Tween Club Cancelled This Year

I'm disappointed to share with all that are interested, that we will not have Tween Club this year.   The number of registrants was very low so we decided to cancel this session.  Tween club was designed around the 'club' concept.  A group of girls is at the centre of all activities and programming for this group.  We felt that without a significant group, the concept of Tween Club would be diminished.

It's with regret that myself, Kayla (my daughter and inspiration for the group) and our new leader Caitlin Fowler, bid all past and potential Tween Club members farewell for this year.  We will have to evaluate whether we resurrect the program again next fall.

Take care for now,  Patti

Introducing Caitlin - Our Tween Club Leader

"My name is Caitlin Fowler and I am a swim instructor and aspiring headguard at Dovercourt. I am currently in 2nd year at the University of Ottawa studying biochemistry as well as competing on the Women’s Varsity Hockey Team as one of the goalies. I have always adored working with kids, whether it has been through the summer art camp my sister and I ran for several years, volunteering at Churchill (my former elementary school) or coaching inspired little goalies. I am an energetic, fun-loving kind of person who enjoys meeting people and making friends. I can’t wait to get to know everyone and to start spending what will surely be amazing time together!! "

Kayla will be returning this year to help out and of course I will be in and out to assist where needed.

Looking For Input

Our schedule is starting to fill in but we are looking for input from the girls. During our first meeting, being held Oct 9th, we will give the girls a chance to tell us what they would like to do this year. We will fill in the blanks with their ideas.

Last year the girls request dance so we had a Hip Hop class, they also wanted to do a Spa day so we made hand rubs and oatmeal scrubs, and there was an interest in cooking so we brought in Jen Brennen and she helped with a healthy cooking class.

We'll see what they come up with this year.

Getting Ready!

We are working on our 2012-2013 schedule and it will be posted soon. It's been a wild and wonderful summer and it's now time to pull our plans together for Tween Club. Caitlin, Kayla and I will be posting our plans in the next week.

Looking forward to meeting all the girls on October 9th at the McKellar Field house!

Our Charity for the Bizarre Bazaar

We have chosen The Girl Effect as our charity this year. Click on the link to visit their site our preview THIS video to get a quick overview.

The Friendship Garden

Tonight we planted our friendship garden. The girls all participate by bringing a plant, tools and adding their own elbow grease. I particularly like the sign and overall our lasagna garden looks marvellous. A special thanks to Doreen, Clara's Mom, for coming out to explain to us what a lasagna garden is and help us design something that we can all be proud of.

I do ask the Tweens and their families to take the time to pull a few weeds when they travel through McKellar park. Many hands make light work.

Thanks to all the parents for your participation in this project.

Date Changes

We had to change our April 17th meeting to April 24th so in order to spread things out we've adjusted all the remaining dates.

April 24 - Bizarre Bazar Planning

May 8 - Games and Treasure Hunt

May 22 - Friendship garden

June 2 - Bizarre Bazar at Dovercourt

Details for the Bizarre Bazar will come home with the girls after our next meeting.

Sorry for the confusion and changes.

Whoops!!! - Double Booked - No Meeting Tonight

Just received a call from Dovercourt. The Field house has been double booked and we will be moving our regular meeting to April 24th, next week. Apologies for the confusion.

We will be having our planning session for the Bizarre Bazar so have the girls dress for painting.

Until next week, Patti

Plans for the Spring

The spring brings it's own challenges. The girls want to get out and the nights are longer. The next three meetings will move around based on weather. The girls really want a treasure hunt and games day and we will have to move that to what ever day is the nicest. For that reason, this week we will be having Spa Evening.

The wonderful thing about being girls is that we can be strong but also soft. Spa Evening is all about enjoying being a girl. We will help each other do our nails and hair and we will even experiment with making our own scrubs and facials. We want the girls to know that it's very important to take time for ourselves, to even pamper ourselves and take care of one of our most important organs, our skin.

Starting Up in April

We will see the girls back again on April 3rd. Andrea and I are still pulling things together for April. I surveyed the girls during the February meeting and they seemed interested in a game day, art project and/or a beauty event. We will post the schedule as soon as we have things firmed up.

April Activities

We will be looking for ideas for our April meetings. Looking back at the suggestions the girls originally shared in October, we still have a few options to consider including:

- sock monkeys or maybe owls

- painting the walls of the field house

- game day (TV tag, Ninja tag, etc)

- puppet show

- spa night

- hygene

- gymnastics

- zip lining (I wish)

Looking back at the list, we have done art projects, dance classes, cooking, and our pj movie night is this week.

What would the parents like us to cover?

Movie Night

The girls will be wearing their jammies, bringing stuffies and enjoying popcorn and Chicken Run this year. In past years, the girls have requested that the films be longer so we are trying a full length video this year.

In years gone by we have shared Harvest Queens, a documentary written and directed by my co-founder Janis Hass. We have also watched Kick Like a Girl and the Dove Evolution video. Janis recently suggested Flawed by Andrea Dorfman which I plan to incorporate in April.

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.