Thinking Day Trip to Casa Loma

Trip to Casa Loma to celebrate Thinking Day!

Lady Mary Pellatt was the first Chief Commissioner of Guiding, and she served for many years. We saw the main floor rooms (the great hall, the library, the piano room) and the beautiful suites, as well as the towers, the tunnels, the gardening room and the stables. Did you know that Casa Loma had 98 rooms? 46 bathrooms? 56 phones? It was the first private home to have an elevator and a built-in vacuum system. It had electric lights when most people were using candles or gas, and amazing wrap-around showers. We got a wonderful tour from Poppy and got Casa Loma Guiding Crests too!

Don't forget, tomorrow's meeting is at Cresthaven. See you there!

A Visit from the Toronto Police!

We were delighted to have with us two officers from the Toronto Police 33rd Division tonight. We learned all about how to become a police officer, what to do in emergency situations, and a lot about what a police officer's life is like on the job!


After our visit, we even got crests and pins. Awesome! I know one police station that is getting some "thanks cookies" when they come in!

No meeting next Monday. Come Tuesday for a bridging meeting with the Brownies if you can. If you can't come on Tuesday, see you on Sunday 22nd for the Casa Loma Trip!

Groundhog Day!

In honour of the groundhogs, who saw their shadows today (which means six more weeks of hard winter), we made edible groundhogs. That meant cupcakes, chocolate sprinkles, icing, chocolate bars or cookies, and lots and lots of imagination!

Four of our girls also earned their Campfire Leader badge.

Important Dates:

Thursday, Feb 5, evening - please bring anything for our Flea Market to the church (Trinity Presbyterian Church, 2737 Bayview Ave just south of the 401)
Friday, Feb 6, all day - please bring anything for our Flea Market to the church
Saturday, Feb 7 9-12 am - please come to the Flea Market! Proceeds to help with our Division Camp at the end of May
Monday, Feb 9 - Police Officer coming to our meeting to talk about the Law Awareness badge
Monday, Feb 16 - NO MEETING. Schools are closed for Family Day.
Tuesday, Feb 17 - Bridging meeting with the Brownies, 6:45-8:15, Arbor Glen
Sunday, Feb 22 - Trip to Casa Loma. BUS LEAVES AT 12:45 from Arbor Glen. If you aren't there, the bus will leave without you! Please be there! Bus returns at 4 pm.
Monday, Feb 23 - District Thinking Day Meeting AT CRESTHAVEN. Do NOT go to Arbor Glen. Cresthaven is at 46 Cresthaven Drive.
Monday, Mar 2 - regular meeting

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.