Relaxing Yoga

We had a wonderful guest Yoga instructor, Tamera Dion, come and join the younger girls on Tuesday, January 8th in the Field House. Many of our Tweens came prepared, dressed in Yoga gear and carrying comfy, colourful Yoga mats.

To start out our session, we burned off some energy by playing games with a huge, bouncy ball, and then told stories of nice things we did for others over the holidays. It was great to hear the girls talking about babysitting cousins and younger friends, helping with Christmas dinner, making gifts for friends and family members, shovelling sidewalks and generally being the wonderful young ladies we get to spend time with each week.

By the time we'd heard a multitude of exciting stories, our guest arrived and set us up. Many of the Tweens had done Yoga before, but we did have some newbies.

Janis and Shauna happily watched the girls stretch, move and pose. There were a lot of funny facial expressions as each girl tried her best!

At the end of our session, we had a great time to relax, and even learned a small meditation in which we watched the glow of a candle flame until our eyes began to water.

It was wonderful to end the session calm, relaxed and refreshed. Maybe we'll meditate more in the future! That would save our parents from the bouncy girls they usually meet at the end of Tween Club.

I look forward to seeing all the Tweens at the end of the month!

Shauna

A Great Magazine for the Older Girls

Girls Can Do Anything - Canada's Empowerment Magazine for Teens. I have picked it up twice at Chapters and have been very impressed with its content, so has Kayla. The magazine is written for 11-17 year olds. It's touches on tough issues (bullying & dealing with death), body and boy issues, managing time and mess, and profiles girls that are doing great things, and lots more. You can find them at http://www.gcdamagazine.com/. I just signed Kayla up for a subscription, $24 for 6 issues which cover 12 months.

Enjoy the holidays, Patti

November - Ugly = Beautiful

Our November meetings were spent designing and producing our very own 'ugly' dolls. Although we did borrow the name of the dolls from a well known brand of toys (http://www.uglydolls.com/), our designs were truly original and uglier by far.

The girls designed their quirky dolls on paper to make patterns, cut them out and transferred them to felt, added buttons, hair, pockets and knick-knacks, then worked with their sewers to bring their creations together. At the end of the production process, quite a few of the girls brought special rocks or buttons or keep sakes to put inside their dolls to be the heart. Many of these objects were kissed by all the girls and finally stuffed inside their creations.

Our objective was to reset the expectations of perfection. Perfection is far too overrated. Anyone and everything can be viewed as beautiful in it's own way. These dolls provided the girls with a new perspective on what is 'ugly' or 'beautiful' and they also walked way with a wonderful sense of accomplishment.

We hope the girls have shared their dolls with you. The girls were also given diaries to start writing in. Their first assignment was to outline 5 things they love about themselves. Could be there feet for allowing them to run fast or the colour of their eyes which is just like their Grandmother's. We want them to start looking at the beauty they have inside and out.

Patti

Our Start In October

We start Tween club in October because September is crazy busy for all of us. By early October children and parents alike are back into a routine and ready that's when we invite our girls to join us at Tween Club.

The individual meetings in October were all about meeting each other and getting to know our leader Shauna Pollock, plus parent leader Patti and Janis, and of course an opportunity for the girls to start to mix and mingle. Although many of them knew each other from school, the neighborhood and last year's Tween Club, there were many new faces and names to get to know.

The mixing took it's natural shape of a girl frenzy at first but in time Shauna settled both groups into a series of games that allowed the girls to get to know each other a little better.

These two meetings were started in a circle format where the girls could talk about why they were in the club and what they were expecting from Tween Club this year. There are always many giggles and laughs throughout their excited conversations. What we have observed above all, is that the girls want to share (talk). The games allowed them to share their names and their personalities with the others.

During the second half of the meeting Shauna shared her experiences of being a young girl (Shauna is only 25 yrs old and a teacher in a middle school during the day).