Guides year in review

The girls especially enjoyed the First Aid training. In February, we had a Pamper Sleepover and did some baking. At Easter, we had an egg competition and were very impressed by the creative talents of our girls. We are continuing to work on the Be Well theme. We had a visit to the aqua run in Elgin; tie-dyed some t-shirts and pillowcases and had a water fight. Two of our girls went to Switzerland with the 1st Forres Guides and took part in many challenges including walking, white water rafting and meeting up with other Guides and Scouts at the International Evenings. 

The girls have spent this year getting used to the new programme. The community has been the main focus of their programme: making mini Christmas cakes for the over 60’s, entertaining the senior citizens on Burns Night, serving at the Bowling Club Summer Ball and helping with the Hopeman Gala. Just a few of the things they have taken part in.

This year has been a busy one again for us. 

We started off last August with our annual summer camp with Lhanbryde Guides and Rangers at Badaguish. In your Element provided raft building and canoeing activities for us down at Loch Morlich. Then we had a more relaxing day cycling to Glenmore Lodge and back through the forest.  The Rangers also helped out with marshalling at the Aviemore Open Water Sprint Triathlon at 7 o’clock on the Sunday morning. 

We decided to get right into the new programme and as part of our Express Yourself Skills Builder we used sharpies and surgical spirit to make tie dye drawstring bags to carry our new badge books in. We had a Body Shop party to raise the money for our badge books and more.

Outfit Moray did a couple of sessions for us in October with  half of us climbing at RAF Lossiemouth then a taster archery session at their base then swapping the next week. 2ndNew Elgin guides also had a fact finding treasure hunt around Lossiemouth.

For Remembrance Day we made felt poppies to wear at the parade. Roy, the school caretaker is a collector of military memorabilia and he brought some of his collection for us to see. It was fascinating. 

Although it was cold and a wee bit wet, we took a ghost walk around Elgin. The White Witch brought the stories to life and we learnt lots of new things about where we live.

The Rangers made their promises in December and had a takeaway to celebrate. 

We also all attended the pantomime at Eden Court in December.

In January, the District organised a Sunday Fun Day with all the Brownies Guides and Rainbows attending with help from the Rangers.

Thinking Day was another District get together and we used the theme of looking back and tried out some traditional games and made traditional toys.

Four of our girls were working towards their Baden Powell Award and they had a food tasting as part of one of their evening activities. The girls attended their Baden Powel Challenge weekend and had a lot of fun.

Getting wet seems to be a theme and although we tried to do some of the new UMAs at the Linkwood burn – repairing the bottles and the water filtering, some of us got a little wetter than intended.

The girls were presented with their Baden Powell Awards at our annual beach party at Hopeman in June. We are very proud of them and hope that they continue onto Rangers.

We had our second camp in May this year (since the Tartan Gig is when we usually go in August). This time we stayed closer to home, camping at Roseisle and Outfit Moray doing two days of activities for us. The first day we spent climbing at Cumingston and surfing at Lossiemouth with this being taken by Donald from New Wave Surf School. We were lucky to be able to use the showers at the Hopeman pavilion after the surfing. Our second activity was gorge walking up at Bridge of Brown. The first and second groups did it on the Saturday when the river was quite tame, but the rain came overnight, and the river was running faster the next day when the remaining girls took to the water. What a day of fun.

A group of the Rangers decided back in October that they would like to tackle their Bronze Duke of Edinburgh. Much of the time at Rangers has been spent preparing the girls for their expedition, but many of the activities fit into the new Unit Meeting Activities and Skill Builders, so everyone has been joining in.​

Finally, our leader Elaine was invited to the Garden Party at Holyrood Palace for her services to Guiding. 

As I sat looking back over what 3rdNew Elgin Guides have been up to over the past year, I was amazed at how busy we have been and what has been achieved.  Our unit continues to be well attended, with girls from a variety of local schools. We have been working on the new programme over the past 3 terms and have found some of the activities good fun. The Guides really enjoyed ‘testing out tactics’ in the Take Action pack and entertained us with a very lively campaign. Within our unit meeting time we have also particularly enjoyed a patrol pudding bake off, Burns Night with our very own Guide piper, a Heroes and Villains Hallowe’en night, a visit from Moray Rugby Club, various evenings organised by our Baden Powell Guides and a fantastic unit sports night.

