 |
 |
 |
||||
|
A "SURVIVOR THEME" PATHFINDER WEEKEND CAMP Eight of our 14 girls were able to come and they had a blast. We started Friday night when we told them their assigned tribes and gave them their fabric ties/bandanas. They then chose a tribe name, made a tribe poster, came up with a chant and proceeded to make clothes for the two Barbies we'd brought for a raft making challenge. The Barbie outfits were quite clever; one even had slippers. We'd made a mailbox from a small cardboard tube and Saturday morning they received their first mail. Their challenges for the morning were to
They were allowed to take 2 items per girl. We had added tarps to their kit lists but we still had one group of 4 girls who had no tarp. They bartered some extra chores for a spare tarp. The compass trail had some snags but one of the Guiders went as a "step counter robot" and they finally reached their destinations. Once there they built their shelters. When the girls were ready we had two girls go in the shelter and we dumped a bucket of water on it. They had no trouble starting the fires. We gave them a fire starter and 5 matches and despite the drizzle and the fact that everything was wet from the past couple days of rain both groups had quite good fires going in no time. One group had brought a towel as one of their items and they dried off twigs before using them. Neither group needed the fire starter. They signalled using ground-to-air signals and it was quite amusing to see them waving things in the air to get our attention. After successfully completing each challenge they received a food voucher for a lunch item. They then came in to make lunch. After lunch we joined the tribes and played a wilderness trivia game. The girls took turns rolling the die and answering the questions. They could get help from the others but if they answered incorrectly they had to pick a number and eat the food behind the corresponding door. The items were a snail, sardine, taro root, tomatillo, dog biscuit, Hershey's kiss, molasses toffee and coconut toffee. The first girl to answer incorrectly picked the snail. She took it, looked at it for a second and popped it into her mouth and chewed, never even wanting water. It was pretty impressive; the other girls were in awe. We also had a girl gag on the dog biscuit (who would have guessed) which put a small damper on the festivities but we got them all back into the game after a couple of minutes. In the end a couple of the girls sampled some of the items. I think we had 3 try the snails. We had planned to have the tribes make a raft that would support Barbie with only things they could find outside but we completely forgot. We made dinner for the girls using a menu posted, rat meat loaf, rice, jungle greens (salad), and kitty litter cake. The rat meat loaf had quite an affect and several girls couldn't get around the fact that it was just meatloaf. The kitty litter cake was quite hit. After dinner the girls voted for the most helpful and the most ingenious. This was one of their favourite things of the weekend. They would go into the other room, write the name on a piece of paper, fold it in half and put it into the container. They did this with much fanfare writing with a flourish and talking to an imaginary camera. When we were done they wanted to do more voting even though we didn't have any more prizes or categories. Sunday we let them sleep and have the day to themselves. We were impressed at how well the girls all worked together, there were no little cliques. They pushed the bunks together so they had eight bunks making a square with the heads all together. They spent hours talking late into the night. We talked about how well it had gone and how different it was without everyone there. They could see how the dynamics had changed too. It was really a great camp. The girls want to do another one. Susie McCormick |
||||||
 |
||||||
 |
||||||
 |
||||||
 |
||||||
 |
||||||
 |
||||||
 |
||