Final Skills Builder Evening

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.