Open Book Badge for August

Welcome to the READING MONTH of August!!!!

This month we are giving all the Girl Guides the opportunity of working towards their Open Book Badge.  We have a whole list of fun and exciting activities to keep you busy over the month.


There are 3 MUST DO activities that include taking part in Reading Hour on Saturday, 25 August, finding your favourite recipe for our very first Karana Downs Girl Guides Cookbook and reading and becoming a member of this blog page ( which is so easy since you are right here now reading this ).


We have a collection of other activities that should keep you very busy over the month.  There are even two free choice spots on the sheet for you to make up your own reading fun.


Enjoy completing the Open Book Badge and we can't hear about how you are going with them.  Please let either of us know through here or come up and tell us.


HAPPY READING,


Tahlee and Helen

Let the games begin!!!

KDGG is beginning it's own Olympics this week, and the preparations are well underway.  Teams have chosen their names, developed their flags, chosen their team colours and practised their war cries.

Go teams!!!

Finishing our Nature Badge - Nature Air Mail Project

To complete our Nature badge, we participated in the Nature Air Mail Project, contributing to the future display by local artist Tricia Smout who is the 2012 Artist in Residence at the Brisbane Botanic Gardens at Mt Cootha. (Make sure you catch the exhibition at the end of the year and see if you can find our work within it!)

Im sure you'll agree, the girls work was excellent!

Nature Badge - Food Chains

Learn about food chains using this fun, interactive game.  Remember, we don’t have squirrels in Australia, but we do have foxes, (many live here in the outskirts of Brisbane) which were brought to Australia from Europe with the early settlers.  (See below to learn more about the problems foxes cause in Australia)

http://www.sciencekids.co.nz/gamesactivities/foodchains.html

Foxes eat native plants and animals and compete with native animals which would need the same food to live or space to safely raise their young.  Can you think with what native animals foxes may compete?

Find out more about foxes in Australia through these links:

http://www.thefoxwebsite.org/populations/australia.html

http://www.dpi.qld.gov.au/documents/Biosecurity_EnvironmentalPests/IPA-Fox-PA13.pdf

Have your own copy of Pest patrol, an activity book (with teachers’ resource)

http://www.dpi.qld.gov.au/documents/Biosecurity_EnvironmentalPests/IPA-Pest-Patrol-Activity-Book-Complete.pdf

This brings us to the end of our Nature Badge blog for this term.  Until then... all the best.

Message from Wootoo:

Don't forget to be working on your nature badge.  (For the girls to earn the badge they need to have completed at least 10 of the ideas on front/back of the nature badge sheet).

Nature Badge - Habitats

As a part of our nature badge work, we have been looking at nature around us, and seeing what lives there, and how healthy the environment is.

The area which is home for a certain type of plant or animal is also known as its habitat.

(For example, in your home, you could say that your room is your “habitat”, even if you share it with a brother or a sister).  

There are many different habitats across Australia.  Can you think of the names of some of them? You probably have heard of “Rainforest” before.  We have some beautiful rainforests here in Australia.  Here are some Queensland examples:

Dense Rainforest in Tamborine National Park:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Wl040QMsyM

Daintree Rainforest Footage by Australian Geographic:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cj0MBLHdKNk

Explore seven different habitats at the Australian Museum website:

http://australianmuseum.net.au/Wild-Kids-Habitats

The Queensland Museum website is always worth a visit, and helps us understand more about different habitats relevant to our world in their “Wild backyards” online resource.

We challenge you to investigate all three at:

http://www.qm.qld.gov.au/microsites/wild/wild-backyards.asp

Wildlife and habitats are under threat, learn more at:

http://www.wwf.org.au/our_work/saving_the_natural_world/wildlife_and_habitats/

But don’t despair!  Help our native plants and wildlife by creating a habitat for them in your own back yard!

