Skating Update

We planned for this event to be earlier this year so we wouldn't run into weather problems. That didn't quite work out. We are going to cancel our skating plans and focus on emotions this week. We will be doing some drama around emotions including some work with music and a little Yoga too.

No skates required tonight.

January 10th - We Start Up Again

Reminder to all that we have moved the schedule ahead one week this month because of the school holidays, vacation, etc.

We will see the girls on January 10th.

Hope everyone had a great holiday season!

It's Time for Some Healthy Snacks

Jen Brennen will lead us through a series of recipes and the preparation of a variety of healthy snacks. I can't let the secret out of the bag yet. We'll wait for the girls to share.

All About Me Boxes

The girls have been asked to bring pictures, magazines, photos and anything else that represents their interests and passions.

Come Prepared to Play Outside

We're playing games in the park tonight, as requested by our Tweens, and doing a few Halloween crafts, also requested by the gals.

Getting To Know Each Other

We had a great evening of games and getting to know each other this past week. We played name games, move your butt (just for the fun of it), made posters about ourselves, and the girls made some recommendations for future activities. It looks like we had a few keys activities already planned that the girls wanted on the schedule including cooking, a party, games in the park and dance.

Our older group is smaller than usual this year so we are combining the groups and moving meetings to the first and third Tuesday of Oct, Nov, Jan, Feb, April and May. The schedule is outlined on the right of this site.

It looks like we have a great group. They were enthusiastic, involved and having fun last week.

Andrea, Kayla and I are looking forward to the coming year of Tween Club activities.

Welcome to Andrea!

This year's tween club instructor is Andrea Dark, both an headgaurd and swim instructor at Dovercourt. She is a third year political science and religion student at Carleton University. Andrea has always been involved in her community, whether it has been through being class president at her highschool, to helping organize her local relay for life, completing an internship on parliament hill or facilitating English Conversation Groups at Carleton. Andrea loves being active, meeting new people and having a positive influence on others! She looks forward to meeting all of you and sharing incredible memories with you over the next few months!

Getting Ready for This Year

It's been a busy summer and we are finally getting Tween Club ready for the upcoming year. More news on our leaders and our activities coming shortly. If the girls have any ideas or thoughts on what they would like to do this year, please leave them in the comments section of this blog post.

The Tween Bake Sale

The weather was dull and grey and I have to say it was cold sitting out there for 3 hours. A hot cup of tea and regular breaks inside helped to keep us warm.

Thanks to all your baked goods and a few boxes of books from our house, we were able to raise $330 (which included a $100 donation from one family) for Harmony House.

It's unfortunate the weather wasn't on our side. I think next year we need to try the first weekend in June. We've never been very lucky with the last weekend in May. Time to switch things up next year.

Thanks again for your support and assistance. We will be in touch soon.

Bizarre Bazaar - CANCELLED - But Bake Sale On!

We have canceled the Bizarre Bazaar due to weather. We can't set up the activities in the rain which changes the plan all together. We are scaling back the event to just a bake sale and me and my daughters can take care of manning the table.

If you have done your baking, please bring it by and we will gladly sell it to the Dovercourt swim lesson gang. The proceeds of the Bake Sale will got to Harmony House, our charity of choice this year. Feel free to drive up and we will grab your sweet treats from the window of you car. We will be set up under the awning on the parking lot side.

We will be in touch with a message for the girls next week and more news on next years program. I'm so sorry that the Bizarre Bazaar did not come together this year.

February Fun

We started off the month with separate sessions on emotions and a look into the mirror. Our mirrors allowed us to look at our natural beauty.

Just this week we enjoyed a beautiful evening of skating at the McKellar Park rink. We played tag and follow the leader and enjoyed a night together on the ice.

