Oh the Places You'll Go Advancement Ceremony!

A tradition in our district is to have a district wide advancement ceremony. Since we were all out at camp anyways we thought it would be best to have advancement there. Heather (my sister) and I took on the task of planning and running advancement for over 130 people. I love the book "Oh the Places You'll Go" by Dr. Seuss so we used this, and transportation as a theme for Where in the World is Gofer Guiding Camp. 

As a thank you, we made little hot air balloons filled with candies for the leaders at camp. I think they are super cute and they were inexpensive and easy to make. 

We decided that the best way to do advancement would be to have each branch of girls be a city that advancing girls would move to; so Sparks would move from Sparks City to Brownieville and Rangers would move from Ranger Park to Guideropolis. Heather put a lot of work into the signs so I wanted to show them off. :) 

All of the units sat in their respective city and had to move from city to city by a special kind of transportation... keep reading to see what those modes of transportation were! 

The Guides moved from Guidetopia to Pathfinderton by boat. This boat was actually a Halloween costume I had a few years ago. I was thrilled to use the S.S. Soggy again! 

The Sparks moved from Spark City to Brownieville by a steam train. This was made using cardboard, paint and paper plates for the wheels.Thank goodness we had a spare room to use in my parent's house to make all of these props!

There are a ton of Brownies in the district so we had a really fun idea. We thought it would be cool to show up in Brownieville with a little school bus. When we asked all the advancing girls to come on board to Guidetopia we realized that we would need a bigger bus. I was at the front of the bus and Heather was at the back- we worked our magic and expanded the bus to fit all of the girls on. We used cardboard, plastic tablecloths- for the folded part, and paint to make this awesome school bus! 

There was only one Ranger who was finishing her girl program and we wanted her to feel extra special. There was only one way to get from Ranger Park to Guideropolis- a rocket ship! This one has a cardboard base, a paper plate for a window, paint for colour, and an emergency blanket to be nice and shiny! 

The last mode of transportation from Pathfinderton to Ranger Park was a gondola (we were running out of ideas). There were only a few girls moving up so the gondola worked really well. 

Overall the advancement was a huge hit and a lot of girls said it was their favourite part of the whole camp. We read bits of "Oh the Place's You'll Go" in between each group of girls advancing and then gave leader gifts at the end of the ceremony. It was a lot of work to make all of the props, but it was so much fun! 

If you would like a "script" of the advancement ceremony you can get it here! 

Thanks for reading!