Create a habitat for frogs thanks to ideas from Frogs Australia Network:

http://frogsaustralia.net.au/conservation/creating-habitat.cfm

Further resources to creating backyard wildlife habitats are available at:

http://www.australian-backyard-wildlife.com/
until next time when we look at food chains...
Karana Downs Rocks!!

Nature Badge 2012

Welcome back!!!

In support of your work on your nature badge, we are once again using our blog to explore our world and share our thoughts and experiences.  Join, comment, and even post your own content and photo's here on our blog.

This month, our blog explores the variety of plants and animals we find in nature, our Great Barrier Reef, and an amazing animal, (not to be found in Australian waters) the Giant Octopus.  We also learn about food chains, and look at an introduced pest and it’s impact on Australia.  We look at habitats including our own backyards, and learn more about plants and animals.  Enjoy!

Images from David Attenborough’s Planet Earth:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7crV89ZZ_yc

Plant and animal differences

Learn about the variety of life on our earth:

http://www.sciencekids.co.nz/gamesactivities/plantanimaldif.html

Our very own Great Barrier Reef is teeming with both plant and animal life. 

Learn about our amazing natural resource in this video:

http://www.sciencekids.co.nz/videos/nature/greatbarrierreef.html

People have long been fascinated by creatures of the sea, and there have been many movies about some of those which frighten us, such as the giant octopus. 

Yes, they do exist (but not in Australian waters) and are amazing creatures.  View them at: http://www.sciencekids.co.nz/videos/animals/giantoctopus.html

Learn more about these incredible invertebrates at:

http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/invertebrates/giant-pacific-octopus/

But DO NOT WATCH THIS IF YOU ARE EASILY SCARED!!  Giant octopus v shark:

http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/animals/invertebrates-animals/octopus-and-squid/octopus_giant_kills_shark/

 which leads to our next edition on habitats… until then,

Karana Downs Rocks!!!

Cooking blinis using recycled cans

Reducing, Re-using and Recycling can be fun!  Check out the photo showing how we cooked Russian blinis using recycled cans brought in from home.  Each of us had a chance of cooking our mini pancakes, a yummy afternoon tea!  Whilst some of us were cooking with Wootoo and Kinta, the rest of us were playing our games "without power or stuff" with our regular parent helper Paula and Jen's mum Jo, who was helping out with Thinking Day.

Games we love to play whilst saving our planet!

In groups, we discussed things we play with everyday and found that much of our play time needed energy stored in batteries or electricity.  Thinking about this, we came up with a bunch of games we can play which don't have a toll on our environment:

Entertainment without power or stuff:

1. Hide n seek
2. Tiggy
3. Hand games (e.g. thumb wars)
4. Stuck in the mud
5. Red Rover
6. Piggy in the middle
7. Heads down thumbs up
8. Duck, duck, goose
9. Leap frog
10. Chinese whispers
11. Charades
12. 44 home
13. The story game
14. Role playing
15. Clapping games
16. Fruit Salad
17. Eye spy
18. Soccer (with a pine cone)
19. Hop Scotch (made from sticks and stones)
20. Rainbow spotting

Nude Food!

  

Through our Thinking Day activities, we have found that reducing, reusing and recycling are all worthwhile!  One way we can reduce the amount of packaging we waste is to change the way we pack our lunches.  Together we discussed using lunch boxes, wax paper, ice bricks and insulated lunch bags to carry our lunch to school each day.  We can save help save our planet whilst saving money and eating more healthily!

Wootoo challenged all Guides to aim to have two nude food lunch days a week.

Try the interactive game allowing you to virtually pack their lunch and weigh up both how healthy lunch is and the impact of the waste packaging on the environment.  

http://www.nudefoodday.com.au/schools/interactive-activities.php

Reduce…the use of fossil fuels when getting around

Reduce…the use of fossil fuels when getting around.

In this activity for Thinking Day, we grouped into our patrols. 

