Hello! Happy St. Patrick's Day!
Our Guide Unit had recently completed the World Guiding Badge. There are eight questions and they must complete 6 of 8. Question #2 of that badge asks to "Discover similarities or differences among the Girl Guides of five WAGGGS countries, such as their Promise and Law, uniforms or enrolment pins". We chose to look at Mexico, Australia, England, Syria, and South Africa {one country from each of the five WAGGGS Regions}.
Learning about the Promise & Law of WAGGGS member countries is a lot to take in during a short weekly meeting time. The important thing is to help the girls understand that all WAGGGS countries have a Promise, Law, Uniform, Pin etc and as a Guider we should lead them to discover that even though the words to various promises and laws are different they all have the same underlying meaning and spirit.
Here is my approach on how to simplify this part of the badge: I made displays using file folders to show information about each of these countries' Promise, Law, and Uniform. In doing so, this helped to familiarize myself with the info so that I could teach with some sort of credibility LOL. As a group, we read the promise for each country, looked at photos of the uniforms, and learned a few points of interest about each one. Just enough info so that they weren't overloaded. We then passed the folders around so that everyone could have a closer look at the information.
We really like the new UK Guide Uniform. Girlguiding UK worked with five young women who were studying 'Fashion and Children's Wear' at University. They were asked to design a 'fresh, comfortable range of clothing' for the Guides. The designers spent a year consulting with Guides to come up with a new look and in 2014 the new Guide Uniform was launched.
In South Africa, their Spark aged Girl Guides are called Teddies.
Our Guides thought that was such a cute name.
Our Guides were excited to learn about the Syrian Promise because of the Syrian Refugees relocating to Canada.
We liked the Guias de Mexico uniforms.
We liked the Australian Uniforms and also found out that units may choose their own unique name such as 'Rainbow Star Guides' or 'Dolphin Guides'.
I also included photos that some of you Owl & Toadstool viewers had sent to me over the past few years. The Guides loved seeing actual photos of other Guides and Brownies from around the world. Thank You!
We, of course, did Lapbooks for part of this World Guiding Badge. The Guides were excited about this activity and couldn't wait to show them to their friends! So, that covered question #3 of the badges "Help younger girls learn about Girl Guiding around the world by creating a game, storybook, colouring book, poster or display of your own choice".
I am with a new Guiding Unit this year so lapbooking was a new thing for this group. I streamlined both World Guiding and Canadian Guiding badge activities into a one folder lapbook. You can see in the right side of the above photo the page of images ...that covered question #1 of the Canadian Guiding badge ,"Find 10 interesting facts about the history of Guiding in Canada...". They cut out the images and glued them into a layered book {top left corner of the lapbook}. I found it best to explain one fact at a time and then they all glued that image into the book then we moved on to the next fact.
The layered book that says "Guiding Events" {bottom right corner of the lapbook in the photo above} covers question #5 of the Canadian Guiding badge, "Begin a scrapbook, journal, zine, comic book, photo album, or autograph book about guiding events". This is a good place to record events etc. The girls decorated the pages of the layered book with GGC clip art.
Two of our Guiders are also our Co-District Commissioners so that covered question #4 of the Canadian Guiding badge, "Find out about other adult roles in Guiding". The girls asked them questions about what they do as Commissioners.
Some of these Guiding Badges may seem to be quite in depth but if you break it down and cover portions of it over several meetings then eventually the badge will end up being completed. Face it, some of our girl guides would never earn any badges if we did not do some as a group at our weekly meetings or at camp. World Guiding and Canadian Guiding are two examples of badges that can be easily covered at meetings.
I hope this helps some of you with badge or program work. It pays to do a little prep work before your meeting! Have a great day!
