Stars and Promises

26/06/14

We started off this evening by decorating stars for the Big Brownie Birthday Fun Day in 2 weeks. There were two stars for the girls to decorate: one they will keep and stick a sticker on it at each station on the day and the other which will be given to a randomly selected girl from another unit. They had to write their name on both of them and then what they enjoy most about Brownies on the one that's being given away. They could then draw whatever they wanted on the back of both of them. I was talking to our Guide when there was a bit of commotion from one of the tables. It was only friendly banter but they all kept yelling "I'm gonna tell" so I decided to sit with them to try and calm things down a bit. Colouring the stars kept the girls busy for most of the evening and, after almost an hour, they had all finished and we started tidying up as our Guide was supervising the two hostesses for the Promise ceremony make tea and coffee for the parents of the girls making their Promise tonight. 

As I was helping sweep paper off the table, Brown Owl came over and said that she'd realised that she'd lost a Promise badge somewhere between home and the hall. She asked me if I'd pop home and grab another one for her. Our house is only a 5 minute drive away so I hopped in the car and nipped home. While I was gone, the girls sang a couple of songs to fill the time and entertain the parents. I believe they sang 'Have you ever seen a penguin come to tea?', 'Thunderation' and 'Cuddly Koalas' (lyrics here). When I got back, we started the Promise ceremony. We had two girls making their Promise this evening. They both did really well - one needed prompting but other than that it all went smoothly.

After the Promise ceremony it was time to hand out loads of badges - quite a lot of first, second and third year badges, some Adventure Ons, the two hostesses and two cooks to a girl who'd done them in her own time! Even with the interlude where I went to get the badge we still managed to finish exactly on time! All that was left then was to supervise the two hostesses washing up. We thought we were going to have to take the badge off the first girl ever as we saw her walking across the car park with her mum before doing her part of the washing up but then it turned out she was just taking her things to the car and then coming back! She came back and did her bit and then we could all go home.

It was quite a relaxed evening as all I had to do was sit with some girls and talk to them.

In other news, I've started seriously looking at my Look Wider qualification, now that I've finished my exams. I have done a fair few of the phases already (mostly phase 3s - YL, ALQ, driving test) but I haven't yet completed a whole octant, although I'm quite close. Now I just have some writing up to do and then I have to decide what to do to fill the blanks.

Dragon Boats and my ALQ badge

08/05/14

This evening we finished the dragon boats the girls had started last week. Our first challenge was getting the boats back to Brownies as we couldn't store them there and there was only just enough room in the car for them as us! We managed it, with a little help from a parent at the other end to get them into the hall.

We did show-and-tell and then told the girls that they had until 7 (about 45 minutes at that point) to finish their boats before we raced them. They had just spread themselves around the hall in their sixes and were getting stuck in when the District Commissioner came in. She asked if she could have a few minutes of the units' time as she couldn't come at the end of the meeting so we got the girls into a circle. That took some time as they didn't want to stop so soon but they did all eventually get into the circle. She then presented me with my Adult Leader Qualification! I was quite surprised that it all went through so quickly, but I'm not complaining!

We then let the girls go back to their boats. It was absolute chaos with glitter, paper and pens absolutely everywhere but they seemed to be enjoying themselves. We floated around and helped by cutting sticky tape and settling minor disagreements but we left them to their own devices when it came to the actual making of the boats. 

I had one girl come up and ask me what my badge actually meant. Our conversation went something along the liines of:

Her: Does your badge mean you can be Brown Owl if you want?
Me: Yes, it does.
Her: So you could be Brown Owl and Brown Owl could be your helper? (Brown Owl was within earshot and smiled at me)
Me: Yes but I don't want to just yet.
Her: Don't you want to be a Brown Owl?
Me: I do, but I want to get university out of the way first.
Her: Oh... *runs off again and Brown Owl laughs*

Around 5 past 7 we stopped them and did a quick sweep of the hall with a broom to get most of the mess out of the way. We lined the girls up at one end of the hall in their dragons (and did a fair amount of rapid repairs where they were falling apart!). We invited in a few parents who were waiting outside to watch and then we started the race. The race itself went well with no major problems but then we said they could run back to the other side of the hall. Most of them took this as the cue to run pell-mell back across, ripping the dragons to shreds as they went! It was all done in good humour and all the girls got involved so it was a good way of quickly breaking it down into pieces we could put in a bin bag and in the large bins outside. They all helped fish the pens and glue out of the piles of rubbish that had been swept to one side and then put all the rubbish into yet more bin bags. 

