Safari camp: placemats

Most of our Brownie camps run from Friday night to Sunday afternoon. Colouring in the placemats is a nice way to calm the girls down before bedtime on their first night at camp.

Each Brownie has the same picture on the front of her placemat (I omitted our unit name and the date - make sure to include these as they make a nice keepsake! I still have all the placemats from when I camped as a Brownie).

Front of placemat:

Once the placemats are laminated the girls choose a back page (pre-made), put the two sheets back-to-back in a laminating sleeve and with supervision, laminate their placemats all ready to use at breakfast the next morning!!

These are the four options the Brownies had for the backs of their placemats. 

Clearly none of these images are mine. Unfortunately I haven't been able to locate all the sources, but most are below as links. I clearly need to do a better job at saving this information!

• Elephant, giraffe, monkey
• Snake in a tree
• Elephant optical illusion
• Black dots and horizontal lines optical illusions
• Colour quiz optical illusion

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Do you make placemats at camp?

Australian fauna observation game

Looking for a quick observation activity? Just print up some pictures of animals, laminate them, punch a hole and then add string!

This observation game can be played anywhere, including the Guide hall, but is best experienced outdoors. Hidden amongst the trees and plants of dense bushland the animals can be quite difficult to spot (unlike in the photos above taken in front of a fence!)

We used this activity at a camp and while the girls were finishing up with breakfast, the animals were hidden in the bush area attached to the campsite. In Patrols, the Brownies were challenged to locate and create a list of the Australian fauna they encountered. Bonus points were awarded for providing an interesting fact about the animal or bird. eg. habitat, diet etc.

The area was large enough that the girls barely saw the other Patrols as they made their way around using their stalking skills so as not to 'spook' the animals. We were lucky that there was some real wildlife nearby, including many lorikeets and a huge blue-tongue lizard! 


Australian Animals:

1. Brushtail possum          
2. Sugar glider          
3. Fruit bat          
4. Ringtail possum            
5. Koala                             
6. Galah                    
7. Kookaburra     
8. Frilled neck lizard
9. Lyrebird                       
10. Cassowary          
11. Cockatoo       
12. Dingo
13. Turtle                           
14. Emu                    
15. Saltwater crocodile
16. Tasmanian devil
17. Echidna
18. Platypus
19. Black swan
20. Numbat
21. Bowerbird
22. Huntsman spider

Be sure to have a master list of all your animals. It is often very difficult to locate them at the end of the game, even with the assistance of the girls! 

Unfortunately I cannot locate the source of the images I used. I found them through Google images. Please let me know if you find their artist so I can give them credit!

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What observation games do you play in your unit?

Haunted Happenings

The majority of families in our area do not celebrate Halloween. I assume that this is similar all over Australia, but perhaps not. Nevertheless, we can't resist an excuse to dress up, so most years we host a bring-a-friend Halloween Party.

Each girl brings along a plate of food to share. It's great to see how creative everybody gets: eye ball cakes, spider cupcakes, orange and purple jelly and more.

Ghost lollipops

Tombstone cupcakes - not sure what website these were printed from. Any ideas?

The week before usually sees the Guides creating skeletons, spiderwebs and paper pumpkins to decorate the hall. Cardboard tombstones are a favourite of mine and they are simple to make with cardboard boxes being cut to shape, spray painted silver and then written on with a Sharpie. 

Their creativity really shows with the use of book characters (Voldemort, Leslie - Bridge to Terabithia), silly puns (I.N. Sane, Justin Pieces) and creating amusing backstories (Popstar - trampled by a mob of screaming girls who broke into his hotel).

Activities and games include:

• Wrap the mummy (race to cover a team mate in toilet paper)
• Halloween themed piñata
• Piece the skeleton together relay race (using laminated skeleton pieces)
• Craft - pipe cleaner skeletons
• Halloween hangman relay race (using words like pumpkin, witch, goblin)

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Do you celebrate Halloween in your unit?