21/03/19
This evening we did the fifth and final part of the two Skills Builders we have been working on, Innovate and Lead Stage 2. The girls who were doing Lead did "Design Time" and the girls doing Innovate did "Made to Measure". I was with the Lead group. Our task was to create a zoo. The girls first had to think of 5 animals that they would like to put in their zoo, on their own. We provided lots of books on animals to give them some ideas and they could be as rare and unique as they wanted (we even had a few dragons!). I then paired the girls up by pulling names out of a hat. In their pairs they had to create their zoo but there was only space for 5 animals. They had to discuss which animals they would like and why. Finally, the pairs had to join up into 4s and do the same thing again so they were left wth 5 animals from the 20 each 4 would have started with. I had an odd number of pairs so I had one group with 3 pairs in who were allowed 7 animals in their zoo instead. Once they had narrowed down their choice, they could draw a picture of their zoo and give it a name. I was quite impressed with most of the girls - when narrowing down their animals, lots of them said they could each choose 2 and then the 5th one would be a joint decision, and the same happened when they got into bigger groups - they all chose 1 and the last one was a group decision. That was a suggestions written on the card but we stopped giving the girls the card as it just caused confusion so I was quite proud that they came up with that idea all by themselves!
The group doing Innovate were making sponge boats. We had bought lots of the scourer sponges (the yellow ones with a rough green side) and the girls could make a sail for their boat which was stuck on a cocktail stick in the sponge. They then had a straw and they blew their boat in a tub of water. We measured the distance that it travelled 3 times and they worked out the average (we provided calculators!). They could then look at the boats that went the furthest and redesign their sail based on the best ones.
Once we had finished the activities, we all sat in a Brownie circle and the Lead girls showed the pictures of their zoo and explained what animals they had in them. The girls who had been doing Innovate then voted on what they thought was the best zoo. We then handed out the badges to those girls who had been at all 5 meetings. We had 17 of our 26 girls get a badge. Of those who didn't get a badge, 5 were new starters who joined after we started and the other 4 have only missed 1 meeting each. We have told those girls that we are going to do a catch up session soon and that we haven't forgotten about them! This was quite a good evening, and I was very surprised that my group got along without arguments this week! Perhaps it's something to do with the fact that we muddled them up and they weren't working with their friends for once.
Monday 25 March 2019
Monday 18 March 2019
Easter Bookmarks and Promises
14/03/19
One of our older Brownies has been asking for a while if she can run an activity so she can tick off the last part of her More Adventures badge before she turns 11 in May. This week we finally had time to slot that in and she chose to make Easter Chicken Bookmarks.
The Brownie showed everyone how to fold the main shape (you can also find the instructions online) and then the girls went and did that bit while the Brownie handed out all the extra bits that she had pre-cut for them to stick on. Once they had finished their chicken bookmark, she had also bought some patterned paper so they could make fortune tellers.
Tonight we also had 4 new girls making their promises, so about 30 minutes before the end, any members of their family who wanted to watch showed up - there were loads of them this time! Some girls just bring one parent, tonight we had grandparents, siblings, and lots of parents! We always ask the parents to come a bit earlier than they need to so they can watch us doing an activity - this time we chose to play 2 games of Pirates, at request of the girls. We did have to remove Starboard as that is where all the parents were sat, and we banned hiding under the tables with tea and coffee on too!
We then proceeded to enrol all 4 new girls and then sang two songs to finish (for once we finished early!) - we sang Hole at the Bottom of the Sea, and Cecil is My Caterpillar.
This was a great evening - the girl who ran it is very mature for her age and was very good at explaining the steps to the girls and going round helping them all.
One of our older Brownies has been asking for a while if she can run an activity so she can tick off the last part of her More Adventures badge before she turns 11 in May. This week we finally had time to slot that in and she chose to make Easter Chicken Bookmarks.
The Brownie showed everyone how to fold the main shape (you can also find the instructions online) and then the girls went and did that bit while the Brownie handed out all the extra bits that she had pre-cut for them to stick on. Once they had finished their chicken bookmark, she had also bought some patterned paper so they could make fortune tellers.
