GIRL GUIDE NOTES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23492, 5 May 1938, Page 5

GIRL GUIDE NOTES

By Guider

TRAINING Guiders are reminded of the training to be conducted by Miss Knight in Dunedin from June 3-10 (Guide training) and June 17-20 (Brownie training). It is hoped that every company and pack will have a representative. If it can possibly be managed, Guiders will find it most profitable to live-in. The cost is 25s for the week, 12s (id for the week-end. For those who can come only in the evenings and the week-end the fees will be announced later. Whatever happens, Guiders are urged to try to keep this week, or w.eek-end, free from all other engagements. It will be abundantly worth while. Applications, accompanied by a deposit of ss, should reach the provincial secretary by Saturday, May 21. The training will be held unless notice is given to the contrary, in the old Batchelor Hospital, Forth street. Applicants are asked to state whether they can provide themselves with a camp bed. GENERAL The first company to broadcast was St. Andrew's last week. Ist Knox supplied the programme, and this week it will be South Dunedin Brownies. Further Thinking Day contributions include 2s Id from Owaka and 6d from two Post Rangers. STEPPING STONES TO HIKING For country companies there should be little difference in the spring and summer between an ordinary company meeting and what we now call a hike, except that one takes up more time than tne other and usually involves a meal. "Hike" is really a new name for the Saturday afternoon meeting of early days, when companies met from about 2.30 till 7 p.m. and practised all manner of Guide activities out of doors. Many and varied were the achievements of these half-day meetings; they ranged from tracking to bridge building, from firstaid and stretcher drill to cooking kippers in wet brown paper, and from stalking games to long-distance signalling. Thoroughness, combined with a feeling of leisure, seemed, to be a feature of these meetings.

There has been a tendency recently for hikes or half-day meetings to become the exception more than the rule, and possibly for this reason Guiders have come to look upon them as rather an undertaking instead of all part of the day's work and something to be taken in their stride. Has the special name got something to do with it, by leading us to believe that a "hike" is something extra and above the ordinary company meetings? But by whatever name we call these outings, their underlying purpose is still the same, to pursue Guiding in its natural element—the open air. For country companies this is an easy matter, but for the town dwellers who comprise the large majority of the Guide populace, it is more difficult, and therefore of more importance, as these Guides are , starved of most natural outdoor pursuits by the nature of their surroundings. A list of possible activities which can be carried out during the ordinary company meetings seems to divide itself under two headings—those connected with the preparation of equipment and those which develop physical fitness and an outdoor sense. Preparation of Equipment.—This can nearly all come under the "useful article" required for second class. Here is a list of suggestions:— Make a haversack.

Improvise a billy or frying pan or water bottle and make a cover or sling for it. Make bags for tea, sugar, flour, bread, etc., and collect or improvise receptacles for butter, salt, pepper, baking powder, etc. Hem and waterproof a piece of material for a mackintosh seat and devise a good and inconspicuous way of carrying it, or, alternatively, get leave to cut up an old mackintosh or the tube of a motor lorry tyre, or remove the neck off an old hot water bottle and adapt it for use as a seat. Make cups out of half coconut shells. Evolve a dry receptacle for matches and for punk. Make and stock a hussif or a first aid case. , , , „.. The Development of Physical fitness and an Outdoor Sense.—Open windows in the clubroom are a possibility for nearly every company, and this, combined with a genuine effort to have some part of every meeting out of doors, is a foundation on which to build all the rest of our outdoor ideas. We may not get on so fast with actual tests, and we will not get so much into our meetings as before, but we will be on the way to producing Guides who are at home with Nature and find their pleasures in the open air. In towns trails can be laid with coloured beans and such like inconspicuous things, or by means of an onion rubbed on buildings at nose level. Shop windows can be studied for, 10 minutes for the best foods, the most practical articles of clothing, and the most Useful items of general equipment for a hike—the results to be discussed in the clubroom. It could be arranged for a visitor to come to the clubroom and for a patrol to be asked to take her out to show and tell her about the nearest ancient monument or some other building of interest. Patrols can be given 10 minutes to go and notice all the different ways of telling the direction of the wind; or they can be given half an hour to make up a Nature alphabet of things they actually find. As a change this can sometimes be done in the dark in the country, and so can the collecting of samples of the right trees for firewood. Sometimes a well-planned and welljudged interpatrol competition helps to foster the outdoor sense of the Guides of a whole district or division. All Guide tests, from tenderfoot to first class, are devised for the open air, and it is when we take them out of their rightful surroundings that they begin to lose their meaning and became mere items to be learnt before we can get a badge.—Rosa Ward, in the Guider.