We have been on several trips including den building and toasting marshmallows at Roseisle beach, the Girlguiding Moray panto and cinema trips, a visit to Elgin Police Station, a District trip to Pinz to celebrate Thinking Day and our all-time favourite this year - a sleepover at Innoflate, Aberdeen with Lhanbryde and Urquhart Guides.  This was really amazing and we recommend it to you all.  We have also had trips to PGL Dalguise last October and again this summer which was great fun.

We awarded our final four Guides with their Baden Powell Awards during a High School Musical themed night just before the end of term. This part of the old programme will be greatly missed by us as we see the Guides grow so much in their confidence completing the award.

We have supported our local community by once again clearing the leaves at The Oaks on a few occasions and we held a sponsored fitness event during which the Guides raised money for Abbie's Sparkle Foundation, SSPCA, Macmillan and CAMHS.  Representatives from each charity attended to accept these donations. We also collected food items and made prize hampers for our hall committee.

We look forward to exploring more of the new programme after the summer break and are very excited to be attending the Tartan Gig.

Many thanks to my unit leader team - couldn't do it without you wonderful people.

It’s been another busy year for Cullen Guides. The session started with County Camp and later in the term a Baden Powell presentation with a bouncy castle.  We visited Buckie Pottery and made cute highland cows from a ball of clay.

We had a trip to the panto, entertained with the Brownies at the Cullen Christmas lights switch on and our Christmas bowling and McDonald’s to end the year.  

At our meeting place we tried new crafts, badge work and international activities led by our BP girls. The New Year saw us phase in the new programme. Highlights so far have been mixology and baking using an incorrect recipe. Drama and baking are always popular with our Guides. In February, along with the Brownies, we were invited to entertain the Cullen Pensioners and discovered a wealth of talents within our unit. 

We have camped at Dalguise, experiencing lots of new outdoor activities, walked to Portknockie for chips and ended the year with an indoor/outdoor barbecue.

The Guides have been very busy enjoying the new programme and have been working on various Skills Builders and loving the new interest badges, their favourites have been: Vlogging, Campaigning, Personal Brand, Photography and of course Mixology and Confectionery.

We have also had lots of other fun activities including Chinese New Year crafts, Guides Showstopper Challenge decorating cakes, an annual visit to Buckie panto, a meal out at the Coach House, visit to Buckie Pottery, quizzes, indoor and outdoor camps, and Natalie had a fantastic trip to Switzerland with 1stForres Guides.  The girls also had a trip to Buckie Lifeboat Station to present a cheque for the money they had raised whilst working on their Campaigning badge.  All in all a fun-filled year. 

This year has been another busy one for 2ndForres Guides, we have looked at some of the new programme and as an intro we tried the Mixology badge during a 1920s themed evening which included learning the Charleston.  We made Rice Krispie pumpkins and did some face painting for Hallowe’en. We had a wartime Guiding themed indoor camp at Edinkillie at Christmas. We went to Edinburgh in February for Wander the World. Emma and Amie made their promises as Young Leaders outside the Scottish Parliament building. We had an evening kayaking at Blairs Loch and a Hunger Games themed day out at Roseisle. We had several cookouts and a fantastic trip to PGL Dalguise.

1st Kinloss have had another busy and enjoyable year. We have worked on badges and Go for It’s from both the old and new programmes including; Communicator and World Culture badges, Camp and Network Skills Builders. We had a lovely walk to Kinloss Abbey to learn a bit about its history. We had great fun at our Hallowe’en and Christmas parties and enjoyed using our creative skills during our craft evenings.  We had a lot of fun during our Burns Supper evening eating haggis, neeps and tatties, and trying our hand at reading some of Burn’s poetry. We had a book-themed evening where we all came to Guides dressed as their favourite book character. We held a World Thinking Day sleepover at Roseisle Hall where we worked for and gained our World Thinking Day badge, what fun we had making life-size time machines. We worked towards our Network and Camp stage 4 Skills Builders during the summer term. We particularly enjoyed the campfire playlist activity, learning new campfire songs. We finished for the summer with a cook out at Roseisle Forest where the girls cooked sausage pasta whilst completing their campfire feast activity.