First Meeting Back - Introducing the New Programme

06/09/18

This was our first meeting back after the summer and we thought we would take the time to introduce the girls to the new programme. We are going to be running a bit of a mixture while we, as leaders, get our heads round how it all works but we wanted to get the girls enthused from the beginning and help them understand the different themes a bit more. We also had a Scouting imposter this week - my other half (who's a Beaver Leader) came to the meeting as he is coming on pack holiday with us and we thought it best he meet the girls properly before then!

We started off by explaining to the girls in the pow wow that Guiding had changed the programme, which we told them meant that all the books and badges had changed, but that we would still do the same sorts of things in meetings. We then split them into their sixes and gave each six a pack containing all of the badges (just printed onto paper and cut out) and a badge book. We got them to group them into interest badges, skills builders, and theme awards. We then asked them to pick an interest badge which sounded interesting and find it in the book to decide if they would actually do it after reading the clauses. We had a few problems with them finding the badges in the books but once we pointed out there was a contents page at the front, they were fine! Quite a few, however, didn't understand what part they had to read to see what they had to do and a lot of them said "doI really have to read all of this?!". This was something us as leaders had picked up on when we first opened the books - it is very wordy for some of the younger girls and is not as clear as the old badges what the actual clause is.

We then collected in all the theme awards and put them to one side. The leaders all handed out skills builders and interest badges randomly, one to each girl. They then had to find a partner who had the other part of the theme award (we told them about the 4 hours of activities but didn't include it in the game). Once they were in a pair, one girl with an interest badge, and one with a skills builder, they could go and claim the theme award. We encountered a lot of confusion over which theme the badges were, as there are pale pink, dark pink, and purple ones, and the badges in each theme are not a uniform colour. I had already flagged this as a potential issue, and my suspicions were confirmed in this game! If they could not find a partner, they could go and swap their badge for a different one with a leader. We ended up strategically giving out badges to the last few girls to make sure they found a partner! Once they were in pairs, with a theme award between them, we then told them the requirements for the Brownie Gold badge. We then got them to get into a group of girls who could get the award, i.e. one of each theme award. There was mass confusion for a bit, especially in needing all 6 colours, not just 6 badges, and then we discovered that no one had gained the Express Myself theme award and so no one could get the Gold!

We then told the girls we were going to play a game which was part of the new programme. We chose 'Fox, Frog, Flea', from the Have Adventures UMAs. We gave up trying to explain food webs - the girls had heard of food chains but couldn't grasp the concept that it could be a web instead. We explained the rules - essentially you have 2 teams, they choose to be one of the three animals, each team lines up facing each other down the middle of the room and does the action associated with their animal, and then one chases the other according to the rules on the card with any girls that get caught swapping teams. The game itself went pretty well, although we started off with quite a few rounds which were draws which the girls thought was hilarious. The girls really seemed to enjoy it, but we did have to put a time limit on it instead of playing until all girls were on one team.

We then needed to sort out sixes for pack holiday which is coming up pretty soon. We have 3 sixes which are different to our regular meeting sixes so we named the three sixers and then asked the rest of the girls to split themselves evenly between them. Some years we specific that each six must have a certain number of girls who have been on a pack holiday before in them but this year we only have 5 of the 18 who have been before (of which, 3 are the sixers) so we let them just choose whoever they wanted to be with. They then had to choose a name for their six which fits in with our Olympics theme. We decided to go with Olympic sports instead of countries as last year we did Around the World. Luckily they chose pretty quickly, and we now have Swimming, Gymnastics, and Horse Riding. We made a note of who was in each six and then moved onto another part of the new programme.

We chose the 'Magic Moving Postcards' from the Express Myself UMAs. We got the girls into their actual sixes and gave them 15 minutes to come up with whatever they wanted. As leaders, we moved round the room settling small disagreements and giving suggestions. We then got each six to perform their mime and all the other girls had to guess where they had been and what they had done. There were a few slightly tenuous links but we guessed all of them eventually.

We had a few minutes to spare so we decided to play a game to end the meeting. We chose Pirates but decided not to get girls out and treat it as a practice game for the new girls to learn how to play as we didn't have enough time to get all the girls out.

This was a great first meeting back, it is nice to see all the girls again, especially as I have been away at university and haven't seen them as regularly, although there are a lot of new faces and names to learn! Our first foray into the new programme wasn't too bad, but it will take time to get used to having prescribed activities to do rather than free reign to do whatever we want all the time. The girls seemed to enjoy the activities we did, although they did also seem a bit confused to start, but that will work itself out, especially once we have made our sticker chart for the new programme (we have ones for the Adventure badges and they work really well as a visual aid to the girls).