Tonight we also had 4 new girls making their promises, so about 30 minutes before the end, any members of their family who wanted to watch showed up - there were loads of them this time! Some girls just bring one parent, tonight we had grandparents, siblings, and lots of parents! We always ask the parents to come a bit earlier than they need to so they can watch us doing an activity - this time we chose to play 2 games of Pirates, at request of the girls. We did have to remove Starboard as that is where all the parents were sat, and we banned hiding under the tables with tea and coffee on too!
We then proceeded to enrol all 4 new girls and then sang two songs to finish (for once we finished early!) - we sang Hole at the Bottom of the Sea, and Cecil is My Caterpillar.
This was a great evening - the girl who ran it is very mature for her age and was very good at explaining the steps to the girls and going round helping them all.
Wednesday 13 March 2019
Thinking Day Trip
09/03/19
Today was our annual District Thinking Day trip which I organised as part of my Queen's Guide (full post on the process of organising this trip will come soon!). We took 3 coaches of Rainbows, Brownies, and Guides to Techniquest in Cardiff. We all met in a car park and each unit met all their girls and waited for the coaches. The coaches turned up perfectly on time and we loaded everyone up quickly as it was raining pretty heavily. We only had one unit who were missing one girl by the time we were all on the coach but they managed to contact her and found out she had misread the drop off time but was only across the road so arrived very quickly.
We then set off, in convoy. The girls were remarkably well behaved on the coach, although we did have a near constant chorus of 'are we nearly there yet'..! The drive isn't too bad, about 90 minutes, so we were there pretty quickly. Once we arrived, we got all the girls off the coach and lined them up against the wall while we paid and figured out where they needed to go. Each coach had been assigned a different lunchslot and they put their lunchboxes in big bins so they didn't have to carry them around all day. We then went into the centre - all the leaders were responsible for their own girls during the day, some units just let their girls loose and wandered round keeping an eye on them (there are 2 floors and only one way out) and other units assigned girls to a leader and they had to stay together. Our unit took the latter approach, to a certain extent, in that each leader was responsible for 3/4 girls but we generally let them roam around as long as they were always within eyesight.
The girls had great fun there, with one girl even commenting that is 'wasn't very sciency' so it was great! Each coach was called over the tannoy to go and have their lunch - we had a half hour slot in a cabin round the back of the centre. I also had a list of 15 minute slots that the leaders could go to the gift shop in, as the shop was way too small for us all to descend on it at the end of the visit! Our unit opted to go to the shop just before lunch so the girls could then leave their purchases in their bags. When our lunch slot was called, we all headed across to the cabin and walked in just as a Guide opened her water bottle of lemonade and it squirted straight up, hit the ceiling, and sprayed down over several girls nearby! All the other leaders were staring, gobsmacked at the situation, and then the Guide was stood on the table, wiping it off the ceiling with a paper towel! We sat and ate with our girls and then headed back into the centre.
Each unit also had the option of booking onto the show for the day, Fire vs Ice. There were several showings through the day and we chose the last one. There were two presenters who did a 30 minute show about Fire and Ice through various science experiements, including dropping a bouncy ball in liquid nitrogen to turn it into a 'marble' (it lost all elasticity so just thunked into the ground, instead of bouncing!) and setting alight liquid oxygen. The girls all really enjoyed that part.
Once it was over, we headed to the cabin one last time so we could remake our promises. We got that over and done with very quickly and then dismissed the units one coach at a time to go to the toilet and get on the coaches. Once a coach was full, it headed off. All the coaches then stopped at a services on the way home and the girls bought dinner there (or a second packed lunch in the case of girls with allergies). This is something that all the girls love to do so, even though it is a bit chaotic for the leaders, we tend to do it anyway. It worked quite nicely that we had staggered the coach departures from Techniquest though as it meant we were a bit more spread out at the services as there are not actually enough tables at the one we stopped at for all the girls to be sat down at once. The coaches then headed home once they had finished eating and the leaders handed their girls back to their parents.
