Easter Bookmarks and Promises

14/03/19

One of our older Brownies has been asking for a while if she can run an activity so she can tick off the last part of her More Adventures badge before she turns 11 in May. This week we finally had time to slot that in and she chose to make Easter Chicken Bookmarks.

The Brownie showed everyone how to fold the main shape (you can also find the instructions online) and then the girls went and did that bit while the Brownie handed out all the extra bits that she had pre-cut for them to stick on. Once they had finished their chicken bookmark, she had also bought some patterned paper so they could make fortune tellers.

Tonight we also had 4 new girls making their promises, so about 30 minutes before the end, any members of their family who wanted to watch showed up - there were loads of them this time! Some girls just bring one parent, tonight we had grandparents, siblings, and lots of parents! We always ask the parents to come a bit earlier than they need to so they can watch us doing an activity - this time we chose to play 2 games of Pirates, at request of the girls. We did have to remove Starboard as that is where all the parents were sat, and we banned hiding under the tables with tea and coffee on too!

We then proceeded to enrol all 4 new girls and then sang two songs to finish (for once we finished early!) - we sang Hole at the Bottom of the Sea, and Cecil is My Caterpillar.

This was a great evening - the girl who ran it is very mature for her age and was very good at explaining the steps to the girls and going round helping them all.

Story Making and Pack Holiday Posters

13/09/18

This evening we started with a vote. Every year we do a sale (see here for a previous year's) to raise money for a charity. The last sale they did (while I was at university), we raised money for WWF so we could sponsor an animal. We have sponsored several animals in the past and always get a cuddly toy to go with it which then goes home with a different girl each week. We currently have a dolphin, a gorilla, and an elephant but the dolphin is getting a bit old and so we wanted to retire him to join the dog (they now sit under the toadstool) and get a new animal. I had looked online at the choices and chosen 5 to vote on: lion, panda, penguin, polar bear, and rhino. We printed out the picture of the toy onto paper which we spread round the room. Each girl was given 3 token, a red, a yellow and a blue. They then had to put the red token on their favourite, the yellow on their second choice and the blue on their third. I then counted up the votes - red getting 3 points, yellow getting 2 and blue getting 1. While I was counting, the girls sang 'Who Stole the Cookie from the Cookie Jar'. I then announced that the winner, who got 56 points, was the polar bear. We now just need to send off the money to the WWF and wait for the toy to arrive.

We then decided we would do another of the new programme UMAs - we chose 'Catch a Story' from the Express Myself theme. We had a small soft ball which we passed across the circle and each girl had to add a word to the story (we specified no rude words first!). Brown Owl started by saying 'Once' so that the next 3 would have to say 'upon a time' so that the girls got the idea and then we let it continue, with occasional prompting from leaders about the best word. If we did it again, we would definitely write the story down as we went along as by the end we couldn't remember the whole thing. We might also consider adding a time limit to the length of time a girl had to think of a word as we frequently got stuck waiting. We did eventually get a sort of story about a dog called Max who didn't like puppies because they were weird! I was quite impressed with some girls choice of words, we had a few say 'because' and 'however', although I would say it is an activity more suited to older girls as the younger ones were having trouble keeping up with what had laready been said and making sensible suggestions of words (we went round in circles at one point saying things the dog hated).

Once we had done that for around 15 minutes we stopped and got out some tables. We handed out various A5 pictures relating to the Olympics, there were some simple ones such as the rings, and some more complex ones like a man with an Olympic torch. These will form the decorations on pack holiday, and are also a great way to keep the noise down a little bit while we hold the parents meeting for girls who haven't been on pack holiday before. I sat on a table with some of the newer girls and coloured in my own picture, and got to know them a bit more.

This was quite a nice relaxed evening and went very smoothly. I always enjoy meetings where I can just sit and talk to girls and get to know them a bit more, especially with so many girls who've joined since I went away for university. And we always end up having some entertaining conversations, such as tonight when I was asked how old I was so I said "22" and one girl said "I think you look more like you're 23"!

Board Games and Chocolate

17/09/15

This week there was a picnic to celebrate the 50 birthday of the local primary school, which most of our girls attend. As such, we only had 10 girls. We had asked the girls the previous week who was going to the picnic so we already knew it was going to be a depleted meeting.

We bought 2 board games for the girls to play in groups of 2 or 3. The first was a version of snakes and ladders, called worms and fleas. You jumped up the fleas and slid down the worms. There was also the added complication of pills (don't slide down the next worm you land on) and flea drops (move forwards to the next flea and jump up it). The other was a Paddington Bear game. Each girl had 2 slices of bread and a jar of marmalade (as tokens) which they placed on any square on the track. Each time they rolled the dice they had the choice of going forwards hat many, or backwards (not both). By the end of the track, they had to have collected 2 slices of bread and a jar of marmalade each (not necessarily the ones they had put on the board), so that Paddington could make himself a marmalade sandwich!

At the same time, we decorated chocolate disks. Our Young Leaders melted some chocolate, and spread it in thin disks on greaseproof paper. They let it set a bit and then the girls came in to decorate them with all the left-over decorations we had from various other cooking evenings. We had white chocolate buttons, smarties, and various shaped sprinkles. All the girls were really good at only taking a few, and not just loading it up with as much sugary stuff as possible (as we've had in the past). Can't quite say the same for us Leaders after the girls had gone though, and we were left with some bars of chocolate and a tube of smarties!

When they were all done we played a game of Chinese Charades. We found that it was a good game with fairly short lines of girls; we added in a few leaders and had 2 lines of 6 girls. The girls seemed to enjoy it too. We also sang a couple of songs: 'There Was an Old Man', and 'Cookie Jar'.

Finally we let the girls go home, which was far less complicated with a small number! Sometimes it is nice to have a meeting with a few girls as you get to spend some time with them more one-on-one, however I wouldn't want to do it every week - there are some things that are designed for more people.