Skills Builders Part III

24/01/19

This evening we started off by naming our new Polar Bear who arrived a few weeks ago. We wrote all the suggested names on pieces of paper and spread them out around the room on chairs. Each girl was then given 2 tokens with which to vote for her favourite. Once everyone had voted, we removed the names which got no or very few votes and everyone took back their 2 tokens and voted again. This time there was a very clear winner so we accepted it as his name - Snowy. If the votes had been more spread out, we would have removed the lower few again and repeated until a winner was found.

Now we had named our polar bear, the 5 new girls were given the opportunity to choose which of our two Skills Builders groups they wanted to join. I then took the Innovate group and we did the 'I Have an Idea' activity. We started off with Kim's game - we had a variety of different items which we hid under a blanket. We then uncovered the items and the girls had 30 seconds to look at them all and remember as many as they could. They then had to go and write down all the ones they could remember in small groups. We then came back to the pile and went through all the different items. I was quite impressed - one group managed to get 16 of the 17 items! The girls then split off into their groups again and thought of an invention they wanted to make. They had to draw a picture of their idea, label it, and give it a name. We had varying degrees of success with that activity - one group, with the help of the Young Leader, came up with a hob which you could set a maximum temperature for an it would turn off if it went over that temperature, so your food didn't bubble over. The second group designed a robot that would do anything you asked it to. They ended up with 4 slightly different designs of the same thing, as each girl wanted to do it 'her way'! The third and final group ended up with 3 completely different inventions - a pizza maker, a toy maker, and a tree house maker. We then had all the girls present their ideas to the rest of the groups and then we voted on the girls favourite one - this time they had 3 tokens and placed them on the ideas they thought were the best. The winner, by 1 point, was the pizza maker, followed by the hob.

The Lead group were doing the 'Leader Goals' card. They had to think of all the qualities a good leader should have and then think about a role model (real or fictional) who was a good leader. They had to draw a picture of them and write all their leadership traits around them. They then had to draw a picture of themselves and write their leadership traits around their picture. Finally, they had to compare the role model with themselves and see where they could improve to become a better leader.

The girls all seemed to enjoy this evening, although the girls who chose Innovate back when we chose got the better deal tonight in my opinion. I think the activity the Lead girls were doing was by far the least interesting of the 5 but at least they have got it out the way and can have fun for the remaining sessions.