Skills Builders Part 4

14/02/19

This week we continued with the 2 Skills Builders we have been working towards - we are now on activity 4 of 5. The girls doing Lead were teaching each other dance moves, and the girls doing Innovate were building towers from fruit and veg. I was assisting the girls doing Lead. They had to split into 4 teams (ours had 3/4 girls in each). They had to choose a song in their team and then each come up with 2 dance moves to it. They had to teach their dance moves to the rest of their team and then combine them all into a routine which they then performed. We had a wide range of songs, from A Million Dreams from The Greatest Showman, to Katy Perry's Firework - all of which were sung by the girls as they performed because we had no way to play a recording. The girls worked pretty well in their teams, although we had one that split into two because they couldn't decide on a song. They didn't fully grasp the concept of all choosing moves so one of the groups had the older girl teach the two younger ones a routine to a song she knew instead. As leaders, we had to observe the groups and award each team one of 4 awards:

• Leadership Star: for the team that gives the best directions to each other
• Teamwork Champions: for the team that works the best together
• Top Encouragers: for the team that's most encouraging towards each other
• Best Listeners: for the team that listened best to each other

This part worked out perfectly as each group slotted into one category very nicely! Once the girls had each performed their routine, we announced the awards, with a special mention to the girl who had been singing her song nice and loudly and carried on when the girls doing the Innovate task stopped talking and turned round to watch too!

The girls doing Innovate were first given slices of various fruits and veg and asked to try and build the tallest tower they could with them. When they started struggling a bit, they were then given large slices of apples and cocktail sticks - the foundations and support beams - and then they could try again. The aim was to try and show them why buildings don't fall over, although we found that the girls didn't really care about the specifics, they just wanted to build towers and then eat the food! We had some quite impressive structures by the end though:

Once we had finished, we then played 2 games of Pirates before doing the Brownie circle and sending the girls home. This meeting was fairly laid back as we did not have to plan too much. The girls also seemed to enjoy the activity they were doing, and we had very few girls ask if they could swap to the other one.

Next week is half term so I am taking week off from blogging (so I can focus on finalising things for our Thinking Day trip in a few weeks!).

Charity Shop Game/Jigsaw Checking

07/02/19

Near to our meeting place is a charity shop, and Brown Owl knows some of the people who work there. They get lots of donations of items to sell, but can only sell those which are complete. Brown Owl helps them out by frequently collecting jigsaws and checking they have all the pieces. We decided once a few years ago to collect some kid-friendly jigsaws and games and have the Brownies check them instead. Tonight we did that again. We had 3 large bags of jigsaws and games and the girls were told to collect an item from the bag, check all the pieces were there for the games and do the jigsaws to make sure there weren't any missing pieces. If it had all the pieces, then we taped it shut and made a pile, and if there were pieces missing then we made a pile to be binned (as they cannot sell those). The girls all got stuck in with this really quickly and our pile of complete items grew rapidly. There were a couple of jigsaws which were missing a piece, and a game which needed batteries so we couldn't check it at the meeting but other than that it was quite a successful evening. I ended up helping a group of girls who had picked up a box of jigsaws. There were 9 jigsaws, with a variety of number of pieces, all split into bags but with no indication of which one was in which bag. Once you had made the jigsaws, they then joined together into three long thin jigsaws, which had silly little end pieces (which we gave up trying to put on and just counted!). The girls all enjoyed making the jigsaws, but it was quite painful watching some of them trying to put pieces in completely the wrong places (non-edge piece in an edge spot etc.)!

Once we had done all the charity shop items, we had some spare time so we played a game on Tomato (as suggested by a Brownie) - it is like Fish and Chips but instead of a girl saying "Fish and Chips", they say "Tomato" in a funny voice and the girl at the front has to guess who said it. We only had time for a couple of rounds as the girls took ages guessing!

The last thing we did this evening was to hand out the new anniversary badges. We are lucky in that we have a decent sized budget and so we could buy all the previous badges for our girls too. We had loads of them getting 1 year, quite a few getting 2, a handful getting 3 and one girl who had done 5 years (although she ticked over after Brown Owl bought the badges so she didn't get them all tonight)!

This meeting was a nice relaxed one as I just got the opportunity to sit and chat with the girls and do some jigsaws. They all seemed to like being given the responsibility of making sure all the pieces were in everything too, and seemed to grasp the fact that they would be sold to make money for children with disabilities to go on a holiday/trip somewhere. I will definitely be trying to bring this tradition to the unit I join when I move house.

Paper Plane Evening

31/01/19

This evening we started the meeting with a UMA - "Lend a Hand" from the Know Myself theme. We tweaked the card slightly by just writing the items on pieces of card instead of finding the physical items to bring in. We then shuffled them all and pulled one out randomly. The girls then had 30 seconds, in their sixes, to come up with a way they could lend a hand with that item. We then went round the sixes asking them for their idea and the winner (or two occasionally) got a token. Some of the girls seemed to understand the point of this, but others got a bit confused and started thinking of ways other people could help them with the item instead. My personal favourite ideas were the girls who were going to decorate a hammer and use it as a door stop when the door broke, and the girls who were going to use a duster to catch a spider when their friend was scared of it! By doing this activity, quite a few of the girls will now have completed an hour of the Know Myself UMAs and will get a sticker on our wall chart.

We then did our paper plane evening. We had found a book over Christmas which contained instructions for making paper planes, coloured paper to make them, and a variety of games to play once you had. We chose 2 designs for the girls to make - a simple one and a slightly more complex one and they could choose which to make. I ended up helping a group of girls with the more complex one as they were struggling to follow the written instructions. When they had finished, we set up some boxes in the four corners which they could try and throw their plane into in the fewest number of throws. We also set up two games from the book - there was a fold out hangar and a runway and they had to throw their plane along the runway into the hangar at the end. A couple of girls managed, although their planes were generally upsidedown! We also had a piece of card with three holes in it, one underneath the other, which they could try and throw their planes through. That one was quite difficult as the holes were not much bigger than the planes but we didn't have anything bigger to use instead. The girls just got closer until they were able to do it more often!

We finished up the meeting by handing out a few badges - an advanced swimmer, and 3 fire safety ones. The girls seem to have got a burst of energy to do interest badges, having been told that the old ones are stopping at the end of the year! It's almost like they enjoy doing those ones and want to get in as many as they can before they go..! We haven't had a single girl ask about the new badges yet, despite telling them about them on multiple occasions. The girls all seemed to really enjoy this evening too - it was nice to be able to do whatever we wanted, instead of having to follow the new programme and the girls don't seem to know the difference so no problems there!