27/03/14
This week I couldn't attend Brownies as I was in my school Leavers' Concert. The meeting was run by Snowy Owl and our parent helper as Brown Owl was at the concert too. I thought I would just quickly tell you what they had planned for the evening (although I don't yet know how it went).
First off, one of the leaders of the Beavers who meet in the smaller church hall decided that they were going to have a fire drill during the Cubs meeting because they had noticed that they don't ever take a register or even know how many kids they have! They thought a shock might be the quickest way to make them realise how important it is. They informed us last week so that we were aware it was going to happen. I'm not sure if the Brownies were told that there was no need for them to evacuate or if Snowy decided to use it as our fire drill but I'll be interested to know, firstly, how our girls reacted and, secondly, if it had the desired effect on the Cubs leaders...
The original planned activity for the meeting was Mother's Day cards which Brown Owl had cut out before and given them to Snowy, along with the key to the cupboard. The idea was that the girls could decorate the cards however they wanted to give to their mothers on Mother's Day. We're lucky that we don't have any girls who've lost a mother or anything like that as I can see it could cause all kinds of issues if we did.
I imagine they then played some games if they had time as the girls always ask if they can.
Anyway, things will be back to normal next week; when I'm actually at the meeting!
Monday 31 March 2014
Monday 24 March 2014
Bugs and Sunflowers
20/03/14
This week we did yet more of the Big Brownie Birthday badge - I know; it seems like that's all we do these days but it is a pretty significant milestone in Guiding! This week's evening was focused around the outdoors.
We started off by playing a quick game. Brown Owl had bought some sticky flowers in 5 different colours and 2 different shapes and stuck them to small pieces of card. The girls were in their sixes and had to collect 6 flowers (which was one each in 3 of the 4 sixes). Brown Owl then told them which flowers the bees liked that day (and therefore had no nectar left in) and the girls added up all the flowers they had collected which still had nectar in. Once we got past the initial hurdle of the girls not understanding the 'you need 6 flowers in your six corner' part of the instructions, we ended up playing several rounds before finding out which six was the winner! The girls didn't seem to enjoy it as much as other games we've played but that was probably because there was no skill or running around involved - it was mostly a game of luck.
Then the girls got the tables out ready to do a variety of activities. Some of the girls were making bug houses from plastic water bottles, some were planting sunflower seeds and others were colouring in butterflies for a game. They all did all three activities by the end of the evening. For the bug houses, we gave each of them a plastic bottle with the bottom cut off. They rolled up a section of corrugated cardboard and put it inside. I was then in charge of stapling it in so it didn't fall out (harder than it sounds when they'd stuffed as much in as possible and I only had regular staples that couldn't go through more than one layer of cardboard!). They then cut a drinking straw into thirds and pushed that in between the cardboard. The idea is that they take it home and hang it upside down under a bush somewhere quiet and then go back every few days and see if any bugs are living in it. We made sure to tell them to not touch it if there are, although if they wish to bring in pictures they are more than welcome. The second activity was planting sunflower seeds - we've had competitions in the past and thought we would do another one. The girls each planted 2 seeds into a pot which they have to take home and look after. They then measure it and Brown Owl keeps a note of how tall each girl's is. Once it gets above 5/6 feet and there are only a few left living, we get the girls to bring in a photo of them stood by it and the tallest one gets a prize. The final activity was a kind of filler for girls who had finished both other activities or were waiting for space to do one of them. We printed off the outline of a butterfly (6 to an A4 page) which they had to colour in symmetrically and give to Brown Owl. She is keeping them for a game we were going to play tonight but ran out of time.
The girls seemed to enjoy themselves for the most part this evening, although we did have a few who didn't see the point of making the bug houses or planting sunflower seeds. When we asked them to clear up though, we had a minor issue! Some of our older girls are starting to get a little old for Brownies, I think, and sometimes cause us problems when they get bored. We have big octagonal tables for crafts which split in two and get stacked on a trolley when we're done. Usually we ask the older girls (particularly sixers and seconders) to put the tables on the stack and for the younger and smaller girls to tidy things off the tables. However, tonight, these few older girls obviously got fed up waiting for someone to clear the table so, instead if clearing it themselves, one of the swept everything off the table onto the floor in one fell swoop and then proceeded to put the table on the stack with her friend and move on, leaving a pile of paper, pens and offcuts of bottles all over the floor. I always struggle with getting them to listen to me - I don't know if I just don't have the right amount of authority when I say things or whether it's because I'm closer to their age - but they refused to pick it all up. Some of the younger girls ended up doing it instead and I made sure I praised them for helping even though they didn't make a mess. It does irk me sometimes that they refuse to listen to me but I always make a mental note of it so I can try something different next time.
