Girl Guide Winter Camp

This year I decided to step down from my position as a girl guide leader with a weekly meeting. The best part has been that I can keep doing the things I love best and avoid the things I don't like. And the thing I love best is camp!!!! So every year in the winter we head out to a camp that the Girl Guides own. In the winter we stay in the fancy lodge. The girls are only 9 to 11 years old and their parents couldn't cope with the girls sleeping outside in winter. This year the group has 11 girls. We had tonnes of fun. Some of the girls goofing around when they should be in bed.

The girls at camp do all the cooking. They love it. Most of them aren't allowed to cook at home, so this is their chance to do it. At camp, the girls also do all the cleaning. We divide the girls into patrols and they take turns doing all the duties at camp. You would think that there would be much moaning and complaining about the bathroom cleaning, but that is one of their favourite jobs. They even fight over who gets to do the various jobs. The bathrooms at camp are also the cleanest bathrooms ever, because over the course of the weekend they get cleaned 3 to 4 times.

The girls making bead hat crafts. We had an insane number of beads in the craft boxes, so I came up with a bead horse and bead cowboy hat. We always plan a couple of crafts for the girls to do during the down times.

We worked on the chemistry badge. The girls loved the experiments. We did a chemistry magic show for the Brownies (7-8yrs old) and the Pathfinders(12-15yrs old) that we using the other lodges at the camp. I forgot to get some pictures of the show. But the best part was when our first year guide, lit the match for her experiment. I was a little nervous, because normally there is a lot of crying and fear about using matches, but she had no problem. She was actually the first guide I've had that had no fear and just know she could do it.

This is a video of the girls trying to get the baking soda and vinegar explosions going.

More beading. The girls are always bugging do work on them.

We worked on the life skills and the bird watching badges. So to kill two birds with one stone, we made bird houses. For most of the girls this was their first time using a hammer. There was a lot of pulling nails out and straightening them out on the part of the leaders.

There was also a lot of holding the part of the leaders. I think I may have been temporarily insane to hold a nail while a kid hammered for the first time.

It was very difficult to convince the girls that if they held the hammer at the end instead of choking up on it, they would have more success.

We also give the girls what we call a challenge book. It's another thing to keep them busy when they are finished their duties or between activities.

The food line up. You would think we starve them, given how quickly they come for meal times.

The girls laying around in the snow.

This is the pile of stuff . It's amazing how much we bring out for one weekend.

The girls love sliding everywhere. It works out great for us. Once they finish cleaning we kick them out of the building, so the leaders can do the final check out.

All of us at the end of camp.