Gung Hei Fat Choy! - Xin Nian Kuai Le! - Happy New Year!

Today we had our Chinese New Year Party. We had some decorations - lanterns and origami swans and fish and other images. The gym looked great!

Many girls wore beautiful party clothes, too. Lots of people brought yummy food - candy, dumplings, something sticky and sweet and good, pop, cake..... and we played Dragon Tag and made some crafts with shiny red and gold paper.

Happy New Year and I hope you all have a good Year of the Ox.

For Next Week:

Feb 2: We will be continuing on with program work for You and Others.

Feb 7: Remember the Flea Market! Please remember to set aside anything that you are willing to donate, and we can always use help getting it all set up.

Feb 9: our meeting for the Law Awareness badge.

Badge Testing and Various Games

We had badge testing this week. Some of the badges earned were Postal and Skiing and Snowboarding. Other people chose to work on electrical circuits, play chess or use the hieroglyphic stamps.

We also continued work on our program area, You and Others.

Next week is our Chinese New Year's Party. Please remember to bring food, decorations, or games if you volunteered to do so!

More Engineering

We finished the Engineering badge, with some work on making plans to scale. For those who weren't there last week and still need to do the car walkaround, we'll do that next week so you can complete your badge.

Some girls wish to earn their Event Planning badge, and they are the people planning the party for January 26. If you would like to contribute something or help with the party, please join this group!

Next week is badge testing. Please bring whatever you need. Plan to do a maximum of two badges - if you have more prepared, you can bring the material, but there may not be time for testing.

Upcoming events (also downloadable in the sidebar) -
January 26, Chinese New Year's Party.
February 2, visit by Toronto Police Officer and the Law Awareness badge.
February 7, Flea market
February 22, trip to Casa Loma (please bring back forms and money)
February 23, Thinking Day meeting at Cresthaven

We have ordered 40 cases of cookies. That's 1 per girl unless you asked for more, plus a few extra for leaders or people who find they need another one. They will be delivered in March.

Engineering!

This week we did some of the Engineering badge. We built some structures, checked out the dashboard of the car (no, you can NOT drive my car around the parking lot! I can tell that there will be some very excited people when you girls turn 16, though....), built some electrical circuits and learned about simple machines. We also learned about the different types of engineers and played Jeopardy!

Next week we are going to be planning our Chinese New Year meeting. It's all up to you, Guides - you decide what food you would like, what games you would like to play, which crafts you are interested in making. Then we'll figure out how to get the materials you need.

Remember to bring your cookie order forms back. If you don't want to take pre-orders, that's ok - you can just let us know how many cases you'd like. Let's decide if you'd like to do a blitz.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to all Guides, Guiders, Parents and Guardians!

Some dates to keep in mind for 2009:

February 7 - Girl Guide Flea Market (flyer to follow)
February 22 - Thinking Day trip to Casa Loma
February 23 - Thinking Day All-Branch meeting at Cresthaven PS
March 17 - March Break, no meeting
May 26 - All-Branch Advancement, Final Meeting
May 29-31 - Group Camp at Ma-Kee-Wa

Looking forward to seeing you all again soon. Don't forget to sew on all your new badges and remember your indoor shoes!