GIRL GUIDES

Hawera Star, Volume LIV, 27 October 1934, Page 13

GIRL GUIDES

NOTES BY “GUIOER” DIVISIONAL RALLY AT PATEA. The following equipment should be taken to the rally by each company : Six yards rope for team game, four skipping ropes for .skipping race, one basket ball, colours, and drinking mugs. Guides and Brownies should also take mackintosh or topcoat, and rations for the day. Cocoa, -or tea will be supplied for lunch at one penny per cup. Hot drinks will be supplied free before the return journey. Instructions for rally: Upon arrival at the rally grounds, companies and packs will bo directed to their various bases, where they will be in charge of their own Guidors. A Divisional captain -will be in general charge for the day. Guides and Brownies will not be permitted to leave the rally grounds until departure for the return journey. Colours will be broken when all companies have arrived at the rally grounds. Hawera supplies the colour party. The following is the sports programme : TOO yards sprint (14- years and over), 100 yards sprint (under 14), skipping race, company relay, leapfrog competition, passing the rope (team game), overhead ball (team game). ’ Before lunch, inspection of umrorms (points to count for shield), and march rehearsal will take place The public is invited to attend at 2 p.m. Brownies will be in charge of their Owls. The Divisional Brown Owl for the day will be Miss Edna Free, Hawera. The Provincial Commissioner, Mrs D. K. Morrison, has accepted an invitation to attend. She will be accompanied, by the Divisional Commissioner for North Taranaki (Sister Harris) and the Divisional Commissioner for South Taranaki. _ All companies in the division will compete for the Divisional Shield. WOODCRAFT. Search in your mind for the moment when interest in. nature first leapt to life. Was it roused by something you were told, something you were shown, or something you suddenly discovered for yourself P One Guider’s experience is probably akin to many. ... She was standing in the sun thinking the tremendous thoughts of five years old. Suddenly her eye caught a tiny movement down in the dank space below the grating which gave light to mi. underground window. Something was strolling about. She Avatched enchanted; It was the most lovely, stout, black, shiny beetle. Nobody but she knew lie was there, she had never had a pet of her own, and she had discovered him all herself. He was hers. She gave him the most -beautiful name she could think of, Sweet Pea. The grating was the kind that wouldn’t lift up, certainly' not for J)it;6-ygaV-old, but every day she smuggled oiit pieces of biscuit, and dropped them, solemnly through the bars. Sweet Pea, for his part, was slightly unresponsive. It is doubtful whether he even ate the biscuit, certainly ho never attempted- to climb the stick she held patiently for ;him, inviting him to mount. But what did it matter? He was her'very own. . . . Beetles may perform their own introductions, more often the Guider must start her Guides on the path of discovery. Strange that one should need to say, “start them out-of-doors,” yet still to some the indoor nature game seems so alluringly safe, with its limited specimens, its comforting assurance that the Guides can’t ask questions about the wrong things. The indoor game may appeal to those whose interest is already aroused, but there is no thrill in the bunch of rather limp leaves dangling from Captain’s ’taclie case, and too many so-called .nqture games carrv you no further than learning names. For the thrill that creates interest, the. .triumph of finding for yourself l things that even Captain didn’t know were there, you must go in search of real discoveries out-of-doors.

Bogin when is much to see; ror the beginner, tilings must he happening pretty obviously.

.But the uninitiated don’t even know how to look: give them something quite definite to look for. For instance, after feverishly stalking each other, send them off to try to stalk some wild creature. No, they won’t get anywhere near it the first time, so why should not the first discovery be the different ways creatures act when suddenly aware they are being watched? What does a blackbird do? or a rook? and do old and young rabbits behave in the same way? SIMPLE PACK HANDCRAFTS. Old calendars which are too pretty to throw away can be made into blotters to keep on your desk at school. Lay the calendar flat on a piece of new blotting paper, draw round it lightly with a pencil, _and Then cut out carefully along the pencil marks. Stick the blotting paper on to the back of the calendar, and the blotter will be ready for use. When the blotting paper gets covered with inky marks, another piece can be stuck over it. THAT GRUBBY HANDKERCHIEF! I am afraid the following letter which appeared in a recent Guider is an indictment against nice manners: Dear Editor, —There is a way of illtreating books which L think even, worse than those mentioned in The Guider of last month. I forgot who invented those fictitious folk called the “Goops,” but I do remember that one thing the Goops do is to lick their thumbs to turn a page. Is it possible, I wonder, to eradicate this goopisjt habit by starting on the Guides and Brownies of this generation? The habit is on a par with that other horrid habit of this pocketless age—that of perpetually carrying the hankie in the hand. Wo all know that there are two sorts of hankies—“Show.ers” and “Blow-ers.” Well, whatever one may say about a “Show-er,” it is.unpardonable to earr a “Blow-er” in the hand. I have had little pupils come to me for music lessons with a bad cold, and squeezing a wet little hankie in one hand while they, plav scales with the other. Then they change the hankie into the other hand. My poor piano! And the poor next pupil ! I have seen grown-ups turning leaves of books, playing cards, handing cake-plates, with the übiquitous hankie in the hand all the time. It only needs a little imagination to see what nasty habits both, these are. —Yours, etc., A BANGER. CAPTAIN. We can only hope that no Guide or Brownie would he guilty of such “goopish” manners.