March 17, 2023 - Excursion: Tomahawk Ranch - World of Girls + Wonders of Water - Part 1
World of Girls 1-4 + Wonders of Water 3,4 + Cabin Camper 1-5 + Hiker 5 + Outdoor Skills 1,8,10
Meeting Activities:
World of Girls - Started leadership journey where girls travel around the world through stories, learning about different countries and cultures while also exploring different modes of storytelling.
Wonders of Water - Built on Denver aquarium excursion where girls learned to Love Water and to start to take action to Save Water.
Cabin Camper - Weekend excursion to Tomahawk Ranch
Outdoor Skills + Hiker - Went on a hike with a survivalist to learn orienteering, trail marking, knot tying, and emergency shelter building.
Comments:
We arrived at Tomahawk Ranch on Friday evening, departed midday on Sunday, and jammed a lot of journey curriculum in between. I was impressed by the girls’ sense of adventure throughout. They got along well and supported each other when homesick or tired. And they gamely tried everything thrown at them, activities and food. It was essentially eight of our typical 1.5-hour troop meetings in a 42-hour period—with some sleep.
Activities:
Friday, March 17
We unpacked at Tomahawk Ranch around 5:00 pm and set up the cabin. Girls had trouble settling into rooms at first, everyone was so excited and kept reshuffling who was sleeping where.
Snack Story - Ireland
Given our Tomahawk staff-prepared dinner wasn’t until 7:00 pm, we kicked off our World of Girls Journey by traveling to Ireland for St. Patrick’s Day with a snack of Irish Soda Bread with Irish butter and black tea (decaf) with milk.
Girls also made rainbow-themed SWAPS and really got into assembling a leprechaun trap.
Dinner at Mess Hall
We dined on tacos and freshly made churros at the mess hall with Tomahawk staff. Girls respectfully followed all the directions to keep the food line safe from germs and performed the clean-up duties well, scraping food into bins, washing down tables, sweeping floors, and stacking chairs.
WoG Map
After dinner, we did a short introduction to the concept of the World of Girls Journey using a large map that Chris and Mona put together. We put pins in Ireland and Mexico for our snack and dinner connections. Girls and adult volunteers then shouted out all their family heritage ties to countries around the world like Japan, Germany, Romania, Afghanistan, Sweden, Canada, Italy, France, Taiwan, Vietnam, England, and Denmark. We also put pins in China and Spain for the languages and cultures girls are studying at DLS.
Girls were wound up, so it took a while to settle everyone for bed. The altitude didn’t help; Tomahawk is at 9,000 feet. The goal was for 9:00 pm. Maybe 10:00 or 10:30 pm?
Saturday, March 18
Breakfast Story - Forms of Water
We asked girls to keep quiet if up early, but some were eager to see if they had trapped a leprechaun. The trap was tipped over and some of the gold chocolate kisses were eaten so they concluded that leprechauns had been there, but were too quick for the trap. ;-)
Our breakfast food story was related to the Wonders of Water curriculum. We set up an oatmeal bar with add-ins representing different states of water: dried oats, fruits, and nuts; frozen berries; boiling water.
We put up the Wonders of Water poster we started at the aquarium and started adding notes about the states of water and ideas for how to save water, like using the three-bucket system for washing dishes.
WoG and WoW
For the morning’s curriculum session, we launched into the World of Girls Journey books, reading Sahali’s story about girls who can travel the world through the magic of books. Brownie friends ride a magic bookmobile to Jordan and discover new things like saying hello in Arabic (MAR-ha-ba), picking and eating fresh figs. They also realize where they are more similar than different, like sharing games like table tennis/ping pong and drinking tea. We put a pin in Jordan on our map.
We then talked about how within stories we can listen for problems or “clues” and then think about ways we can help.
Next, we went on a journey to Ethiopia to hear the story of a 12-year-old girl who collects water for her family each day.
Girls could readily list problems they heard in this story such as the lack of a clean water source, and the time and effort it took to get water, which didn’t leave much time for the girl to play or study.
We watched the GSUSA video about a little girl who dreams about not having access to water and has to fetch water from a stream, just like the girl in Ethiopia. Brownie Elf explains how important it is to LOVE, SAVE, and SHARE the love of water, especially for those who may take our easy access to clean water for granted.
Survival Hike
We took a break from “learning” to do a hike with outdoor survivalist Mr. Roy. Girls learned the basics of orienteering to the sun (N-S-E-W), how to leave as little trace as possible when off-trail, how to find medicinal plants like pine needles (full of vitamin C) and artemisia pasture sage (nature’s hand sanitizer), how to use a found deer antler as a tool, how to read tracks and scat of animals, and how to tell the time by lining up their hands to the horizon and counting up to the sun.
Girls were challenged to learn a double hitch knot and to build an emergency shelter, which is an Outdoor Skills patch requirement. Some embraced the challenge. Others melted down. But in the end, all girls were able to tie the tricky knot and test its use in holding a tarp to trees.
Lunch Story - Japan
Our lunch food story took us to Japan and was also tied to the water curriculum. Girls made bento boxes with sandwiches and watery fruit cut up into fun shapes. They loved using the cutters and making mini fruit kebabs on toothpicks. They learned that fruit is mostly water: watermelon and strawberries 92%, cantaloupe 90%, pineapple and oranges 87%, apples 84%, grapes 81%, and bananas 74%.
See more photos HERE.
Our weekend adventure continues in the next post, Part 2…
Thanks!
Meredith (Mila’s Mom)