Last night was our “Celebrations” meeting. It is a nice way to include Christmas in the program, but visit other celebrations as well.
6:30 – Arrival – We had “Chinese New Year game” written in the notes, but nobody actually wrote one down, so the girls chose tag instead.
6:40 – Circle Inspections
6:45 – Brownie Ring
6:55 – Program Celebrations – why is it important to respect different faiths and cultures? What kinds of special days to you celebrate? What is the difference between a Holiday/Celebration and an Observance?
Celebrations calendar – Every time we do this, Snowy Owl Christine prints a calendar with lots of different celebrations from around the world. She does this manually – and it is a lot of work. I looked it up and you can get a 2013 Calendar with US Holidays here(I couldn’t find one for Canada). She goes through the calendar in the meeting (that’s the photo to the right) and asks the girls to help fill in birthdays and any holidays they celebrate that are missing as she goes.
7:05 Craft 1 – Chinese New Year Craft – Make a Lantern. Don’t forget your stapler! The calendar activity took a lot longer than we thought so we dropped this craft (it wasn’t a good day for China at Brownies last night… I just noticed).
7:10 Craft 2 Valentine’s for Vets – We introduced this activity by saying that there are Canadian Veterans that may not get visited by their children – they may be lonesome. And we want them to feel appreciated, so lets make them a nice card. We had pink, purple, and red construction paper, lots of glue, crayons, and doilies… plus some pre-printed Valentine’s Day poems from CanTeach and a “Made especially for you by __________ Brownie Unit Name and Number”.
One little girl took my intro a little too seriously but we caught it…
- Brownie to Starry Owl “How do you spell Sorry”
- Brown Owl to Starry Owl Huh??
- Starry Owl “Why do you want to spell Sorry on
Valentine’s Day card?” - Brownie: “I want to write ‘I’m sorry you’re alone’.” <Heart breaks>
- Starry Owl “Let’s think of a happier thought instead” (she already had “I am” written out, so we suggested “Thankful”. All good. phew. Disaster averted. =)
7:30 Craft 3 – Beaded Snowflakes. This was very cool. I got pictures of the process, but I don’t have any of the final product. The link has good photos though with good instructions. Update: found this snowflake ornament instruction from whatever that looks pretty cool and has good instructions too.
Some of the girls finished the Snowflake before the rest, and I took those girls with me to practice learning “On My Honour” that we started learning a couple of weeks ago. It is one of my favourite songs and we haven’t been able to work it into the program for a couple of years and I really hated that. So I’m determined to fix it.
And then we were out of time. Next week is our Neighbourhood Walk and then we’re done for 2012.
It is a bit odd to be thinking of Valentine’s Day as we’re coming up to Christmas, but 
