eggs survive a 2-story drop. Meanwhile, below, Sparks worked on building tall structures using drinking straws.

Feb 2014 012It was fun to expose the girls to science at the university with enthusiastic volunteers. District Science Day was inspired by Girl Guides’ committment to engaging our girls with the STEM disciplines — Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. The event was a huge success with a total of 95 girls and 21 Guiders from all twelve units coming out. A HUGE thank you to the people from Let’s Talk Science — we can’t wait to work with you again in the future!

University Highlands Guiding Group

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Great news! Burnaby Mountain District is opening a brand new unit to service the SFU community at University Highlands Elementary. They’re off to a bit of a late start because we only recently found leaders for the group and there was a lot of set up procedures to go through, but now we’re ready to go. University Highlands Guiding Group is now available on UnitFinder so people in that neighborhood should be able to enter their postal code and register online for the group.

University Highlands Guiding Group is going to be a new adventure for Burnaby Mountain District — this mixed-branch, or “blended” Guiding Unit will accept both Brownies and Guides. The two branches will do most of their activities together, but still accomplish their own branch-specific programming.

Highlands Flyer Image(Click poster above to see more clearly)

The district will be hosting an information session for interested families next Tuesday at the school, and regular meetings will start a couple of weeks after. We look forward to getting involved in the SFU and UniverCity communities and welcoming the fantastic girls of University Highlands!