The Dolphins discussed low fossil fuel transportation and made posters (above left) showing their ideas which included: bikes, pogosticks, walking, scooters, skipping, horses, wheelchairs and running.   (How much fun would it be going to school using a pogo stick – or a horse!)

The Junior Guides investigated using muscle power (above right) and their ideas included:  gardening by hand, recycling, making your own things out of things you don’t need anymore and sweeping.

The Senior Guides completed a “Break it down” activity looking at the resources it takes to make a common object – a pencil.  A pencil is made from graphite, softwoods and cedar, paint, rubber and aluminium.  (Some have a plastic decorative coating too.)  The resources which make up a pencil can be transported from around the world including: Graphite, Brazil/Mexico; wood, Sweden/South Africa; paint, Estonia; Rubber, Thailand/Malaysia, Aluminium, China/Mozambique.

All of these resources, plus the energy used to transport them around the world, for something we take for granted.  The example of the pencil helped us pause and think more about our choices and how what we use and how we use it can effect our earth’s resources.

Challenge:  Share the “Break it down” activity of the Senior Guides at:

http://education.nationalgeographic.com/education/activity/geography-of-a-pencil/?ar_a=2

Switch it Off, Green it Up!

Save...resources in and around your home.

Working together, we investigated our ecological footprint.  We learnt that our ecological footprint is a measure of the amount of cropland, grazing land, forest and fishing grounds required to produce the food, fibre and timber we use and need to absorb the wastes we create.  In Australia, we're consuming more than three times our fair share of the planet's natural resources, and that it would take three Earth's to maintain our current resource use!  We estimated our own ecological footprint using handouts and found our lowest was 16 and highest 48, with most scoring around 26.  We discussed ways we could reduce our impact on our Earth's resources by making better choices, reducing, reusing and recycling in our everyday lives.
Challenge:  Ask your family to try the ecological footprint calculator and discuss ways you can Save Our Planet! as part of thinking day.

http://www.wwf.org.au/our_work/people_and_the_environment/human_footprint/footprint_calculator

What I love about our planet...

To begin our preparation for World Thinking Day, "we can save our planet" we reflected on what we each love about our planet.

"We love the animals, trees, flowers, sunset, breeze, waterfalls, birds, rain and thunder." - Kookaburra Patrol

"We love the sunset, Michael Jackson, horses and cats." - Dolphin Patrol

"We love water to swim in and anything to do with animals.  We also love colour because it would be pretty boring just black and white."  "We love Justen Bieber, fun things to do, my two dogs and my mum and dad". - Lyrebird Patrol

Check out the video "The World is Where We Live" by the WorldWildlife Organisation

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpS8oLLy51Q&feature=email

Thinking Day 2012

Each year on February 22, World Thinking Day, girls participate in activities and projects with global themes to honor their sister Girl Guides and Girl Scouts in nearly 150 countries world wide. 


Our theme for World Thinking Day 2012 is "we can save our planet".  Over the next few weeks we are working together with Wootoo and Kinta to learn more about how our everyday decisions effect our planet, and how we can make choices to help save our planets resources.

Welcome to Karana Downs Girl Guides 2012, Parents Guide to using this blog...

Welcome to Karana Downs Girl Guides 2012!

In support of our Thinking Day activities, we have developed this blog to allow all guides to add their ideas.

Your child can add their thoughts directly to the blog, or you can email their ideas to: kdgguides@gmail.com and we'll get them up on the blog as soon as we can.

If your child is posting their ideas directly to the blog, remember you first need to create a gmail account which you can do through the google homepage.  Whilst our blog is for our use only, it is within a public space, so the usual privacy rules prevail.

When creating a gmail account and posting to our blog we ask you to supervise your children, and ensure you protect your privacy through use of a nickname for example:  Kookaburra, Platypus, Echidna etc. Don't forget to keep your password somewhere safe for future use.   Please do not post photo's which contain children's faces.