Thinking Day trip

15/02/15

Firstly, apologies that this is a little late, coursework deadlines loomed this past fortnight!

I went home for Thinking Day as all the other adults, except Brown Owl, were going on away during half term and couldn't make it to our District Thinking Day celebrations. I'm not complaining about this by the way; I was planning on coming home for it anyway!

We took 3 coaches of Rainbows, Brownies, Guides and Leaders up to Thinktank in Birmingham. It is a science museum with 4 different floors and a garden, all filled with interactive things for children to explore.

It got off to a bit of a rocky start when the coach with the District Commissioner on got stuck in traffic and we were the first there. Luckily they weren't too far behind us and we soon got to go in. We were taken to a room by a member of staff and the girls were told to stay within sight of a leader and not to run or use the lifts (as they are meant for disabled users). Then we went in and were let loose, so to speak. Each unit set their own rules for where the girls were allowed to go. We decided that, as we had 10 girls, 2 YLs and 2 adults that we would all stick together and work our way from floor 0 (where we started) up to floor 4 at the top.

Floor 0 wasn't particularly interactive so the girls quickly became bored (although they were fascinated by the water tipping machine and insisted we had to wait for it to fill up and tip over again because they wanted to see if they'd get wet (it went every 5 minutes or so)!

We then ate lunch before moving up to the next floor. This floor was more interactive with lots of things for the girls to touch and experiment with. They spent quite a bit of time there before we could persuade them to move on up to the next floor. They soon discovered that it was a brilliant idea though, as on that floor was a mock street complete with doctor/dentist, post office, shop, cafe and loads of dressing up costumes! They spent ages in there, and we had a struggle to keep track of where they all were. Luckily, there was on;y one entrance/exit to that section so Brown Owl waited there to make sure no one left without us knowing and the 2 YLs and I wandered around, making sure our girls were fine. There were loads of other leaders and girls in there too so I'm sure, if anything had happened, they would have been in capable hands anyway (and all our girls wear their unit name tape so they can be reunited with us).

Eventually, we persuaded them to leave that area and go outside to the garden. The garden contained loads of water related activities and was entirely self contained so we let them loose and sat with some other leaders discussing Macaroni Woods (our pack holiday location of choice) as they are planning on taking their girls there and wanted to know what it was like. Quite a few of our girls got soaked, so we suggested going inside again to get warm and to finish off the final floor of the main museum.

The top floor was all based around medicine and technology which the girls didn't find particularly interesting (to my dismay, being a CompSci student myself - note to self: run meeting on how awesome technology is), so we went back down and gave them the choice of going back in the mock street or spending their money in the shop, as we didn't have much time left before we had to leave. Most of them chose to come into the shop and I supervised them by the till and directed them back to Brown Owl when they had bought what they wanted.

We arrived back at our coach a minute or two late and were surprised to see we were the first of all the units to get back! A few others then arrived and one of the coaches filled up enough to leave. Then the rainbows on our coach got back but we were still missing the other Brownie unit. Another load of girls and leaders arrived in the car park - most of them got on the second coach but a handful got on ours. We double checked that we were ready to go and that unit said no, they were missing their Tawny Owl and a few girls. We had to pull out of the car park then, to let them lock the gate and we waited for a while. Finally, the rest of their unit turned up - as it turned out, they were trying to get out of the ground floor, despite us having come in on level 2, and couldn't get out of any of the doors...

After that minor mishap, we set off home. On the way, one of our YLs got a text from her sister on a different coach to say their driver had somehow managed to get on the motorway going North instead of South and they were running late! The third coach had got stuck in traffic again so, even though we were the last to leave by quite a large margin, we ended up being the first coach to make it back!

It was a great day and the girls all seemed to thoroughly enjoy themselves. I think this was a perfect trip for the girls as it shows them that science can be fun and interactive and will hopefully encourage some of them to consider going down that route as they get older, something which I am extremely passionate about being a woman in technology myself.