Badges and Brownie Adventure

19/9/13

We started off this evening by making the badges for pack holiday. The girls are split into sixes and choose what character they are going to be (we have Agnes, Lucy and Dave this year) and then the Leaders all choose their own characters for the weekend too. Each girl makes a badge to wear for the weekend so we know what six they are in as do the leaders. Our district owns a badge machine (an absolutely ancient one!) which is loaned out to units who want to make badges. Basically the girls colour in a design (which we had pre-printed from the internet) and then it is placed in the machine, you pull a handle and it creates the badge for you - it fascinates the girls every time! We collect in the badges once they've been made so that they don't get lost between this meeting and next weekend, when pack holiday is. Any girl who is not going on pack holiday can also make a badge, either using a spare design we had printed or colouring in a blank circle however they like, and they are allowed to take it home there and then. I quite enjoy sitting and colouring with the girls because you get to know some of them a bit better as they'll just start to talk about their life and school and stuff. It helps me keep in touch with them too which makes planning evenings a bit easier. 

Once the girls had finished, we tidied away the tables and they did a challenge from their Brownie Adventure or Brownie Adventure On book. If you don't know what these are, they are books that the girls have for their first and second halves of being a Brownie respectively which contain stories and activities for them to complete. You can also get a badge for doing a variety of the activities from the book along with a few other things, including doing interest badges, attending extra events and doing various other meetings. The girls were split into two groups; the younger ones and the older ones. I was helping the group of younger girls, who were learning to sign their names, as I can sign the BSL alphabet. I helped a few of them to work out their name from the pictures in their book and then I challenged them to guess my middle name after I had signed it to them. Most of them were really good at it and it turned out that they had had a partially deaf boy in their class for a while so a lot of them had learnt some basic words and phrases. I was quite surprised at this because I never had the opportunity to learn that sort of thing at primary school - I picked it up with a friend for fun a few years back (although I'm looking into doing a course to learn more). 

We finished off the evening by singing one of the girls' favourite songs-'Who Stole the Cookie from the Cookie Jar' (lyrics here).

This was a good evening because I got to sit and talk to the girls which is one of my favourite parts of helping at the unit. I also found out things about the girls that I didn't already know. It was a nice, relaxing evening - reminding me why I do this.

And finally, just a bit of housekeeping: we are going away on pack holiday on Friday so my next post won't be up next Monday (although you can console yourself with the fact that there will be a couple of posts in the week afterwards about pack holiday!)

Posters and Games

12/9/13

This week we started off the meeting with a game, to try and calm to girls down a bit before starting colouring posters for pack holiday while we had the parents meeting. It was decided that we should play Wigwams (instructions here) however we then had a job settling them down so we could play the game as they couldn't decide on their partners (and two of them desperately wanted to be the other Young Leader's partner!). We finally started playing but we only had time for 4 rounds before we had to stop to allow for the parents meeting to take place.

Before we go on pack holiday, we have a parents' meeting for any parents of girls who've never been on pack holiday before so they can find out what will happen. We have to have it in the corner of the hall so we always colour in posters for pack holiday during the meeting so the girls aren't too noisy. We gave them a choice of a variety of Despicable Me 2 pictures which they could choose from and pretty much left them to it. We ended up having a few arguments though because one table didn't want to share the new pens with the other girls and another table was hoarding yellows (which are kind of essential for colouring in minions...). After we had broken up the minor arguments though, we actually got a lot of surprisingly good pictures; some of the girls had definitely thought about what they were colouring in and hadn't rushed or messed about. The posters will be stuck onto card and put up around the house on camp and then returned to the girls afterwards. 

This evening, whilst being quite taxing on my voice from all the shouting to break up arguments, was actually quite enjoyable. I love sitting and talking to the girls and hearing about what they've been doing (especially as I went to the same primary school as most of them so I can find out about my old teachers!) and I hear some rather entertaining stories!

First meeting back...

5/9/13

This week was the first meeting back after the summer break and the girls, as always, were hyper! Sadly, I could only attend the first half an hour of the meeting due to a meeting at school (which I could have missed but still...) but I still managed to catch up with a lot of the girls and heard many stories of holidays.

We started the meeting as usual, with the girls singing the song and then their own six songs, while skipping round the toadstool (yes, we are a very traditional unit), and one six did show-and-tell. We then had a PowWow to plan the theme for our camp in a few weeks. Usually we would have chosen the theme well before we broke up to give us a chance to come up with some ideas for crafts and games but our Snowy Owl is running it because she wants her camp permit so we are letting her find some of these things out herself (although admittedly she's been getting some very strong hints that she's leaving things a bit late now). She has decided that we are going to do the Toymaker badge while we're there so she gave the girls the choice of a recent film, clothing designers or toymakers. Brownies, being Brownies, obviously chose the recent film theme and, when asked which one, the unanimous decision was 'Despicable Me 2'! I actually think this is a really good idea because there's a lot of different characters for all the leaders and sixes to be and there are loads of activities that can be based around it easily so I'm thoroughly looking forwards to this camp (even if the girls did decide I should be Gru after I had left..!). 

The girls were then split into their sixes for camp which caused much upset, as usual, because friends had been split up. We try to put the oldest 3 as sixers and then have a few girls who've been before and a few who haven't in each six because we've found that, if we let them choose, we end up with a group of younger girls who don't know what they're doing. This way, there are some girls in each six who know what is expected and can help the younger girls out. 

At this point, I had to leave. The rest of the meeting was taken up with games and songs, which is our standard first meeting back because they're never able to sit down and do crafts while catching up with friends they haven't seen for a few weeks! Apparently I missed some excitement though because one girl accidentally hit another in the face and caused a nose bleed while another fell over in game and a third started crying because she lost a game (quite a regular occurrence in our unit with girls who seem to think that's the only way to get attention...)! Part of me is glad I had to leave although I would never actually choose to miss a meeting.

All in all, quite an eventful evening!