All in all I was very impressed by our girls this week. They worked well together and there were no major disagreements (and only one or two minor ones about what colour it should be). There were no objections to being asked to tidy up either and everyone chipped in and made the job far easier and quicker. It's times like these when I really enjoy being involved in Brownies.

Dragon Boats

01/05/14

Unfortunately I couldn't attend Brownies this week as we had an unexpected open evening at school (last one I ever have to go to though!), but here is what I have been told by Brown Owl.

This week they made dragon boats. I believe it was another part of the Big Brownie Birthday badge. From what I have been told, they got really into making their boats in small groups - so much so that they ran out of time to race them and Brown Owl had to take them home and store them for next week! They were making them in small groups and were given full use of all the spare craft items, including glitter, foam and coloured paper. They made more of a mess this week than they did last week with the cereals! Apparently though, they were very good when Brown Owl asked them to tidy up and the hall was spotless when they were finished.

In other news, I have applied for the Team Digital panel I mentioned a few weeks ago. Fingers crossed all goes well and I get onto it! I'll keep you updated anyway.

Happy Boxes

24/04/13

This evening was yet another Big Brownie Birthday night. We have two activities to go until most of the girls can have their badge.

We had two new girls join tonight, one who was the younger sister of a girl who's just left to go to Guides and the other who knew a few girls from school but not well. She seemed a little bit nervous at first but, once she'd been introduced to her sixer who looked after her all evening, she seemed to get into it and enjoyed herself.

We started off with our usual show-and-tell and circle. Brown Owl then briefly explained to them the new handbooks and how we were going to change the sticker charts slightly but, if they were in the middle of an old badge, they could finish it before moving onto the new ones. They seemed a little confused but eventually I think most of them understood what was going on. We then explained the craft for the evening and got them started.

This evening we were doing one of the compulsory activities from the BBB which entailed them making a 'happy box' which they can take home and fill with things that make them happy (photos, tickets, objects etc.). Brown Owl went out and bought mini packs of cereals so they could all have a box. She left the cereals in them which she then said they could eat during the meeting. In hindsight, this was possibly not the best idea as we ended up with cereals all over the floor! I got some girls to sweep up the biggest mess except when one girl handed the dustpan to her friend, the whole lot was spilt again and then stood in accidentally! We put out all the foam, paper and stickers we have in the cupboard for the girls to help themselves to. I spent most of the evening circulating around the tables, wrapping boxes in paper as the girls were struggling a little bit but, other than that, they just got on with their decorating and I caught up with our Guide and Young Leader.

We then played the butterfly game which we ran out of time to play in a previous meeting. We cut the butterflies the girls had coloured in in half. Brown Owl got the girls to spread the left halves of the butterflies around on the floor and then she gave the right halves to the Leaders. Each sixer was given 3 right halves too and, as a six, they had to find the other half of their butterfly and take it to a Leader who would give them another one to find. We spread out around the room and gave the girls the go ahead. I think they forgot about me at one point because they were all running around, trying to find more halves of butterflies (all the other Leaders had given away theirs) and completely missed me standing at the side of the room. Brown Owl had caught my eye and knew there were more left so didn't call a halt to the game but then they got confused as to where the remaining right halves were! They noticed me in the end but we still ended up with 2 left over left halves on the floor when they all said they were done..!

This was a fairly relaxed evening as they were all working independently so we didn't have much to do.

Bugs and Sunflowers

20/03/14

This week we did yet more of the Big Brownie Birthday badge - I know; it seems like that's all we do these days but it is a pretty significant milestone in Guiding! This week's evening was focused around the outdoors.

We started off by playing a quick game. Brown Owl had bought some sticky flowers in 5 different colours and 2 different shapes and stuck them to small pieces of card. The girls were in their sixes and had to collect 6 flowers (which was one each in 3 of the 4 sixes). Brown Owl then told them which flowers the bees liked that day (and therefore had no nectar left in) and the girls added up all the flowers they had collected which still had nectar in. Once we got past the initial hurdle of the girls not understanding the 'you need 6 flowers in your six corner' part of the instructions, we ended up playing several rounds before finding out which six was the winner! The girls didn't seem to enjoy it as much as other games we've played but that was probably because there was no skill or running around involved - it was mostly a game of luck.