Anyways, the majority of the evening went really well and the girls seemed to enjoy it. Next week will be slightly different as I'm not actually able to attend the meeting, although I will probably still put up a brief post about the planned activity for the night even if I don't have any anecdotes to share!
This week we did yet more of the Big Brownie Birthday badge - I know; it seems like that's all we do these days but it is a pretty significant milestone in Guiding! This week's evening was focused around the outdoors.
We started off by playing a quick game. Brown Owl had bought some sticky flowers in 5 different colours and 2 different shapes and stuck them to small pieces of card. The girls were in their sixes and had to collect 6 flowers (which was one each in 3 of the 4 sixes). Brown Owl then told them which flowers the bees liked that day (and therefore had no nectar left in) and the girls added up all the flowers they had collected which still had nectar in. Once we got past the initial hurdle of the girls not understanding the 'you need 6 flowers in your six corner' part of the instructions, we ended up playing several rounds before finding out which six was the winner! The girls didn't seem to enjoy it as much as other games we've played but that was probably because there was no skill or running around involved - it was mostly a game of luck.
Then the girls got the tables out ready to do a variety of activities. Some of the girls were making bug houses from plastic water bottles, some were planting sunflower seeds and others were colouring in butterflies for a game. They all did all three activities by the end of the evening. For the bug houses, we gave each of them a plastic bottle with the bottom cut off. They rolled up a section of corrugated cardboard and put it inside. I was then in charge of stapling it in so it didn't fall out (harder than it sounds when they'd stuffed as much in as possible and I only had regular staples that couldn't go through more than one layer of cardboard!). They then cut a drinking straw into thirds and pushed that in between the cardboard. The idea is that they take it home and hang it upside down under a bush somewhere quiet and then go back every few days and see if any bugs are living in it. We made sure to tell them to not touch it if there are, although if they wish to bring in pictures they are more than welcome. The second activity was planting sunflower seeds - we've had competitions in the past and thought we would do another one. The girls each planted 2 seeds into a pot which they have to take home and look after. They then measure it and Brown Owl keeps a note of how tall each girl's is. Once it gets above 5/6 feet and there are only a few left living, we get the girls to bring in a photo of them stood by it and the tallest one gets a prize. The final activity was a kind of filler for girls who had finished both other activities or were waiting for space to do one of them. We printed off the outline of a butterfly (6 to an A4 page) which they had to colour in symmetrically and give to Brown Owl. She is keeping them for a game we were going to play tonight but ran out of time.
The girls seemed to enjoy themselves for the most part this evening, although we did have a few who didn't see the point of making the bug houses or planting sunflower seeds. When we asked them to clear up though, we had a minor issue! Some of our older girls are starting to get a little old for Brownies, I think, and sometimes cause us problems when they get bored. We have big octagonal tables for crafts which split in two and get stacked on a trolley when we're done. Usually we ask the older girls (particularly sixers and seconders) to put the tables on the stack and for the younger and smaller girls to tidy things off the tables. However, tonight, these few older girls obviously got fed up waiting for someone to clear the table so, instead if clearing it themselves, one of the swept everything off the table onto the floor in one fell swoop and then proceeded to put the table on the stack with her friend and move on, leaving a pile of paper, pens and offcuts of bottles all over the floor. I always struggle with getting them to listen to me - I don't know if I just don't have the right amount of authority when I say things or whether it's because I'm closer to their age - but they refused to pick it all up. Some of the younger girls ended up doing it instead and I made sure I praised them for helping even though they didn't make a mess. It does irk me sometimes that they refuse to listen to me but I always make a mental note of it so I can try something different next time.
Anyways, the majority of the evening went really well and the girls seemed to enjoy it. Next week will be slightly different as I'm not actually able to attend the meeting, although I will probably still put up a brief post about the planned activity for the night even if I don't have any anecdotes to share!
Monday 17 March 2014
Evening in the Dark!
13/03/14
This week we did more towards the Big Brownie Birthday badge. We had a small glitch in that Brown Owl's car broke down so we had to walk to Brownies with all our stuff but it's not too far and we took as little as we could so it was quite pleasant!
Once we got there, we shut all the curtains and blacked out the windows in the doors with black paper. We turned off all the lights and the girls used their torches to see. We did our Brownie circle in the dark and then the girls near Brown Owl shone their torches on her folder so she could do the register (usually we do this by sight as the girls come in and then just ask where missing girls are in the circle but that was too complicated today).