The trip went incredibly smoothly and lots of the girls and leaders came up to congratulate me and say it had gone great. Now I just need to write it up and get my District Commissioner to sign me off for that part of my Queen's Guide and I'm one step closer!
Today was our annual District Thinking Day trip which I organised as part of my Queen's Guide (full post on the process of organising this trip will come soon!). We took 3 coaches of Rainbows, Brownies, and Guides to Techniquest in Cardiff. We all met in a car park and each unit met all their girls and waited for the coaches. The coaches turned up perfectly on time and we loaded everyone up quickly as it was raining pretty heavily. We only had one unit who were missing one girl by the time we were all on the coach but they managed to contact her and found out she had misread the drop off time but was only across the road so arrived very quickly.
We then set off, in convoy. The girls were remarkably well behaved on the coach, although we did have a near constant chorus of 'are we nearly there yet'..! The drive isn't too bad, about 90 minutes, so we were there pretty quickly. Once we arrived, we got all the girls off the coach and lined them up against the wall while we paid and figured out where they needed to go. Each coach had been assigned a different lunchslot and they put their lunchboxes in big bins so they didn't have to carry them around all day. We then went into the centre - all the leaders were responsible for their own girls during the day, some units just let their girls loose and wandered round keeping an eye on them (there are 2 floors and only one way out) and other units assigned girls to a leader and they had to stay together. Our unit took the latter approach, to a certain extent, in that each leader was responsible for 3/4 girls but we generally let them roam around as long as they were always within eyesight.
The girls had great fun there, with one girl even commenting that is 'wasn't very sciency' so it was great! Each coach was called over the tannoy to go and have their lunch - we had a half hour slot in a cabin round the back of the centre. I also had a list of 15 minute slots that the leaders could go to the gift shop in, as the shop was way too small for us all to descend on it at the end of the visit! Our unit opted to go to the shop just before lunch so the girls could then leave their purchases in their bags. When our lunch slot was called, we all headed across to the cabin and walked in just as a Guide opened her water bottle of lemonade and it squirted straight up, hit the ceiling, and sprayed down over several girls nearby! All the other leaders were staring, gobsmacked at the situation, and then the Guide was stood on the table, wiping it off the ceiling with a paper towel! We sat and ate with our girls and then headed back into the centre.
Each unit also had the option of booking onto the show for the day, Fire vs Ice. There were several showings through the day and we chose the last one. There were two presenters who did a 30 minute show about Fire and Ice through various science experiements, including dropping a bouncy ball in liquid nitrogen to turn it into a 'marble' (it lost all elasticity so just thunked into the ground, instead of bouncing!) and setting alight liquid oxygen. The girls all really enjoyed that part.
Once it was over, we headed to the cabin one last time so we could remake our promises. We got that over and done with very quickly and then dismissed the units one coach at a time to go to the toilet and get on the coaches. Once a coach was full, it headed off. All the coaches then stopped at a services on the way home and the girls bought dinner there (or a second packed lunch in the case of girls with allergies). This is something that all the girls love to do so, even though it is a bit chaotic for the leaders, we tend to do it anyway. It worked quite nicely that we had staggered the coach departures from Techniquest though as it meant we were a bit more spread out at the services as there are not actually enough tables at the one we stopped at for all the girls to be sat down at once. The coaches then headed home once they had finished eating and the leaders handed their girls back to their parents.
The trip went incredibly smoothly and lots of the girls and leaders came up to congratulate me and say it had gone great. Now I just need to write it up and get my District Commissioner to sign me off for that part of my Queen's Guide and I'm one step closer!
