Lynette mixing the pancake batter

Pancakes!!

Looks good? :)

We started off with preparing the rice for the Nasi Lemak as this would take a longer time to cook, then began to work on the other dishes simultaneously by splitting up our manpower effectively.

Labels: Outdoor Cooking

Hello!

On 15 April 2015, we had a sports telematch! :) This was also the first time we are wearing our new DHS YAs tee to an activity as we had just collected it the week before. After a rather long break from sporty activities, we finally got the chance to move around and have fun. It was a really sunny day but nothing could stop us from playing to the best of our ability :)

We were split into 2 teams for the entire telematch, and played 2 games and 2 sports in total. This telematch also involved slight elements of physical training in an innovative and enjoyable manner :)

For the first game, each team forms a large circle while the players are in the leg raise position. On go, the first person from each circle gets up and goes to the middle of the circle to skip 20 times with a skipping rope. Then she goes around the circle, jumping over the other team members. After one round, she will lie back down to do leg raise and the second person will do the same. They keep playing until all the players have completed the task. The first team to complete the cycle will run to the opposite end of the parade square, where there will be 2 hula hoops (1 for each team). The second team to complete will have to do lunges across instead. At the opposite end of the parade square, each team join hands to form a circle. A hula hoop will be looped over one player's arm. Without letting go of the other player's hands, she must step into and through the hoop so it rests on her other arm. Then she can slide it onto the next player's arm and she must repeat the same manoeuvre. Whichever team can pass the hoop all the way around the circle first, without letting go of each other’s' hands, is the ultimate winner.

Cheryl skipping as fast as she can!

Yinci from the other team too!

Team 1 trying hard to beat the other team! They were the winners of the first game :) For the second game, each team forms a circle and the players will be in girls’ style pumping position. One person starts by picking a slip of paper (there are 6 slips of papers in total, numbered 1 to 6 respectively), followed by each person in turn. When someone picks a six she will have to do 10 jumping jacks before hopping to the opposite end of the parade square. There, she will have to put on 3 ponchos then start eating a bar of chocolate with utensils (cutting one square at a time). While they are doing this the rest continue picking numbers and if someone else picks a six, she will also have to do 10 jumping jacks before hopping to the opposite end of the parade square to put on the 3 ponchos and eat the chocolate. Once the 2nd person starts doing jumping jacks, the person eating the chocolate has to stop and remove all her ponchos, then run back to join the circle again. If the chocolate runs out before the game ends, they will continue the game with an orange instead. The team which finishes the entire bar of chocolate and the entire orange first wins.

Crystal "enjoying" her chocolates...

Ruiqi jumping too fast for the camera!!

Happy Natalie enjoying the game :D

Ruiqi ate a large portion of the chocolates for her team!! GOOD JOB

What happens when you have to handle 3 ponchos at a time

Wenting eating as fast as possible :D

Football at the school's parade square :)

It was a beautiful day and this telematch indeed allowed us to have fun and bonded us more. These are the shared memories that we will always remember <3

Hello!!

On 8 April 2015, we had an activity to complete 2 of the components of the 5-Point Programme badge - Multi-cultural and Advocacy!

The I/Cs (Crystal, Jaynell and Shihui) first started the activity with a mini skit, depicting bad dining etiquette. We then taught the other YAs basic social etiquette in all aspects in our daily lives, including dining (especially at formal dinners), conversing and personal appearance. We also went through specific skills such as how to shake someone's hand properly, and tips on how to behave properly in the modern world, such as the importance of punctuality and the meaning of RSVP.

We then moved on to the topic of race, where we first discussed the difference between race and ethnicity then gave a mini lecture on multiracialism in Singapore. It is interesting to find out more about what the Singapore government is doing in order to promote racial harmony, as well as to learn more about the current trends in Singapore with regard to this topic. For example, the number of inter-ethnic marriages in Singapore has been on the rise.

In order to facilitate more interaction among the YAs and to create a platform for everyone to share their thoughts, we then had a debate and discussion session. The YAs were split into 2 teams - 1 for and 1 against the respective proposition. The first debate topic was "Is multiracialism still relevant in Singapore today?" and the second was "Do SAP schools go against the notion of having a multicultural society?". These topics were chosen as they were highly relevant to ourselves, being Singaporean citizens and students at a SAP school. Often, we only look at the surface of many issues and do not think deeper into them, such as the significant implications of the issues. This served effectively as a platform for us to listen to alternative viewpoints and broaden our knowledge on the topic.

YAs having an intense debate!

Lastly, we ended the activity with some games! One of the games we played was to address the problem of the mispronunciation of certain words. This is crucial in improving one's public speaking skills, thus we hope to make use of this opportunity to address this problem. YAs were split into 2 groups and formed a line opposite each other. The I/C will show the first person in the line a commonly mispronounced word. If the person pronounces the word correctly, the opposing group would have to do 10 jumping jacks. If the person got the pronunciation of the word wrong and the opposing group got it right, the first team will have to do 10 jumping jacks. If neither team got it correct, they will have to do 5 jumping jacks together. Examples of commonly mispronounced words include "baguette" (pronounced as "bah-get"), "almond" (the "l" is silent), and "Wednesday" (pronounced as "Wens-day").