Then the girls got the tables out ready to do a variety of activities. Some of the girls were making bug houses from plastic water bottles, some were planting sunflower seeds and others were colouring in butterflies for a game. They all did all three activities by the end of the evening. For the bug houses, we gave each of them a plastic bottle with the bottom cut off. They rolled up a section of corrugated cardboard and put it inside. I was then in charge of stapling it in so it didn't fall out (harder than it sounds when they'd stuffed as much in as possible and I only had regular staples that couldn't go through more than one layer of cardboard!). They then cut a drinking straw into thirds and pushed that in between the cardboard. The idea is that they take it home and hang it upside down under a bush somewhere quiet and then go back every few days and see if any bugs are living in it. We made sure to tell them to not touch it if there are, although if they wish to bring in pictures they are more than welcome. The second activity was planting sunflower seeds - we've had competitions in the past and thought we would do another one. The girls each planted 2 seeds into a pot which they have to take home and look after. They then measure it and Brown Owl keeps a note of how tall each girl's is. Once it gets above 5/6 feet and there are only a few left living, we get the girls to bring in a photo of them stood by it and the tallest one gets a prize. The final activity was a kind of filler for girls who had finished both other activities or were waiting for space to do one of them. We printed off the outline of a butterfly (6 to an A4 page) which they had to colour in symmetrically and give to Brown Owl. She is keeping them for a game we were going to play tonight but ran out of time.

The girls seemed to enjoy themselves for the most part this evening, although we did have a few who didn't see the point of making the bug houses or planting sunflower seeds. When we asked them to clear up though, we had a minor issue! Some of our older girls are starting to get a little old for Brownies, I think, and sometimes cause us problems when they get bored. We have big octagonal tables for crafts which split in two and get stacked on a trolley when we're done. Usually we ask the older girls (particularly sixers and seconders) to put the tables on the stack and for the younger and smaller girls to tidy things off the tables. However, tonight, these few older girls obviously got fed up waiting for someone to clear the table so, instead if clearing it themselves, one of the swept everything off the table onto the floor in one fell swoop and then proceeded to put the table on the stack with her friend and move on, leaving a pile of paper, pens and offcuts of bottles all over the floor. I always struggle with getting them to listen to me - I don't know if I just don't have the right amount of authority when I say things or whether it's because I'm closer to their age - but they refused to pick it all up. Some of the younger girls ended up doing it instead and I made sure I praised them for helping even though they didn't make a mess. It does irk me sometimes that they refuse to listen to me but I always make a mental note of it so I can try something different next time.

Anyways, the majority of the evening went really well and the girls seemed to enjoy it. Next week will be slightly different as I'm not actually able to attend the meeting, although I will probably still put up a brief post about the planned activity for the night even if I don't have any anecdotes to share!

Evening in the Dark!

13/03/14

This week we did more towards the Big Brownie Birthday badge. We had a small glitch in that Brown Owl's car broke down so we had to walk to Brownies with all our stuff but it's not too far and we took as little as we could so it was quite pleasant!

Once we got there, we shut all the curtains and blacked out the windows in the doors with black paper. We turned off all the lights and the girls used their torches to see. We did our Brownie circle in the dark and then the girls near Brown Owl shone their torches on her folder so she could do the register (usually we do this by sight as the girls come in and then just ask where missing girls are in the circle but that was too complicated today).

The first thing we did was a nice quiet game while their eyes adjusted to the dusk (and the Sun went down properly). The girls all stood in a circle and Brown Owl went round the circle giving random girls pieces of fruit or vegetable. There were 10 pieces in total so not everyone started with one. They had to hold it behind their back and try and guess what it was and, when Brown Owl said 'change', they had to pass it to their right. We carried on with this until all the girls had had each item. They then went into the six corners and tried to write down as many of the 10 as possible as a six. Brown Owl had chosen some obvious ones and some less obvious ones - we had potato, carrot, parsnip, lemon, lime, onion, apple, pear, garlic, and root ginger. One six managed to guess all of them except the root ginger. One word of advice is that carrots get rather disgusting after being passed round a few girls!

