16/02/14
Happy Thinking Day to all!
Last Sunday we had our Thinking Day celebrations because we couldn't get the hall today. We had all the Rainbows, Brownies and Guides from our district all at a local leisure centre - which came to around 100 girls plus leaders all in one sports hall (let's just say noisy was an understatement!). For those of you who don't know what Thinking Day is, it's a day where all Girl Guides in the World all think of each other and Guiding across the World. The day was chosen because it is the birthday of Lord and Lady Baden-Powell, the founders of the Guiding and Scouting movements. Districts traditionally get together and carry out activities to celebrate.
At our event, the girls had two activities to do - an external company came in and did a roller disco and each unit supplied a craft for their girls. Each unit spent an hour rollerskating and the other hour doing their unit's craft.
Our girls were doing the craft first. We had bought some little jugs and permanent pens so they could colour them in:
There were a variety of designs (including 2 girls copying me again - so flattering!) and they all looked really good laid out on the table when they were done.We think it would have been a good idea to have picked up a filler (a word search or something similar) though because the girls who had finished were getting restless because they could see the other girls skating and wanted to go and join in but they had to wait until the swap over time because there were limited skates available.
Eventually they were told to swap over which was a huge logistical challenge for the leaders, trying to make sure the girls who'd been skating put their skates in the right place and went to the correct unit table while also trying to help all the other girls to put on their skates and guards. It was compulsory for girls to wear wrist guards (the most common injury is broken wrists) and then they could choose to wear elbow and knee pads and helmet so there was a lot to co-ordinate! Eventually we had all the girls in the right places and then the next challenge began - helping a group of 18 girls on their feet when many of them had never skated before. I helped a few of them find their feet and then got some skates on myself - I'm a figure skater so I figured that I could more easily help the girls if I was also on skates (and also enjoy myself!). I didn't realise quite how different roller-skating is from figure skating but I managed to adjust enough to be able to hold onto girls to keep them upright without falling over myself whenever they did! The hour went by really quickly and suddenly it was time for our girls to take their skates off.
Another tradition for Thinking Day is for the girls to all remake their Promise, and we are no different. However, in this case the girls weren't just remaking their Promise, they were all making the new one for the first time. We have 3 candles in our District, a red, a yellow and a blue. When each is lit, the corresponding section remake their Promise, starting with the Rainbows. I have to say that, while I totally agree with the changing of the Promise to encompass all girls, it really doesn't roll off the tongue as well as the old one! Once everyone had remade their Promise, we sang 'This Little Guiding Light of Mine' (lyrics here) and then the girls were told to go back to their table and collect their things and their parents would come over to collect them. Surprisingly, that went very well and we got rid of all our girls really quickly. We did a quick tidy up and then all went home, exhausted but happy!
All in all, it was a very successful Thinking Day and all the leaders and girls enjoyed themselves.
13/02/14
This week, as it was the day before Valentine's Day, we decided to do some Valentine's themed things. We bought some red card and then got out all the spare crafty things left over from other evenings (lots of stickers, sparkly things and coloured paper!) and let the girls loose with it all! They were told they could make a card for their boyfriend, if they had one, or a friend or family member if they didn't. They all got stuck in really quickly and there were some really good looking cards by the end of the evening. I sat at a table of older girls and I was surprised at the number of them who had boyfriends or had been asked out and turned them down. When I was their age (10 years ago - now I feel old!) I had no interest in boys and was never asked out so I was quite surprised there were so many of them... I did also have to convince one girl that making her card as a way of breaking up with her boyfriend on Valentine's Day wasn't a very nice thing to do!
The other activity we had was making giant white chocolate coins. Our Young Leader and Guide were in charge of this in the kitchen. They melted the white chocolate and put spoonfuls into the lids of Pringles tubes. They left them to cool down a little bit so they were soft but not runny and then the girls were given different kinds of sprinkles and Love Hearts to decorate theirs with. We had them one six at a time in the kitchen and, when I went in at the end, there were lots of really good ones - our girls are always really good at crafty type things and they come out with nice things on a regular basis!