The first thing we did was a nice quiet game while their eyes adjusted to the dusk (and the Sun went down properly). The girls all stood in a circle and Brown Owl went round the circle giving random girls pieces of fruit or vegetable. There were 10 pieces in total so not everyone started with one. They had to hold it behind their back and try and guess what it was and, when Brown Owl said 'change', they had to pass it to their right. We carried on with this until all the girls had had each item. They then went into the six corners and tried to write down as many of the 10 as possible as a six. Brown Owl had chosen some obvious ones and some less obvious ones - we had potato, carrot, parsnip, lemon, lime, onion, apple, pear, garlic, and root ginger. One six managed to guess all of them except the root ginger. One word of advice is that carrots get rather disgusting after being passed round a few girls!
We then went on to play a game our Guide had played at her dark evening at Guides, which she ran with our Young Leader. It was called lighthouses (instructions here) and the girls seemed to enjoy it, although they got a bit bored when most of them had crossed the room and there were a few still coming, and going slowly but quietly. We played several variations on the basic game including in sixes (only one girl could come at once), in pairs (had to remain holding hands and both go back when caught) and freezing whenever the torch was on. There were a few girls who found it unfair because they kept getting caught but the majority seemed to really enjoy it.
We then did some Morse code, as suggested by one of the girls last week. Each six split into two and sat on opposite side of the hall. Both halves were given a sheet telling them the alphabet and were tasked with sending a message to the rest of their six, using their torches. It seemed to go OK, although it took far longer than it should have done for the girls to split their sixes in half and sit opposite each other - possibly not aided by the fact no one could see who was who and sixers kept getting lost! Once they were ready though, they seemed to get quite into sending messages.
We finished up the meeting by singing 'This Little Guiding Light', 'Alice the Camel' and 'Alive, Alert, Awake' (lyrics here) as we haven't really had a singing session with our girls for quite a while, unless you count Cookie Jar. It took us a while to remember the actions to 'Alive, Alert, Awake' but the girls kept asking us if we could do another verse so I think it paid off.
This was an interesting experience for us as leaders as well as for the girls. The girls seemed to enjoy the fact we were in the dark and they got to each have a torch (although we did have to make sure they knew not to point them at faces) but it created a few issues we hadn't foreseen as leaders. The most notable was that we couldn't tell the girls apart so yelling across the hall wasn't an option, you had to go over and figure out who you were talking to first. It is also harder to keep track of where everyone is when you can't see them - we have a few girls who sometimes need a bit of encouragement to join in if they don't like the game and, if they go and sit in a corner, it can be hard to spot them. I would also encourage leaders to make sure you have a decent torch (you don't need to be using it throughout the meeting but it would come in handy in an emergency).
You may have noticed that I have created a games page and a songs page and am no longer putting lyrics and instructions at the bottom of the post. I thought it was getting quite complicated to locate anything we had done so I decided to put it all in one easy to find place, so if you're looking for a specific game that's the place to start!
This week we did more towards the Big Brownie Birthday badge. We had a small glitch in that Brown Owl's car broke down so we had to walk to Brownies with all our stuff but it's not too far and we took as little as we could so it was quite pleasant!
Once we got there, we shut all the curtains and blacked out the windows in the doors with black paper. We turned off all the lights and the girls used their torches to see. We did our Brownie circle in the dark and then the girls near Brown Owl shone their torches on her folder so she could do the register (usually we do this by sight as the girls come in and then just ask where missing girls are in the circle but that was too complicated today).
The first thing we did was a nice quiet game while their eyes adjusted to the dusk (and the Sun went down properly). The girls all stood in a circle and Brown Owl went round the circle giving random girls pieces of fruit or vegetable. There were 10 pieces in total so not everyone started with one. They had to hold it behind their back and try and guess what it was and, when Brown Owl said 'change', they had to pass it to their right. We carried on with this until all the girls had had each item. They then went into the six corners and tried to write down as many of the 10 as possible as a six. Brown Owl had chosen some obvious ones and some less obvious ones - we had potato, carrot, parsnip, lemon, lime, onion, apple, pear, garlic, and root ginger. One six managed to guess all of them except the root ginger. One word of advice is that carrots get rather disgusting after being passed round a few girls!
We then went on to play a game our Guide had played at her dark evening at Guides, which she ran with our Young Leader. It was called lighthouses (instructions here) and the girls seemed to enjoy it, although they got a bit bored when most of them had crossed the room and there were a few still coming, and going slowly but quietly. We played several variations on the basic game including in sixes (only one girl could come at once), in pairs (had to remain holding hands and both go back when caught) and freezing whenever the torch was on. There were a few girls who found it unfair because they kept getting caught but the majority seemed to really enjoy it.