We then went on to play a game our Guide had played at her dark evening at Guides, which she ran with our Young Leader. It was called lighthouses (instructions here) and the girls seemed to enjoy it, although they got a bit bored when most of them had crossed the room and there were a few still coming, and going slowly but quietly. We played several variations on the basic game including in sixes (only one girl could come at once), in pairs (had to remain holding hands and both go back when caught) and freezing whenever the torch was on. There were a few girls who found it unfair because they kept getting caught but the majority seemed to really enjoy it.

We then did some Morse code, as suggested by one of the girls last week. Each six split into two and sat on opposite side of the hall. Both halves were given a sheet telling them the alphabet and were tasked with sending a message to the rest of their six, using their torches. It seemed to go OK, although it took far longer than it should have done for the girls to split their sixes in half and sit opposite each other - possibly not aided by the fact no one could see who was who and sixers kept getting lost! Once they were ready though, they seemed to get quite into sending messages.

We finished up the meeting by singing 'This Little Guiding Light', 'Alice the Camel' and 'Alive, Alert, Awake' (lyrics here) as we haven't really had a singing session with our girls for quite a while, unless you count Cookie Jar. It took us a while to remember the actions to 'Alive, Alert, Awake' but the girls kept asking us if we could do another verse so I think it paid off.

This was an interesting experience for us as leaders as well as for the girls. The girls seemed to enjoy the fact we were in the dark and they got to each have a torch (although we did have to make sure they knew not to point them at faces) but it created a few issues we hadn't foreseen as leaders. The most notable was that we couldn't tell the girls apart so yelling across the hall wasn't an option, you had to go over and figure out who you were talking to first. It is also harder to keep track of where everyone is when you can't see them - we have a few girls who sometimes need a bit of encouragement to join in if they don't like the game and, if they go and sit in a corner, it can be hard to spot them. I would also encourage leaders to make sure you have a decent torch (you don't need to be using it throughout the meeting but it would come in handy in an emergency).

You may have noticed that I have created a games page and a songs page and am no longer putting lyrics and instructions at the bottom of the post. I thought it was getting quite complicated to locate anything we had done so I decided to put it all in one easy to find place, so if you're looking for a specific game that's the place to start!

Codes and Promises

06/03/14

This week we did some more for the Big Brownie Birthday badge. We decided to do codes. The girls were given a photocopy of a page from the Adventure book which had a code on for them to crack. It was just a basic a=26, b=25 etc. but it took some explaining to the girls about how they could go about cracking it. They had been given some letters to start with so we were getting them to write the alphabet out (some girls had problems with that, which surprised me...) and put in the numbers underneath so they could spot any patterns. Eventually, they did pick up on what we were getting at and, once they knew the code, it was easy for them to then solve it and find all the words. 

We then gave them another piece of paper with two codes explained on. One was Pig Pen and the other was the mobile phone code. They were then told they could write a message to their friend who would then have to decode it. Some girls decided to carry on using the basic substitution code to write messages and a couple tried to use the Pig Pen cypher. One of the Young Leaders also wrote out two messages in Pig Pen for the girls to try and decode. None of them asked me about the mobile phone code and I don't think any of them did it - probably because they didn't understand; I'm not sure how many of them actually have mobiles.

The codes in the Adventure book photocopy were all about Iranian New Year (which incidentally is some time soon) so we decided to play the Iranian smiling game (instructions here) because we had some spare time. Brown Owl chose the two girls who were making their Promise that night to start off and one of the Young Leaders and I went with them to the first person as they're both quite shy. The girl I was with really didn't want to make a fool of herself making girls smile so we didn't even get the first girl to smile but the other girl got a few people to smile. The game went very well - now that we've steered away from playing fishes continually, the girls seem to enjoy playing games more and play fairly - and this is a fairly popular one too because it gives the girls an excuse to be a little bit silly without getting told off!

We then had the Promise ceremony for the two new girls. One of them managed her Promise with a little bit of prompting from Brown Owl (and an interesting amalgamation of the old and new one at one point!) but the shy-er girl (who I was with in the game) got hers out with no prompting and it was nice and loud despite a few tears when her parents arrived because she didn't want to do it. 