The girls then played a game of 'get the keys' (instructions here) while the Young Leader, Guide and I 'tidied' the kitchen - which generally consisted of us licking out the bowl of melted chocolate and eating the spare sprinkles and Love Hearts while chatting! One of our girls was leaving so she was given her certificate and Brownie Bear keyring as a leaving present in the circle at the end.
It was quite a low-maintenance evening tonight; the girls just got on with things and I could sit and talk to them, which is one of my favourite things about Brownies. I still can't decide if I agree with doing things for Valentine's Day with 7-11 year olds because I've always thought it was something for couples in steady relationships and I don't think they understand true love at that age. However, they all seemed to enjoy the evening whether they were making cards for boyfriends or people they just wanted to show their appreciation for and that is what guiding is all about, in my opinion.
Now we have a week off for half term although there will be another post about our Thinking Day celebrations at some point.
06/02/14
This week I ran the meeting. I made a comment last week to Brown Owl about whether she'd planned anything to celebrate Chinese New Year with the girls and she said no but, if I wanted to do something, I was more than welcome, so I did! I started out by Googling Chinese New Year traditions and games. One of the first things I picked up on was the giving of red envelopes and I thought it would be nice if each girl got an envelope with something in it. I then saw these dragon mobiles on Baker Ross and decided that we could do those. I thought it would be nice for the girls to try some Chinese food as well so that was next on my list. Originally I decided that they could try eating the food with chopsticks but I thought that could get a little difficult so I turned it into a game instead. Finally, I had a game and a song up my sleeve if needed and I was ready to start collecting everything I would need.
First I started planning the dragon mobiles. I decided that it would be cheaper for me to make my own mobiles instead of buying them from Baker Ross. I played around with a couple of different sizes before I settled on this, which is A5 size:
Mum took them to work and photocopied them onto card for me. I coloured one in to show the girls what it would look like in the end and also to give them some ideas for colours:
The next thing I planned was the red envelopes. The envelopes themselves were fairly easy to source and then I created a sheet to go in them on Word. I took the words from here (and simplified them a little bit for the girls) and added a photo of their animal to it. I also left a couple of boxes blank so I could write in their name, date of birth and draw their name in Chinese. Mum also photocopied those at work and then I wrote in the boxes. For the names, I used this website. I copied the names into a Word document, made sure they would fit in the box and then printed them. I then traced each one onto the sheet - it took me about 30-40 minutes to do them all but they looked quite impressive once I was done! This was the final product of an evenings work:
The hardest thing to source was cheap disposable chopsticks, surprisingly! It took a friend and me almost 2 hours of walking round numerous pound shops and other shops (and Costa because it was cold and raining..!) before we finally found some in Wilkinson's at 5 sets for 60p. I then bought some dried pasta and peas. The aim of this game was for the girls to move as many items from one plate to another in a minute, using the chopsticks. They were then given one point per piece of pasta and 5 points for every pea and their score was added to their sixes total.
Finally all that remained was to buy the food and head to Brownies. I settled on microwavable duck pancakes and prawn crackers with a mild chilli dipping sauce.
The first thing we did at Brownies was to give out the envelopes. They were a little upset that they didn't have any money in them (Chinese tradition) and, in retrospect, I should probably have put in some chocolate coins or something. Some of the younger ones didn't understand the paragraph about their animal so we had to spend a while explaining parts, although lots of them were comparing with their friends to see who was the same animal and whether they suited their animal. Only one girl asked me what the Chinese said but she seemed quite impressed that it was her name.