We then did some Morse code, as suggested by one of the girls last week. Each six split into two and sat on opposite side of the hall. Both halves were given a sheet telling them the alphabet and were tasked with sending a message to the rest of their six, using their torches. It seemed to go OK, although it took far longer than it should have done for the girls to split their sixes in half and sit opposite each other - possibly not aided by the fact no one could see who was who and sixers kept getting lost! Once they were ready though, they seemed to get quite into sending messages.
We finished up the meeting by singing 'This Little Guiding Light', 'Alice the Camel' and 'Alive, Alert, Awake' (lyrics here) as we haven't really had a singing session with our girls for quite a while, unless you count Cookie Jar. It took us a while to remember the actions to 'Alive, Alert, Awake' but the girls kept asking us if we could do another verse so I think it paid off.
This was an interesting experience for us as leaders as well as for the girls. The girls seemed to enjoy the fact we were in the dark and they got to each have a torch (although we did have to make sure they knew not to point them at faces) but it created a few issues we hadn't foreseen as leaders. The most notable was that we couldn't tell the girls apart so yelling across the hall wasn't an option, you had to go over and figure out who you were talking to first. It is also harder to keep track of where everyone is when you can't see them - we have a few girls who sometimes need a bit of encouragement to join in if they don't like the game and, if they go and sit in a corner, it can be hard to spot them. I would also encourage leaders to make sure you have a decent torch (you don't need to be using it throughout the meeting but it would come in handy in an emergency).
You may have noticed that I have created a games page and a songs page and am no longer putting lyrics and instructions at the bottom of the post. I thought it was getting quite complicated to locate anything we had done so I decided to put it all in one easy to find place, so if you're looking for a specific game that's the place to start!
Monday 10 March 2014
Codes and Promises
06/03/14
This week we did some more for the Big Brownie Birthday badge. We decided to do codes. The girls were given a photocopy of a page from the Adventure book which had a code on for them to crack. It was just a basic a=26, b=25 etc. but it took some explaining to the girls about how they could go about cracking it. They had been given some letters to start with so we were getting them to write the alphabet out (some girls had problems with that, which surprised me...) and put in the numbers underneath so they could spot any patterns. Eventually, they did pick up on what we were getting at and, once they knew the code, it was easy for them to then solve it and find all the words.
We then gave them another piece of paper with two codes explained on. One was Pig Pen and the other was the mobile phone code. They were then told they could write a message to their friend who would then have to decode it. Some girls decided to carry on using the basic substitution code to write messages and a couple tried to use the Pig Pen cypher. One of the Young Leaders also wrote out two messages in Pig Pen for the girls to try and decode. None of them asked me about the mobile phone code and I don't think any of them did it - probably because they didn't understand; I'm not sure how many of them actually have mobiles.
The codes in the Adventure book photocopy were all about Iranian New Year (which incidentally is some time soon) so we decided to play the Iranian smiling game (instructions here) because we had some spare time. Brown Owl chose the two girls who were making their Promise that night to start off and one of the Young Leaders and I went with them to the first person as they're both quite shy. The girl I was with really didn't want to make a fool of herself making girls smile so we didn't even get the first girl to smile but the other girl got a few people to smile. The game went very well - now that we've steered away from playing fishes continually, the girls seem to enjoy playing games more and play fairly - and this is a fairly popular one too because it gives the girls an excuse to be a little bit silly without getting told off!
We then had the Promise ceremony for the two new girls. One of them managed her Promise with a little bit of prompting from Brown Owl (and an interesting amalgamation of the old and new one at one point!) but the shy-er girl (who I was with in the game) got hers out with no prompting and it was nice and loud despite a few tears when her parents arrived because she didn't want to do it.
We finished off the meeting with a quick song: 'Hole at the Bottom of the Sea' (lyrics here) and then sent the girls home. It was a good meeting and fairly low maintenance as we were just pointing the girls in the right direction. They complained initially when we told them we were doing codes this evening but they all seemed to enjoy it and even requested that we do Morse Code at some point, with torches, so it must have been a success on some parts!