We finished off the meeting with a quick song: 'Hole at the Bottom of the Sea' (lyrics here) and then sent the girls home. It was a good meeting and fairly low maintenance as we were just pointing the girls in the right direction. They complained initially when we told them we were doing codes this evening but they all seemed to enjoy it and even requested that we do Morse Code at some point, with torches, so it must have been a success on some parts!

Design a Room

27/02/14

This evening we did some more of the Big Brownie Birthday badge by getting the girls to design their future bedrooms. This can also count towards their Brownie Adventure badges as one of the challenges. We gave them several options for how they could design their room - either by drawing it on a piece of paper as if they were stood by the door, looking in; by drawing a floor plan from above; or by creating a 3D model of it. The 3D model was an idea Brown Owl had which she thought might be more interesting for the girls to do but it turned out to be far harder than we had anticipated... Most of the girls had a pretty good go at using the templates that Brown Owl had photocopied but they hadn't copied very well so some of the girls were getting confused as to which lines were dotty and therefore needed cutting along and which lines they needed to fold along. That meant that us leaders were kept quite busy helping the girls because the vast majority wanted to do the 3D model! Most of them turned out quite well though - even if most of them weren't coloured in because it took too long to make them.

We finished and tidied up with a few minutes to spare so we decided to sing the song I'd planned for my Chinese New Year evening - 'My Ship Sailed From China' (lyrics here). The girls found it quite funny!

It was a good evening tonight - I got to sit and help the girls which is one of the things I love about Brownies. And they all got stuck in and tried even if they couldn't really do it all, which is why we decided it could count towards their Brownie Adventure challenge section too.

Thinking Day Celebrations

16/02/14

Happy Thinking Day to all!

Last Sunday we had our Thinking Day celebrations because we couldn't get the hall today. We had all the Rainbows, Brownies and Guides from our district all at a local leisure centre - which came to around 100 girls plus leaders all in one sports hall (let's just say noisy was an understatement!). For those of you who don't know what Thinking Day is, it's a day where all Girl Guides in the World all think of each other and Guiding across the World. The day was chosen because it is the birthday of Lord and Lady Baden-Powell, the founders of the Guiding and Scouting movements. Districts traditionally get together and carry out activities to celebrate.

At our event, the girls had two activities to do - an external company came in and did a roller disco and each unit supplied a craft for their girls. Each unit spent an hour rollerskating and the other hour doing their unit's craft.

Our girls were doing the craft first. We had bought some little jugs and permanent pens so they could colour them in:

There were a variety of designs (including 2 girls copying me again - so flattering!) and they all looked really good laid out on the table when they were done.We think it would have been a good idea to have picked up a filler (a word search or something similar) though because the girls who had finished were getting restless because they could see the other girls skating and wanted to go and join in but they had to wait until the swap over time because there were limited skates available.

Eventually they were told to swap over which was a huge logistical challenge for the leaders, trying to make sure the girls who'd been skating put their skates in the right place and went to the correct unit table while also trying to help all the other girls to put on their skates and guards. It was compulsory for girls to wear wrist guards (the most common injury is broken wrists) and then they could choose to wear elbow and knee pads and helmet so there was a lot to co-ordinate! Eventually we had all the girls in the right places and then the next challenge began - helping a group of 18 girls on their feet when many of them had never skated before. I helped a few of them find their feet and then got some skates on myself - I'm a figure skater so I figured that I could more easily help the girls if I was also on skates (and also enjoy myself!). I didn't realise quite how different roller-skating is from figure skating but I managed to adjust enough to be able to hold onto girls to keep them upright without falling over myself whenever they did! The hour went by really quickly and suddenly it was time for our girls to take their skates off.

Another tradition for Thinking Day is for the girls to all remake their Promise, and we are no different. However, in this case the girls weren't just remaking their Promise, they were all making the new one for the first time. We have 3 candles in our District, a red, a yellow and a blue. When each is lit, the corresponding section remake their Promise, starting with the Rainbows. I have to say that, while I totally agree with the changing of the Promise to encompass all girls, it really doesn't roll off the tongue as well as the old one! Once everyone had remade their Promise, we sang 'This Little Guiding Light of Mine' (lyrics here) and then the girls were told to go back to their table and collect their things and their parents would come over to collect them. Surprisingly, that went very well and we got rid of all our girls really quickly. We did a quick tidy up and then all went home, exhausted but happy!

All in all, it was a very successful Thinking Day and all the leaders and girls enjoyed themselves. 