Jen Charbonneau Joins us Jan 25th

We will have a guest speaker, Jen Charbonneau at the end of the month. Jen joined us a few years ago and we thought it was time to have her back for an encore. Jen will lead a session that will focus on the tough emotion of stress. At our first session the girls talked about the stress of school, dealing with yelling parents, getting out the door in the morning, and other day to day stresses they have experienced.

Jen will help them identify the emotion of stress, provide some words to better communicate it, look at coping mechanisms and more. She will do a craft with the girls, a relaxation visualization (she will have CD's to purchase if your girls are interested) and she even has a small gift for them.

Looking forward to the session at the end of January.

Happy, Confused, Excited and Sad

These are just a few of the emotions we felt during our individual sessions this month. The younger girls looked at different emotions and described when they felt them, how their bodies reacted during these emotions and who they confide in to deal with emotions. We played games, drew strength from each other and our individualism and the rocks that Anne gave us will help remind us of the strength we draw from both.

The older girls put their emotions into motion by putting together artistic representations of their emotions. One group used a musical approach to tell the story of feeling an array of emotions, another put on a play with a narrator and background sounds and the last wrote a song and included guitar playing from one of the girls. At the end of the session, the girls shared their emotions. Most were happy and content and a few were excited and tired.

We are but a spectrum of emotions. We are emotional beings after all.

Tween's Are Back at McKellar Park

Our first meeting was held in the McKellar Park Field House tonight. The youngers arrived looking eager but slightly apprehensive. Anne Walzak and myself lead the group tonight because we are having a bit of a problem finding a new instructor. We should have the problem resolved by the end of the month.

We played name games, picked figurines to play in the sand with and designed poster that were all about us. We then proudly put them up in the new field house and claimed our territory as the Tween Club.

On October 26th the youngers will join the olders to meet and greet, mix and mingle. It was a great start to this year. The girls asked us to add some music and singing to the plans for this year. I can see some karaoke in our future.

A New Year For Tween Club

Ladies of All Ages!

We're getting ready to start Tween Club next month. We hear from our partners at Dovercourt that our younger group is full at 12 girls and the older group has a space or two left. So, we have a gang, now it's time for us to get the ball rolling. Our tentative schedule is posted and will be reviewed by us this week.

We will be confirming locations (we're planning on the field house at McKellar Park) and the instructor (looks like we will be introducing a new instructor to the gang) and I have a new partner in programming. Lots of change this year!

Updates will be coming next week.

You paddle like a girl. Good for you!

Here in Ottawa we are blessed with a downtown whitewater course and many natural rivers close-by that are great for whitewater paddling.

We are also lucky enough to have a summer camp so that urban kids can learn how to kayak in the city.

Leanne (pictured above) is one of our Tween Club members, who has attended the Ottawa River Runners Summer Camp.

According to her dad Roger: "The children develop technique, fitness, confidence, and self-discipline and have fun too! Of course this is true for many sports but I think there is a special element of confidence-building as children conquer their initial fears of going in rapids. The specific competitive sport that our club is involved in is called "Whitewater Slalom Canoeing and Kayaking" and it is an Olympic sport."

Sounds awesome.

Spoke By Spoke

Dominique Laroque is offering a new biking program called Spoke to Spoke at Creative Wheel Centre in Vals-des-mont. Dom joined us this year for a bike orientation and lesson this year and hosted a Bike Rodeo a few years ago.

We love what Dom and Creative Wheel stand for..."The Creative Wheel Centre is founded on the belief that connecting with nature through physical, contemplative and artistic pursuits is the most potent medicine available to us all." As you can tell, her centre is about a lot more than just biking.

This year Dom is launching Spoke by Spoke. Please forward this info to girls that might be interested.

Bizarre Bazaar raise $430 for Project Tembo

The 4th annual Bizarre Bazaar: What an incredible success!

Tween Club raised $330 through a variety of activities including: a fantastic bake sale, garage sale, bouncy castle, apple bobbing, bean toss and a how-many-jelly-beans-in-the-jar guessing contest!