This week we did some more for the Big Brownie Birthday badge. We decided to do codes. The girls were given a photocopy of a page from the Adventure book which had a code on for them to crack. It was just a basic a=26, b=25 etc. but it took some explaining to the girls about how they could go about cracking it. They had been given some letters to start with so we were getting them to write the alphabet out (some girls had problems with that, which surprised me...) and put in the numbers underneath so they could spot any patterns. Eventually, they did pick up on what we were getting at and, once they knew the code, it was easy for them to then solve it and find all the words.
We then gave them another piece of paper with two codes explained on. One was Pig Pen and the other was the mobile phone code. They were then told they could write a message to their friend who would then have to decode it. Some girls decided to carry on using the basic substitution code to write messages and a couple tried to use the Pig Pen cypher. One of the Young Leaders also wrote out two messages in Pig Pen for the girls to try and decode. None of them asked me about the mobile phone code and I don't think any of them did it - probably because they didn't understand; I'm not sure how many of them actually have mobiles.
The codes in the Adventure book photocopy were all about Iranian New Year (which incidentally is some time soon) so we decided to play the Iranian smiling game (instructions here) because we had some spare time. Brown Owl chose the two girls who were making their Promise that night to start off and one of the Young Leaders and I went with them to the first person as they're both quite shy. The girl I was with really didn't want to make a fool of herself making girls smile so we didn't even get the first girl to smile but the other girl got a few people to smile. The game went very well - now that we've steered away from playing fishes continually, the girls seem to enjoy playing games more and play fairly - and this is a fairly popular one too because it gives the girls an excuse to be a little bit silly without getting told off!
We then had the Promise ceremony for the two new girls. One of them managed her Promise with a little bit of prompting from Brown Owl (and an interesting amalgamation of the old and new one at one point!) but the shy-er girl (who I was with in the game) got hers out with no prompting and it was nice and loud despite a few tears when her parents arrived because she didn't want to do it.
We finished off the meeting with a quick song: 'Hole at the Bottom of the Sea' (lyrics here) and then sent the girls home. It was a good meeting and fairly low maintenance as we were just pointing the girls in the right direction. They complained initially when we told them we were doing codes this evening but they all seemed to enjoy it and even requested that we do Morse Code at some point, with torches, so it must have been a success on some parts!
Monday 3 March 2014
Design a Room
27/02/14
This evening we did some more of the Big Brownie Birthday badge by getting the girls to design their future bedrooms. This can also count towards their Brownie Adventure badges as one of the challenges. We gave them several options for how they could design their room - either by drawing it on a piece of paper as if they were stood by the door, looking in; by drawing a floor plan from above; or by creating a 3D model of it. The 3D model was an idea Brown Owl had which she thought might be more interesting for the girls to do but it turned out to be far harder than we had anticipated... Most of the girls had a pretty good go at using the templates that Brown Owl had photocopied but they hadn't copied very well so some of the girls were getting confused as to which lines were dotty and therefore needed cutting along and which lines they needed to fold along. That meant that us leaders were kept quite busy helping the girls because the vast majority wanted to do the 3D model! Most of them turned out quite well though - even if most of them weren't coloured in because it took too long to make them.
We finished and tidied up with a few minutes to spare so we decided to sing the song I'd planned for my Chinese New Year evening - 'My Ship Sailed From China' (lyrics here). The girls found it quite funny!
It was a good evening tonight - I got to sit and help the girls which is one of the things I love about Brownies. And they all got stuck in and tried even if they couldn't really do it all, which is why we decided it could count towards their Brownie Adventure challenge section too.
This evening we did some more of the Big Brownie Birthday badge by getting the girls to design their future bedrooms. This can also count towards their Brownie Adventure badges as one of the challenges. We gave them several options for how they could design their room - either by drawing it on a piece of paper as if they were stood by the door, looking in; by drawing a floor plan from above; or by creating a 3D model of it. The 3D model was an idea Brown Owl had which she thought might be more interesting for the girls to do but it turned out to be far harder than we had anticipated... Most of the girls had a pretty good go at using the templates that Brown Owl had photocopied but they hadn't copied very well so some of the girls were getting confused as to which lines were dotty and therefore needed cutting along and which lines they needed to fold along. That meant that us leaders were kept quite busy helping the girls because the vast majority wanted to do the 3D model! Most of them turned out quite well though - even if most of them weren't coloured in because it took too long to make them.
We finished and tidied up with a few minutes to spare so we decided to sing the song I'd planned for my Chinese New Year evening - 'My Ship Sailed From China' (lyrics here). The girls found it quite funny!
It was a good evening tonight - I got to sit and help the girls which is one of the things I love about Brownies. And they all got stuck in and tried even if they couldn't really do it all, which is why we decided it could count towards their Brownie Adventure challenge section too.
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