Code of Conduct and Games

29/01/14

This evening we did more of the Big Brownie Birthday badge. One of the compulsory activities was for the girls to create a 'code of conduct' in their sixes. We provided paper with a border for them to write on and Brown Owl gave them a couple of sentence starters, such as "as a six, we will...", "when our leaders are talking we will..." and other similar things. There was a bit of complaining before they started (as one girl said "ugh, literacy at Brownies"!) but, once they'd got started, they actually worked quite well together! I was surprised that we didn't have more arguments and disagreements because that seems to have become the norm for our unit with this set of girls. Us leaders basically left them to their own devices and the girls came up with some really good ideas (although with some amusing spellings!) which would make for a perfect unit if they stuck to them all..!

Once they had finished, we said they could play a game before moving on to the next activity. One of the other Young Leaders ran a game of trains (instructions here). To start with, they weren't listening to her and the game was going nowhere until Brown Owl stepped in and pointed out that they'd just written down how they were going to behave and they were breaking every single one of them! She told them that, if they listened, then the game could begin quicker and they would have more fun than if they were talking to their friends and not listening to instructions. After that they listening and the game went without any more hitches!

We had originally planned that we would then do another one of the Big Brownie Birthday challenges - writing in code. It wasn't the highest voted from that section but it was pretty high up, however none of the girls wanted to do it; the majority wanted to play more games instead. Brown Owl gave in and told them that they could play fishes (instructions here) which seems to be the girls' favourite game at the moment however, this time, it didn't really go to plan. The two girls who ask Brown Owl first are allowed to be the 'sharks' and this week it ended up being two of our older girls. We started noticing after a few minutes though that they were specifically choosing a girl who they were going to catch each time instead of trying to catch them all equally. This was leading to tears from the targeted girls and Brown Owl eventually called a halt to the game. She told them that games are never fun when people aren't playing fairly and then told them to get into their six corners. We had an old leader visiting for the week so we got her to pick two girls to be sharks, on the grounds that she doesn't know any of them. The second time round, the game went far better because they were all playing fairly. We also didn't have any tears from girls who had been caught because there was never any doubt as to if they had been or not. I think we need to not play fishes for a while although there might be uproar about it from the girls if I suggested it - I just think that taking a break and playing different games might be a good idea. 

Overall, this was a fairly successful meeting. Although we didn't do what we were intending to do, the girls still had a good time which is what I think Brownies should be all about! And I think they might slowly be getting the message about team work and fair play which is a good thing too...

First meeting back - team building games

09/01/14

This week we started the Big Brownie Birthday Challenge badge. For those of you who don't know, here is an explanation but it's basically just a variety of challenges the girls can do based around Guiding through the ages and at the end of it they get a badge.

We decided to start with one of the compulsory tasks which was team work, something our girls struggle with sometimes! For the first game, we had the girls in their sixes and gave each six 3 sheets of newspaper. We then told them that there was a river in front of them which they had to cross using their newspaper pieces as stepping stones. The stepping stones could hold any number of girls as long as not so much as a toe touched the floor - at which point the offending girl had to return to the start! They were told that they would get 4 points for each girl who made it to the other side of the room and the first team across would get an extra 10 points. They were also told that, if a girl fell off, her six could chose to either leave her behind and carry on or they could all go back for her and start again. Having explained these rules to the girls, each leader was assigned a six and told to be quite ruthless in picking up on toes off the newspaper and the race was on! It was quite a close race between the sixes with a fair few girls being left behind by her sixes (and one sixer who told her six to go and leave her behind because they were winning). The girls then added up their points and there was some celebration because the six that got there first had the most points, despite having left 2 of their number behind. Brown Owl then told the girls that she'd forgotten to tell them one of the rules! This 'forgotten' rule was that, for every girl they'd left behind, they lost 10 points. This caused some dissent because the original winning team went down to last place because they'd left behind the most people and the team which originally was in last place ended up coming first because they hadn't left anyone behind! This was quite a good game to show girls that, by working together as a team, they could do better than when they were just thinking of themselves. 