One of our Tween Clubbers won jelly-bean guessing contest. Sadie guessed 783 and there were 782 beans in the jar. Enjoy those jelly beans, Sadie!

We also received a generous donation of $100 from one of our Tween Club parents, Bev Cleary, which pushed our total raised to $430.

Thanks to everyone for all their hard work on Saturday!

Bizarre Bazaar - May 29th

Our Annual Bizarre Bazaar is schedule for this coming Saturday from 9-12PM at Dovercourt. The girls will be hosting a garage sale, bake sale and games for the kids. All proceeds for the event will be going to a charity of the girls choice.

An Evening With Dominique

Come and join Dominique Larocque, founding director of Creative Wheel and LaRoccaXC Mountain Bike School for an educative evening about the health benefits of cycling. Dominique will tailor a program for participants and will cover the ABC to guarantee a fun and safe season on our bikes. Dominique will incorporate inspiration, art and some physical challenges into her session. We will not be leaving the property on our bikes and bikes can be shared in pairs.

To know more about Dominique, visit her vision at www.creativewheel.ca.

Dominique joined us two years ago for a Bike Rodeo. This session will not be as physical for the girls. We are limited by the park. I'm thrilled to have Dom back to spend time with the girls. She's an amazing influence for girls of all ages.

Meet Brittney - our new leader!

Tween Club welcomes Brittney Black as our new leader!

Brittney loves working with children and youth, singing along to Carrie Underwood and the colour pink!

We're thrilled to have such an enthusiastic and energetic leader for our girls.

Brittney is anxiously waiting for the arrival of a new niece or nephew, so she may or may not be at our annual fundraiser, the Bizarre Bazaar on Saturday, May 29th (rain date: Sunday, May 30th).

Welcome Brittney!

Bollywood Dancig

Erica McCulloch joined us to help with a Bollywood dancing lesson. She started by giving us some of the background of Bollywood then she let the girls try on saris and scarves which the girls loved.

We learned a variety of movements with our hands including lotus and deer. We then learned a few moves and finally Erica challenged us to put together our own routines. Then it was showtime.

All About Bullying

Shauna joined us earlier this month to say hello to the girls and also to cover the topic of bullying for us. She did an amazing job. Shauna has a magical way with the girls and many of past members of Tween club were thrilled to see her.

The activity focused on a paper cut out girl. In each session, she was named and put up on the wall. Before we knew it, Shauna was targetting our cut out friend. She was leading the girls into a circle of bullying behaviour before they even realized it. The girls even physically lashed out at the cut out and in some cases projected bullying that had happened to them or they had seen in the past.

Shauna then turn the tables and showed the girls how easy it was to follow along. Join the gang and ignite bullying behaviour. Although it was good for the girls to get some of the angst out, they also realized how quickly a group can take on the wrong personality.

When the girls realized what had happened the discussions began. How do we stop and stand up for other? How do you diffuse a bully? How does it feel to do the right thing? They then as a group repaired the cut out. At one point, I even saw one of the younger girls holding the cut out 'Allison's' hand.

Cool News: Leading Women, Building Community award for Patti and Janis

We invite all of our Tween Clubbers, past and present, to join us at an event hosted by our local MPP Yasir Naqvi.

Patti and I are honoured to receive a Leading Women, Building Communities Award, presented by Yasir Naqvi, on April 10th.

All Tween Clubbers your family are welcome to attend. Here are the details:

When: April 10, 2010

Where: Carleton Heights Community Centre, 1665 Apeldoorn Avenue

Time: 2 pm to 4 pm

We'd love to see you there!

Real girl power: Saluting Canada's Olympic and ParaOlympic athletes!

>Congratulations to the Canadian women on both the Olympic and Paralympic teams for their outstanding performances!

From hockey, curling, speed-skating, bobsleigh and snowboarding, to name just a few, you wowed us all.

You inspired us, delighted us and entertained us. We couldn't ask for better role models.

Thanks for making us proud.