We then got the girls to get out tables and I told them about the craft. I was surprised at how many of them seemed to be thoroughly enjoying it because we've done quite a few crafts recently and they seemed to be getting a bit bored but this week we really struggled to get them to tidy up at the end! Most of them coloured it in really nicely, on both sides and some of them even copied mine exactly! Some of them had trouble cutting out the head as it was a little bit fiddley but most of them had a pretty good go at it and then the leaders helped with the final bits.
While they were doing the craft, our Young Leader and Guide took a six at a time into the kitchen to have a go and the 'chopstick challenge'. They decided to allow the girls to use the chopsticks in anyway they liked because not many of them could use the properly and there wasn't time to teach them all. There were a lot of girls who were holding one in each hand, which worked out to be quite effective in some cases! The only rule that was enforced was "you have to actually pick it up to move it, you can't just scoop it from one plate to the other!" I was surprised at the number of girls who managed to pick up a dried pea with the chopsticks as I struggled a little to begin with and I find using chopsticks fairly easy. In the end, the winning six got around 70 points!
Finally, we ate the food. Two of the leaders had microwaved the duck pancakes while the girls were doing their dragon mobiles and we allowed each girl to try one. They weren't forced to but we encouraged them to at least try a little bit even if they then threw the rest in the bin. Some of the older ones were messing around a bit and pretending to throw up in the toilet but lots of them tried one and all the spare ones were eaten pretty quickly by girls who wanted seconds! We had bought 4 packets of prawn crackers and they were all gone within 5 minutes of opening them! Some of the girls tried the chilli sauce but found it too spicy (we'd bought the mildest they had!) and went to get drinks pretty quickly.
Overall, I think the evening was a huge success even if we did run out of time to play the game and sing the song I had up my sleeve and there's always next week (and next year - when I'll be at uni and with a different unit) to try out new ideas and improve upon those from this year.
29/01/14
This evening we did more of the Big Brownie Birthday badge. One of the compulsory activities was for the girls to create a 'code of conduct' in their sixes. We provided paper with a border for them to write on and Brown Owl gave them a couple of sentence starters, such as "as a six, we will...", "when our leaders are talking we will..." and other similar things. There was a bit of complaining before they started (as one girl said "ugh, literacy at Brownies"!) but, once they'd got started, they actually worked quite well together! I was surprised that we didn't have more arguments and disagreements because that seems to have become the norm for our unit with this set of girls. Us leaders basically left them to their own devices and the girls came up with some really good ideas (although with some amusing spellings!) which would make for a perfect unit if they stuck to them all..!
Once they had finished, we said they could play a game before moving on to the next activity. One of the other Young Leaders ran a game of trains (instructions here). To start with, they weren't listening to her and the game was going nowhere until Brown Owl stepped in and pointed out that they'd just written down how they were going to behave and they were breaking every single one of them! She told them that, if they listened, then the game could begin quicker and they would have more fun than if they were talking to their friends and not listening to instructions. After that they listening and the game went without any more hitches!
We had originally planned that we would then do another one of the Big Brownie Birthday challenges - writing in code. It wasn't the highest voted from that section but it was pretty high up, however none of the girls wanted to do it; the majority wanted to play more games instead. Brown Owl gave in and told them that they could play fishes (instructions here) which seems to be the girls' favourite game at the moment however, this time, it didn't really go to plan. The two girls who ask Brown Owl first are allowed to be the 'sharks' and this week it ended up being two of our older girls. We started noticing after a few minutes though that they were specifically choosing a girl who they were going to catch each time instead of trying to catch them all equally. This was leading to tears from the targeted girls and Brown Owl eventually called a halt to the game. She told them that games are never fun when people aren't playing fairly and then told them to get into their six corners. We had an old leader visiting for the week so we got her to pick two girls to be sharks, on the grounds that she doesn't know any of them. The second time round, the game went far better because they were all playing fairly. We also didn't have any tears from girls who had been caught because there was never any doubt as to if they had been or not. I think we need to not play fishes for a while although there might be uproar about it from the girls if I suggested it - I just think that taking a break and playing different games might be a good idea.