We then did another team activity to see if they could put what they'd just learnt into practice. Each sixer was given a whiteboard and pen and the sixes were told they had to think of a job and create a short mime for the other sixes to guess. We left them to it for this and just observed the different approaches. Three of our four sixes took the 'free for all' approach, where all the girls were talking at once and refusing to listen to each other or back down from their idea when no one else wanted to do it. The fourth six (incidentally, the one that won the previous game) had a much better approach where the sixer asked each girl in turn for her idea and then they chose their collective favourite. They had 5 minutes to practice their mime and then we went round the room watching each mime. The other three sixes had to come up with one guess from their six which they wrote on the whiteboard and then they all showed them simultaneously. For each six that guessed the job correctly, the performing six and the guessing six got one point, which they noted as a dot on their whiteboard. This bit went OK with only one disagreement within a six which was quickly resolved. Once all four sixes had finished the girls went back to their six corners. They were then told to add a point (dot) to their whiteboard for every suggestion that had been made and listened to and another point for each girl who took an active part in the mime (i.e. didn't just stand there, not helping). The girls then sat in a circle in their six, facing outwards. The board was passed round each girl and they had to add a dot if they thought their six worked well together and listened to each other and remove a dot if they didn't think they had worked well together. It took a while to coordinate all this point distribution but, once it was complete, it was quite interesting to see which sixes had the most points! The six who won the previous game came first by a long margin, having not lost any points and the other sixes were lagging behind quite significantly. I'm not sure quite how much they took from this meeting but it's nice to see that at least one of our sixers is capable of making her six work as a team.

We finished off the evening by singing 'Cookie Jar' (lyrics here) and then the girls went home. This was quite an interesting evening from the point of view of a Young Leader because I was able to see which girls are the 'problem girls' in each six, i.e. the ones who refuse to back down and just continually shout at their team or cry until they get their own way. It means that in future team activities we can avoid putting all these girls in the same team or can keep an eye on groups with them in try and resolve problems before they get too severe. Overall, a success and one step closer to our Big Brownie Birthday Adventure badge! 

(Apologies for the long post this time - I haven't written in a while so I'm struggling to say things in a condensed manner at the moment!)

Games and Voting

7/11/13

This was our first meeting back after the holiday. Next year is the Big Brownie Birthday as Brownies are going to be 100 years old and there is a badge that all girls can complete to show they were a Brownie during the centenary year. You must do 9 things to get the badge, 1 compulsory and 2 chosen ones each from 3 different topics (You, World, and Community) so we decided to let the girls vote on what they wanted to do as the chosen activities. Knowing our girls as we do though, we knew that we couldn't just sit them down and do all the voting in one go; they would go crazy! We decided instead to intersperse it with playing various games, which we also let them choose. 

We started off by playing fishes (instructions here) which is always requested by the majority of girls. It went well for once although we did have one girl in tears because she tripped over when she was caught out. When we were done we sat the girls down for the first of the votes.We handed out the choices for the 'You' section of the badge and then Brown Owl went down the list explaining to the girls exactly what each thing entailed. Each girl was told to mark each item with either a line through (don't like at all), one tick (would do without objection) or two ticks (really like) and there was no limit on the number of ticks they were allowed. It took a while to get through all the things (there were about 10 of them) because the girls were talking quite a bit but we eventually reached the bottom of the list and collected them all in.

Then we sang 'The Thousand Legged Worm' (lyrics here) which we used to sing when I was a Brownie but haven't done for a while so none of the current girls knew it. They seemed to quite like the song though, which is good because I really enjoy it too.

We did the second round of voting which was slightly quicker although I did notice that some girls (mainly the older ones) seemed a bit bored and were just ticking and crossing randomly without listening to what they actually meant.

The final game we played was wigwams (instructions here) which was also a request from the girls and then we did the final load of voting before the girls went home. 

It was quite a relaxed evening because I didn't have to do too much beside talk to girls and hand out pens for the voting. When we got home though, I volunteered to count up all the votes which turned out to be more complicated than I first thought..! Most girls had voted in the way they had been instructed which made it fairly easy to add up their votes but a handful of girls either hadn't listened or didn't understand because some of them had put more than 2 ticks (which I counted as 2) and some of them had gone down and put 2 ticks next to every item on the list! A fair few girls had also crossed something out and then changed their mind and ticked it too which made their voting slips quite complicated. I eventually finished counting them up, after a lot longer than I had anticipated, and marked the two highest (or 3 in one case) which we will now do over the next few months so the girls can get their badge.