Tunnelling

07/06/18

This week we went to the local Guiding headquarters to go grass sledging and tunneling. Unfortunately, it started raining as we left to go up there so we couldn't grass sledge as the brakes would not work on wet grass. Instead, we just did the tunnels with all the girls at once, instead of half and half.

We met the girls in the car park and then walked up the hill to the tunnels, which luckily are under a giant tree so the leaders don't get soaked while the girls are in them! We made a pile of water bottles and some leaders went round removing the plastic stoppers from the ends of all the tunnels which keep animals out. We then did a quick safety brief for the girls: essentially, which holes were the entrances to each tunnel system, and that we had head torches and knee pads if they needed them. There are three tunnel systems here, one is a simple straight line where you can see the other end which most of the girls go through first, to get a feel for what the tunnels are like inside. There is then one which is like a lowercase letter 'h' with a bit of a bend in the left hand leg so you can't see any exits when you go in. The final one has about 6 exits and part of it goes round in a circle so the girls can really explore.

Small tunnel system

Loop of large tunnel system

We then started handing out head torches. There are not enough for all the girls to have one, so we said they should line up at the entrance to the tunnel they wanted to go in and anyone who had just come out of a tunnel had to go and give their torch to someone at the front of a line. Some of the girls decided that they didn't want to wait for torches and they would go in without one.

I spent most of my time stood near the entrances, making sure there were no arguments about the torches, and that girls weren't left waiting for too long. We then had the problem that the torches were running out of batteries so Brown Owl went to find the organiser to get some more. She came back with a box of 48 so we were set then!

One of the girls came over to me part way through and said that people kept getting stuck in a dead end and were scared so I asked her to take me to the dead end because we were pretty sure there weren't any. We climbed over the tunnels to a point where a tunnel seemed to disappear into the nettles at the endge of the field. I was explaining to the girl that even if there was supposed to be a way out, they wouldn't want come out of it or they would get stung when I realised that it actually did a 90 degree left turn so we followed it a bit more and lo and behold, there was still a stopper on the end! I took it off and let the girls know that there was no longer a dead end!

A bit later, I caught site of some girls playing next to an exit, and then a small flash of something black rolling. I headed over there quickly, confusing Brown Owl as I thrust spare batteries back in her hand and disappeared at speed! As I came out from under the trees, I realised that some of the older girls were attempting to roll one of the stoppers down the hill. I shouted at them to stop and then made them roll it back up the bit of the hill it had gone down, while explaining to them that that was quite dangerous, especially as there is a tented village at the bottom of the hill!

We eventually had to tell the girls to get out of the tunnels - they didn't want to leave! The leaders quickly went round putting the stoppers back on and then we headed back down to meet the parents.

This meeting, although not quite as planned, still went very well. If we do it again though, we will suggest to the girls to bring their own torch as that then stops them spending time waiting around for a head torch. We have also asked if there any other dates than we could reattempt the grass sledging as the girls were annoyed that we couldn't do it.

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I am now going on holiday and graduating so there will be no new posts until July 23rd 2018.

Games Night and My Last Meeting | University

24/05/18

This meeting was my last one at my university unit. We were going to take the girls for a walk in the nearby woods as the weather has been so great recently but, unfortunately, the good weather didn't last and rain was forecast for the whole day so we changed our plans and decided to have a games night at the hall instead.

We started the evening with a quick game of Horses and Jockeys as everyone arrived and then played a few rounds of Shoe Bomb once everyone was there.

We then played a game which one of the leaders had found on a Guiding Facebook Group. We separated the girls into 3 teams randomly and gave each team two large-ish pieces of cardboard and one smaller one. The teams lined up at one end of the hall (we put out a line of chairs to mark the start). We then picked one girl from each team to be blindfolded and two girls who were not allowed to speak. We deliberately picked a quiet girl to be blindfolded and the noisy ones to be silent - there was absolute uproar from the noisy ones! The girls then had to get their whole team from one side of the hall to the other without falling in the 'lava' (stepping off their cardboard). If the girl with the blindfold peeped or a silent girl spoke, the whole team had to go back to the start.

To start with, we said that their whole team had to be touching the end wall for them to win, without stepping in the lava but it soon became very clear that the pieces of cardboard were not big enough for all the girls to get on in one go and so we created a 'safe zone' with some more chairs at the other end. Once a girl was in the safe zone, she remained there even if other members of her team had been sent back to the start, and we allowed them to talk and remove the blindfolds there too. It was quite entertaining watching the girls attempting to get to the other end, especially those who were blindfolded. Each team had a different tactic - one team had one of the older girls stand on a piece of cardboard, put the other piece in front of her, lift up the blindfolded girl and put her on the new piece, stand on the new piece herself and then move the previous piece on front of them and continue! I was very impressed as the other two teams were doing variations on "take a small step with your left foot. Put it down. Now the right foot. NO that's too far!" and ended up getting sent back multiple times. Quite a few girls also stood with one foot on each piece of cardboard and skated across to the other side before trying to throw the cardboard back to the start. Sometimes they were successful and other times they then had to run across the lava to rescue the cardboard and then they were sent back to the start too!

Eventually, every girl made it to the safe zone. They then said they wanted to play again but switch up who was blindfolded and silent. We were more than happy for them to do that, so we ended up playing 2 more rounds of this game before we called it quits and got the parachute out instead. We played a couple of quick games of In 'n' Out where alternate girls are trying to keep the ball on the parachute or get it off the parachute. That didn't go as well as planned because the girls all just shook it violently and the ball fired off the parachute and across the room multiple times!

We then decided to play Sharks. The girls absolutely loved this game, and there was a lot of screaming from the girls and laughter from the adults as girls were being pulled under the parachute but friends near them were hanging onto them for dear life. I'm not sure what anyone passing the hall thought we were doing - it sounded like we were murdering the lot of them! There were quite a few shocked faces from the parents as they walked in to pick up their daughters.

We then put the parachute away and got into a circle. The other leaders told the Brownies that tonight was my last night and they gave me a small gift - a National Book Token voucher (very apt for me!). They also apologised that they had not got a card tonight because one of the girls who was tasked with getting all the girls' signatures at school had left it at her friends house! The girls all seemed to be sad to see me go - one even asked "are you leaving forever?". I will be very sad to leave them, some of them I have known for several years as they were Rainbows when I helped out in my second year and had moved up to Brownies by the time I returned after my placement year. I had said that I will keep in touch though. And then, as a final touch, once we had sung Brownie Bells and the girls were leaving, the card appeared - the Mum of the girl who had forgotten it had heard as she arrived that it was at the friends house and had run up the road and back to go and get it for me!

This isn't the end of my Guiding story though, I am heading home from university and returning to my home unit in a few weeks, so stay tuned for that!