Monday 4 March 2019
St. David's Day
28/02/19
Given it is St. David's Day tomorrow, we thought we would do some activities to celebrate this week. We started with the limited edition UMA, 'Make Your Snake' which we modified to be a dragon instead. The first comment that our girls had was 'Cecil can't be a dragon, Cecil is a caterpillar...'! We split them into the sixes and gave them a bag with 6 different coloured tokens in (we didn't want to faff around finding them hidden around the room!). The girl pulled a token out of their bag and came up to a leader to get post-it notes in that colour. A leader then read them the question and made sure they understood it before leaving them to write their answer on their post-it note and stick it in the right area of Cecil. I helped a few of the younger ones with their spelling and understanding of the question. My favourite conversation was with one of our newest girls:
We then spent the remaining 30 minutes making daffodils. You cut some daffodil petals out of yellow craft foam ad cut a hole in the centre - Brown Owl had drawn them out already so the hole was the right size. You then took a strip of slightly darker yellow foam and cut some wiggles out of one long edge. You take a pipe cleaner and roll the long piece around the end of it, with most of the pipe cleaner sticking out the flat edge of the foam. Push this through the hole in the other piece of foam. Make some leaves from green foam and twist them into the bottom of the pipe cleaner. They end up looking like these ones, from Baker Ross.
The girls all enjoyed the UMA more than we thought they would, and we got lots of interesting comments from them - from the sounds of it, a cake/pudding night would go down very well! They also liked making the daffodils, although a few of them struggled rolling the centre tight enough to fit through the hole. This meeting flew by really quickly!
There may not be a blog next week as I have to go on a work trip and am not sure if I'll be back in time, although we are also going on our Thinking Day trip on Saturday so I might get that typed up in time instead.
Given it is St. David's Day tomorrow, we thought we would do some activities to celebrate this week. We started with the limited edition UMA, 'Make Your Snake' which we modified to be a dragon instead. The first comment that our girls had was 'Cecil can't be a dragon, Cecil is a caterpillar...'! We split them into the sixes and gave them a bag with 6 different coloured tokens in (we didn't want to faff around finding them hidden around the room!). The girl pulled a token out of their bag and came up to a leader to get post-it notes in that colour. A leader then read them the question and made sure they understood it before leaving them to write their answer on their post-it note and stick it in the right area of Cecil. I helped a few of the younger ones with their spelling and understanding of the question. My favourite conversation was with one of our newest girls:
Me: The yellow question is "what would you miss if you weren't a Brownie?"Once all the sixes had done all 6 questions, we all sat around Cecil and discussed the remaining question - how would you encourage Cecil's sister, Cecilia, to join Brownies. We first asked the girls why Cecilia might think she can't be a Brownie and one of the girls, completely deadpan, just said "because she's a dragon"!! We then discussed why Cecilia might want to join Brownies (if she wasn't a dragon!). My favourite comment we had for this question was "to give your parents a break!". Here is our whole dragon (his head is the pale pink end!)
Her: You!
Me: Awww, that's very sweet, thank you
Her: No, actually, Brown Owl
Me: Oh, so you wouldn't miss me then?
Her: OK, both of you! What's your name? *struggles to spell my name*
Me: What about <other leader>?
Her: Who's she?
Me: *points at other leader*
Her: Oh yeah, how do I spell her name?
We then spent the remaining 30 minutes making daffodils. You cut some daffodil petals out of yellow craft foam ad cut a hole in the centre - Brown Owl had drawn them out already so the hole was the right size. You then took a strip of slightly darker yellow foam and cut some wiggles out of one long edge. You take a pipe cleaner and roll the long piece around the end of it, with most of the pipe cleaner sticking out the flat edge of the foam. Push this through the hole in the other piece of foam. Make some leaves from green foam and twist them into the bottom of the pipe cleaner. They end up looking like these ones, from Baker Ross.
The girls all enjoyed the UMA more than we thought they would, and we got lots of interesting comments from them - from the sounds of it, a cake/pudding night would go down very well! They also liked making the daffodils, although a few of them struggled rolling the centre tight enough to fit through the hole. This meeting flew by really quickly!
There may not be a blog next week as I have to go on a work trip and am not sure if I'll be back in time, although we are also going on our Thinking Day trip on Saturday so I might get that typed up in time instead.
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