This activity was indeed an enriching one and we learnt a lot from the various activities :)

The first activity we had in Term 2 after the March Common Test was pioneering!! This session was initially supposed to be a preparation for the Pioneering@DHS activity, but unfortunately the activity was cancelled due to low response from the external YAs.

This time, we built a Kim's Gym and a Swingboat. It was the first official pioneering activity for the new Y5 YAs, and a good chance for all of us to revise our lashes as well! We faced some problems when we did not measure the distances of our clove hitches properly, but managed to work around the problem. This also taught us to be more careful when we do pioneering again in the future, while at the same time remembering to look at the bigger picture and not be too fixated on the minor details.

YAs working on the swingboat!

Kim's Gym + Swingboat in the background

Completed Kim's Gym! (lacking the tyre) There is a bridge leading from the 1st quadpod to the 2nd, then you can swing yourself across the 2nd quadpod to finally cross this entire "obstacle course" (a mini one).

A shot of the Kim's Gym from a different perspective :)

Happy Rui Qi and Lynette having fun while pioneering!

Ruo Rou and Yan Shan too! After we completed the structures, we took photos with the structures and had fun playing around before we finally cleared up the area :) This pioneering was a fun session and hopefully we can try out more interesting structures in the future!

Y5s + Swingboat

Crystal and Yin Ci standing on the swing and having fun!

Y5s + Kim's Gym

Labels: Pioneering

Hello all! Term 1 of 2015 has passed in the blink of an eye, and these are some of the activities which we did :)

28 January 2015 - Introduction to YAs
This year, we have 9 new YAs joining the DHS Chapter (and all of them are taking YAs as their first CCA!!). The seniors were excited to invite the new YAs to the chapter, as we would finally be carrying out activities with new faces :) Since we already knew one another, we didn't have any sort of icebreaker games which one normally plays during their first activity. However, we still sat down and played simple games such as Human Battleship. Though the games were simple and nothing very special, all of us enjoyed them especially since we were playing them with great company :) Afterwards, we ended the session with a game of frisbee to exercise our sporty side!

Yeokmin and Crystal competing intensely to decide the final winner of the game

24 February 2015 - Thinking Day Contingent @ DHS
Hey hey hey, it's Thinking Day! Every year we celebrate Thinking Day on 22 February, but this year it fell on a Sunday and the next day was the Chinese New Year Celebrations. We arrived in school bright and early to form our contingent and as always, wore our uniforms for the entire day. It was a significant moment both for the Y5 YAs and Y6 YAs, as it was the first time the Y5 YAs were celebrating Thinking Day in their new uniforms, and the last Thinking Day contingent the Y6 YAs will ever form in school. The past 6 years of guiding memories will always stay with us no matter where we go :)

DHS Chapter 2015 - Full attendance!! :)

Happy Y6 YAs on a sunny and wonderful morning ^_^

First photo of the Y6 YAs and Ventures!

25 February 2015 - Thinking Day Celebration
We first had a round of roleplay to understand the origin of Thinking Day better. We were split into 4 grounds and were each given a storyline to act out, and incorporate elements of humour into our acting to create a more engaging mini skit.

Here is an example of the storyline:
The Girl Guides, Girl Scouts and Scouts that we know of today stemmed from this Scouting and Guiding Movement aimed to empower all boys and girls while not forgetting to have fun in the 
midst of achieving our ambitions. And every 22 February, the birthdates of both Lord Baden-Powell 
and Olave Baden-Powell, we commemorate the day of our leaders who have led the world to where 
it is today.

Next, the activity I/Cs (Crystal and Yeokmin) shared with us more about the various themes for Thinking Day in the previous few years, as well as for this year. We learnt more about the significance of each theme, and how we can play our own part and contribute to the theme this year! It was a meaningful session for all of us, especially since we tend to forget that we are really part of something bigger (a worldwide guiding movement!) when we are so caught up with our individual commitments. We were then split into 2 teams and we played a game - each team was to stand in a line and the first person will be given a word related to any one of the Thinking Day themes which we learnt of (for example, Child Mortality) and had to draw out the message. Each subsequent person in line has 5 seconds to look at the previous person's drawing and another 10 seconds to draw out what she remembered from the drawing, before passing on the drawing to the next person. It was a really fun activity and was very amusing to watch how the drawings evolved to something which the last person in line could never guess.

The last activity of the session was a very interesting one. We were given some time to each draw our own self-portrait. We could draw anything which we thought will represent ourselves best. The I/Cs then got us to reveal our drawings and share them with one another, where we could learn more about everyone’s perception of themselves. The activity really revealed our perceptions of our own strengths and weaknesses and it taught us that you are good enough for yourself and you don’t have to constantly seek skin-deep beauty. The I/Cs then shared with us about the Free Being Me project, a collaboration project between WAGGGS and Dove to empower girls through improving body confidence and self esteem. This is an ongoing project which is rather relevant to Thinking Day in terms of Girl Power and we also learnt that self-confidence is the first step to achieving such ambitions.


In between these main chapter activities, we had other activities like Leadership Training for the DHS Guides and a few meetings to prepare for the upcoming Patrol Leader Training Camp for the Y3 Scouts and Guides. Then we ended the Term 1 with the March school holiday, which was only 1 week long and meant for us to study. Regardless, Term 1 was exciting and we look forward to the busier but hopefully better times ahead in Term 2 :)

Labels: Thinking Day, Updates