Girl Guides Ontario - Girl Guides Ontario - Emergency Preparedness Challenge - Guides

Emergency Preparedness Challenge - Guides

Completing this challenge could help Guides complete all or part of the following core program badges or interest badges:

• You and Others – Learn about Safety
• Safety Interest Badges – Fire Aid, Boat Safety, Fire Safety
• Personal Growth Interest Badge – Pet Lover
• Personal Growth Interest Badge - Postal
• Camping – Camp Out, Basic Camper, Experienced Camper (A)
• Science and Technology Interest Badge – Weather
• Girls Creating – Kitchen Creations
• Girls Creating – Performing Arts

Week #1 - Emergencies
• Natural emergencies
• Natural emergencies in the community

Week #2 - Planning Ahead
• Family emergency plan
• Emergency survival kit
• Pet emergency survival kit

Week #3 - Safety Skills
• Lifesaving skills
• Fire safety skills
• Water safety skills

Click here to purchase the Emergency Preparedness crest

Week #1 - Emergencies
Materials Needed
 

• Books about natural emergencies
• Tips for what to do in emergencies
• Paper and pens
• Desk and chairs (optional for newscast)

Introduction (10min)
Pose the question “What is an emergency?” Invite girls to offer their definitions. Encourage girls to share any experiences they may have had relating to emergencies. Talk about the different kinds of emergencies (natural vs. technological vs. human-caused) and which ones are most likely in your community.

Game (10min) – Emergency (like Ship to Shore)
This is a very active game. Assign each of the four walls a direction (north, south, east, west) and the middle of the room as home. Go through all of the actions with the girls until they are able to remember them. Have all the girls start in the middle (home). Call out one of the directions or an action (you can also introduce a few of them at a time and add more as the game goes on). The girls race to run to the appropriate wall/home or complete the action. Play a few practice rounds. When you are ready to play elimination, the last girl(s) to reach the wall/home, to complete the action or without a partner/group is/are out. You can call a few actions in succession before eliminating if you wish.

Tornado – lay down and cover your head
Lightning – squat down and grab your knees
Earthquake – duck down, cover your head and hold on to a partner
Flood – stand on your tip toes and reach up
Blizzard – find a partner and huddle together for warmth
Heat wave – fan yourself and pretend to drink water
Evacuate – get out of the middle
Shelter-in-place – two people form a roof with their hands and a third gets inside

Alternate Game - Is it an Emergency? Spinner Game

Drama (45min+) – Emergency Newscast
Divide the girls into groups of 3 or 4. Assign each group a natural hazard (e.g., flood, blizzard, heat wave, tornado, etc.). Provide the girls with information about their natural hazard (books or previous internet research), including tips on what to do in an emergency. Girls create a newscast as if their emergency had just occurred in the community. Depending on the number of girls in each group, they may want to consider having one or two news anchors, a field reporter and a person affected by the emergency. Encourage them to include safety tips in their broadcast.
Girls may require up to 30 minutes to prepare and practice. If possible offer desk, chairs and any other props you may have available to create the set!

REMEMBER to ask each girl to bring in an emergency survival kit food item for the next meeting when you will continue with this challenge. Food that can be eaten without being cooked!

Week #2 – Planning Ahead
Materials Needed
 

• Non-perishable food
• Bowls and spoons
• Spices
• Chocolate, etc.
• Paper
• Pencils
• Markers
• Emergency contact cards

Introduction (15min)
Review the emergencies from the previous week. Tell the girls that although emergencies can occur, there are things we can do to prepare ourselves. Two of the things a family can do are to prepare an emergency survival kit and to create a family emergency plan. These two items will be the focus of this meeting.
An emergency survival kit contains all of the items that your family needs to stay safe and comfortable for 72 hours. One of the key items in an emergency survival kit is non-perishable food. Discuss what non-perishable food is (food that can last for a long time and doesn’t need to be refrigerated) and what types of food would be good for your emergency survival kit. Focus on foods that can be eaten without cooking (ie. Canned pasta vs. dried pasta) and foods that provide nutrients.