Overall, this was a fairly successful meeting. Although we didn't do what we were intending to do, the girls still had a good time which is what I think Brownies should be all about! And I think they might slowly be getting the message about team work and fair play which is a good thing too...
24/1/14
This week was our annual visit to the panto. We used to go to the one at the local big theatre but their prices slowly went up and we swapped to going to a (slightly more amateur) one hosted at a local private school which some of our Brownies have been in in previous years -although not this year. I think it is actually better as it is a smaller venue so the atmosphere seems better. Either way, the girls always thoroughly enjoy themselves every year!
It is always a bit chaotic making sure we have all the girls before we go in, especially if another Brownie unit decided to go on the same night! We managed to get in without too many problems though and eventually got all the girls settled in the correct rows and seats! Brown Owl told them that, once it had started, they were not to make any noises with their sweet wrappers as most of them had bought sweets with them. A couple of them were getting bored because it hadn't started but then it did and they all shut up! The panto this year was Robin Hood and it was as good as it usually is! We had one or two girls who had to be told to sit down or be quiet once but it was on;y because they were excited!
The most chaos came during the interval... We had told the girls that they could bring money for ice cream or drinks if they wanted and most of them had done so. Almost all of them decided to get ice creams and I ended up being the one to supervise them. Most of them seem to understand the values of coins though so that wasn't the issue; it was more getting them to make a quick decision because there were other people in the queue too! And some of the girls had only come because their friend had and were just getting in the way... They did all eventually get their ice creams but then several of them decided that they actually needed the toilet too so the other Young Leader and I ended up looking after a mountain of ice creams and sweets while we waited for them. We finally got them all back in and sat down just before the second half began but then a couple of other girls decided that, actually, they wanted an ice cream too and tried to go out on their own to get some. Brown Owl stopped them on her way back through the door and got them to sit down again though because they had stopped selling ice cream by then.
The second half was just as good as the first half, if not better. I enjoy the fact that they cater for adults and children in the way of jokes, although it does cause a slight issue if the girls ask why I'm laughing if they haven't understood it..! When we came to leave, we got all the girls to pick up their coats and sweet wrappers and took them all out into the foyer. I stood by the door and directed them towards the corner while Brown Owl and Snowy made sure they went home with the person they were supposed to. That was going fine until the other unit that was there decided that our idea was a good one and tried to congregate their girls in the same corner as us. Luckily we'd almost got rid of all our girls and grouped together a bit further over but it seemed a little inconsiderate of them.
All in all, a good night out and one that the girls enjoy as much as the adults!
16/01/14
This week we had two girls making their promises so we decided to start the meeting off by teaching the girls about the new promise. For those of you who don't know, the promise recently changed so it better included girls from other religions and countries. Here is an explanation from Guiding UK and below are the old and new promises:
Old promise:
I promise that I will do my best,
To love my God,
To serve the Queen and my country,
To help other people,
And to keep the Brownie Guide Law
New promise:
I promise that I will do my best,
To be true to myself and develop my beliefs,
To serve the Queen and my community,
To help other people,
And to keep the Brownie Guide Law
Brown Owl cut up 4 copies of the promise into 7 sections and gave them out to the girls, one piece each. The girls were then told to reassemble the four promises without any help from the leaders (although I'm not sure we'd have been that much help anyway because I still don't know it!). There was quite a lot of confusion and chaos for the next few minutes. The girls seemed to get the idea that they needed to get into 4 groups with one of each part and then rearrange them into the correct order but they couldn't seem to actually coordinate this. We had one girl almost in tears because none of the groups wanted her in their group and another group that told us they were done and they only had 6 parts of the promise! I was quite amused that none of the girls thought to ask the two girls who were making their promise tonight as they should know the new promise perfectly (and not the old one to confuse things)... After leaving them to their own devices for a bit, Brown Owl stopped them and told them the actual promise and they got themselves into the right groups. We then got them to swap pieces of paper with another girl and got the sixers and seconders to go to one side of the room and all the other girls to stand in the middle. The sixers and seconders then were tasked with collecting a full set of the promise and arranging them in the correct order. That went infinitely better as the girls then knew what the promise was supposed to be.
