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...