Activity (30min) – Emergency Survival Kit Cook-Off
Split the girls into teams (3 or 4 works best). Have them discuss what types of foods are needed for different types of dishes and decide which foods they brought in can be used. You may wish to allow the girls to trade food with other groups. Provide some bonus items could enhance the girls’ dishes (e.g., salt, pepper, spices, etc.). You can distribute these as prizes for answering trivia questions, working well as a team or anything else you would like to reward.
After each team has created their dish, have them present their dish to the rest of the group. You can have judges or just reward all the girls with tastier emergency survival kit items (e.g., chocolate, dried fruit, etc.-check for allergies first!).

Craft (30min) - Pet Postcards
Just as we put together an emergency survival kit for our family, we also need to put one together for our pets. The items will differ depending on the type of pet. Brainstorm the items different pets might need. Have the girls choose a pet to create a postcard for. On one side of the postcard, create a checklist of survival kit items. On the other side, create a slogan to encourage people to make a pet emergency survival kit. Have them choose a side where they would properly address the card to a friend or family member and ask them to indicate the fields they would use. For example, first and last name of recipient, suite or apt. number, street address, city/town and postal code followed by country. They could mail the postcard and create awareness about planning for your pet in an emergency!

Discussion (15min) - Family Plan
You may wish to invite the girls’ parents to listen in on this part of the meeting to listen to the discussion. A successful family plan is built with the entire family participating.
Talk about the importance of having two meeting places for your family. One meeting place should be just outside your home, on the same side of the street (e.g., a neighbour’s house). This is good for emergencies such as a house fire. The second meeting place should be outside of your neighbourhood (e.g., a relative’s house who lives out-of-town). Everyone in the family needs to know these two meeting places.
Talk about the importance of being able to contact your family members in an emergency. This includes cell numbers, work numbers, school numbers, family contact numbers, etc. Provide the girls with contact cards to take home for their family emergency plan.
Encourage the girls and their parents to complete the Emergency Preparedness Action Plan. The Action Plan will help a family build a family emergency plan and identify things they can do to be better prepared for an emergency.

Week #3 – Safety Skills
Materials Needed
 

• Empty film canister or pill bottle
• Plastic lace (15 cm per person)
• Bead
• Safety pin
• Items for a first aid kit (e.g., band aids, alcohol swabs, plastic gloves, etc.)
• Stumper Stories
• Pens
• Paper
• Small bowl or bucket

Introduction (5min)
There are a number of additional safety skills that are important for each girl to have – fire safety, water safety and life saving. Talk about why these skills are important. This is a good area to link to a camping trip. Ask the girls if they have any previous experience in these areas.

Lifesaving Skills (30min) – Camp Hat First Aid Kit
Starting with the lid of your canister/bottle, pierce a hole in the centre with the scissors. Take a piece of plastic lace and string it through the hole. Ensure both ends are through the hole forming a loop on the top of the lid. Knot the ends of the string or use the bead as a stopper on the underside of the lid. Add a safety pin to the loop so you can fasten your first aid kit to your hat. Fill the bottle/canister with the first aid kit items and discuss the purpose of each. Remind the girls that in an emergency, the first thing to do is always call 9-1-1.

Fire Safety Skills (30min) – Stumper Stories
Divide the girls into small groups. Have the girls complete the Stumper Stories. Have each group present their result to the rest of the group. Discuss the answers as a group.

Water Safety Skills (30min) – Water Charades
Talk about the different water safety rules for pools, lakes, bathtubs, in boats, etc. As the rules are being discussed, have one Guider/girl document rules and write one rule per small strip of paper. Fold up the individual slips of paper and place them in a bucket or bowl. Divide the girls into two teams. One person picks a rule from the bucket/bowl and acts it out for her team (without speaking or using sounds). The team has one minute to correctly guess the water rule. If they can’t get it, the other team has one guess to steal it. The team with the most correct answers at the end of the game wins.