Then we got out all the tables and the girls made matchbox drawers which had been left over from pack holiday and we hadn't got round to doing it. We gave each girl 4 empty matchboxes, a piece of cereal box, a piece of shiny card and some patterned paper. They had to stick the four matchboxes together, two on the bottom and two on the top and the leaders went round with thick needles and split pins, making holes in the matchbox trays for the handles. They then covered the 4 matchboxes in the patterned paper (or they could use white paper and draw their own design), which was quite difficult for some girls for some reason. They they cut their piece of cereal box into the shape they wanted for the back of the dresser, covered it in their paper and stuck it on using sticky tape and not glue because otherwise the drawers won't come out! I did have to rescue one girl because she'd glued it without realising but I think I managed to save hers! Finally, they cut the shiny card out in whatever shape they wanted and stuck it to the cereal box as a mirror. They all seemed to really like this craft and it's a perfect one to do as part of the toymaker badge (which is the badge we did on pack holiday).
Whenever we have girls making their promise, we also have a couple of girls doing their hostess badge. Every girl will get the chance to do their badge at some point during their Brownie life; we chose the girls based on their enrolment date. I was tasked with helping the girls who were doing their hostess badge tonight. They have to provide a table decoration and some cakes or biscuits so we first got out some tables and chairs so they could lay out their things. Once the parents of the girls making their promise had arrived they two hostesses asked if they would like tea or coffee and then we made it. Both parents wanted tea (which was good because I drink lots of tea and can make it easily but I don't drink coffee so I have to remember how to make it each time!) so I showed the girls how to fill the kettle and turn it on. We then got the tea bags ready (and I had to explain the function of the string on the ones Brown Owl had bought as they were planning on just dropping them straight in!) and then had to wait for the kettle to boil. Both girls kept complaining that it was taking too long to boil! Finally I poured it into the mugs for them and instructed them on how much milk and sugar they needed to put into each and they carried it into the hall to give it to the parents. I think it went quite well this time - some of the girls have no interest in doing it at all but these two were asking me fairly sensible questions and following instructions.
Finally we could get going with our promise ceremony. We start off as we normally would at the beginning of the meeting - skipping round out toadstool and owl, singing the Brownie song. The girls then sing their six songs and move into a circle, in their sixes, with two of the oldest girls holding the pack's flag. I stand next to Brown Owl and hold the boxes with various badges and books in for the new girls. Each girl is bought up to Brown Owl by her sixer who says 'This is [name] and she would like to become a Brownie' and then returns to her space. Brown Owl then says something to the effect of 'Before you can make your Promise, you need to say the Brownie Guide Law because you are about to promise to keep the Law. Do you know the Law?' and the girl will then say her law (or the pack will say it with her if she is a little nervous). The Brown Owl then gets every girl who has already made her Promise to salute while the girl makes her Promise, occasionally with a little bit of prompting from Brown Owl. I then hand her the Promise badge which she pins onto the girl's top and then I give her the various other badges; six emblem, county silk, unit name badge and finally the box and book. The two girls who made their promise this week did very well, especially our Norwegian girl who sometime struggles with English a little. Once she'd got going, she was word perfect.
After the meeting the two hostesses had to wash up - they get given their badge in the circle before everyone goes on the condition they complete it by washing up afterwards! They were less enthusiastic about this than they had been about the making of tea but they did a pretty decent job of things never-the-less.
All in all, I think this was a very successful meeting and the girls thoroughly enjoyed themselves and learnt the new promise which hopefully will slowly become as natural for me to say as the one I've been saying for 11 years of my life! I will just add here that I, as an atheist, am completely supportive of the removal of God from the Promise but, at the moment, it doesn't roll off my tongue as nicely as the old one did!
