GirlGuidesCANblog Big Deal Seal

Update: This post was voted a 2012/2013 GirlGuidesCANblog Big Deal Seal winner in the Camping/Outdoors & Global Guiding category! Bravo blogger Elizabeth!

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85th Montreal Guides

Our district went to a winter camp a couple of weekends ago and quite a few Guides from my unit were in attendance. As leaders, we worried a bit about the extremely cold weather we had been having recently. And so, the meeting before we went we decide to run an activity I remembered doing as a girl. I figured that if it had stuck with me for that long, maybe it would stick with the girls as well.

We split our unit into three groups and gave each one three pieces of clothing. One group got socks, another tops and the last, pants. We set-up the activity so that the clothes they were given were made from different materials including cotton, fleece, wool and nylon. The girls got to dip each garment in water and see how it fared.

They came to many interesting conclusions such as the fact that fuzzy socks are nice and warm when dry, but get wet faster and stay wet longer than their typically unrecommended cotton counterparts and that sweat pants may seem warm, but they are usually made of cotton and stay wet for a long time. They were also able to convince themselves through demonstration that fleece, wool and other synthetic materials would be the best ones to bring to camp.

My favourite comment of the evening came as the last team – the pants one – shared their findings with the unit: “We decided that these nylon pants would be best for the summer and that the fleece ones would be nice and warm for the winter,” they told us. “But these jeans, they’d be good for nothing!” That’s when we knew the message had gotten through!

I guess Confucius was right:

“Tell me and I’ll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I’ll understand.”

Guest blogger Elizabeth

By Guider Elizabeth, 85th Montreal Guides.

Elizabeth has been a Guider for five years, both in Guelph, Ontario and Montreal, Quebec. Meeting night is her favourite time of the week because she never laughs as hard as with the girls.

Read some of Elizabeth’s previous posts on GirlGuidesCANBlog: Mother-Daughter Guiding, and Camp Food: Not Just for Camp.

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