09/01/14
This week we started the Big Brownie Birthday Challenge badge. For those of you who don't know, here is an explanation but it's basically just a variety of challenges the girls can do based around Guiding through the ages and at the end of it they get a badge.
We decided to start with one of the compulsory tasks which was team work, something our girls struggle with sometimes! For the first game, we had the girls in their sixes and gave each six 3 sheets of newspaper. We then told them that there was a river in front of them which they had to cross using their newspaper pieces as stepping stones. The stepping stones could hold any number of girls as long as not so much as a toe touched the floor - at which point the offending girl had to return to the start! They were told that they would get 4 points for each girl who made it to the other side of the room and the first team across would get an extra 10 points. They were also told that, if a girl fell off, her six could chose to either leave her behind and carry on or they could all go back for her and start again. Having explained these rules to the girls, each leader was assigned a six and told to be quite ruthless in picking up on toes off the newspaper and the race was on! It was quite a close race between the sixes with a fair few girls being left behind by her sixes (and one sixer who told her six to go and leave her behind because they were winning). The girls then added up their points and there was some celebration because the six that got there first had the most points, despite having left 2 of their number behind. Brown Owl then told the girls that she'd forgotten to tell them one of the rules! This 'forgotten' rule was that, for every girl they'd left behind, they lost 10 points. This caused some dissent because the original winning team went down to last place because they'd left behind the most people and the team which originally was in last place ended up coming first because they hadn't left anyone behind! This was quite a good game to show girls that, by working together as a team, they could do better than when they were just thinking of themselves.
We then did another team activity to see if they could put what they'd just learnt into practice. Each sixer was given a whiteboard and pen and the sixes were told they had to think of a job and create a short mime for the other sixes to guess. We left them to it for this and just observed the different approaches. Three of our four sixes took the 'free for all' approach, where all the girls were talking at once and refusing to listen to each other or back down from their idea when no one else wanted to do it. The fourth six (incidentally, the one that won the previous game) had a much better approach where the sixer asked each girl in turn for her idea and then they chose their collective favourite. They had 5 minutes to practice their mime and then we went round the room watching each mime. The other three sixes had to come up with one guess from their six which they wrote on the whiteboard and then they all showed them simultaneously. For each six that guessed the job correctly, the performing six and the guessing six got one point, which they noted as a dot on their whiteboard. This bit went OK with only one disagreement within a six which was quickly resolved. Once all four sixes had finished the girls went back to their six corners. They were then told to add a point (dot) to their whiteboard for every suggestion that had been made and listened to and another point for each girl who took an active part in the mime (i.e. didn't just stand there, not helping). The girls then sat in a circle in their six, facing outwards. The board was passed round each girl and they had to add a dot if they thought their six worked well together and listened to each other and remove a dot if they didn't think they had worked well together. It took a while to coordinate all this point distribution but, once it was complete, it was quite interesting to see which sixes had the most points! The six who won the previous game came first by a long margin, having not lost any points and the other sixes were lagging behind quite significantly. I'm not sure quite how much they took from this meeting but it's nice to see that at least one of our sixers is capable of making her six work as a team.
We finished off the evening by singing 'Cookie Jar' (lyrics here) and then the girls went home. This was quite an interesting evening from the point of view of a Young Leader because I was able to see which girls are the 'problem girls' in each six, i.e. the ones who refuse to back down and just continually shout at their team or cry until they get their own way. It means that in future team activities we can avoid putting all these girls in the same team or can keep an eye on groups with them in try and resolve problems before they get too severe. Overall, a success and one step closer to our Big Brownie Birthday Adventure badge!
(Apologies for the long post this time - I haven't written in a while so I'm struggling to say things in a condensed manner at the moment!)
