11/09/14
This evening we started our planning for pack holiday. On last pack holiday, our Young Leader and Guide were looking through the scrapbook and came across a detective themed weekend. They decided they wanted ours to be a detective one this year so have been planning over the Summer. Our first task was to split the girls into their sixes. We split the girls into the ones who are coming and the ones who aren't. The ones who aren't coming started the evenings activity and the others organized their sixes. We asked them to get into pairs with a girls they wanted to be with. The three oldest girls were then given the position of sixer and the other pairs were put in their sixes. We try to have a girl who's been before in each six so that the other girls know what is expected of them. The sixes worked out quite nicely this year. The Young Leader and Guide then gave them options for six names, all names of detectives. One six immediately claimed Pink Panther and the other two both wanted James Bond so we said that neither could have it and they eventually settled on Johnny English and Sherlock.
All the girls then worked on this evenings activity; puzzles from their handbooks. There was a wordsearch and a 'fit-word' (a sort of crossword where you have to fit the given words into the right places) and the Leaders mingled helping them while discussing our own names for pack holiday. All the Leaders are going to be villains but there was quite a long list for us to decide from. I think we have settled on:
Brown Owl: The Queen of Hearts
Snowy: Feathers McGraw
Me: Elphaba (Wicked Witch of the West)
Cooks: Dastardly and Muttley
Young Leader: Moriarty
Guide Helper: Cruella De Vil
Leader's children: Darth Vader and The Joker
Once the girls had finished, we tidied away and played a quick game of Fruit Bowl. We started it off by just getting the girls to swap seats and then we started to remove chairs and get girls out. It was going fine, even if Brown Owl was slowly running out of things to choose from, until we got down to the last two girls. If it was me, I would have just said they were both the winner and left it at that but it was decided that the first to a third chair on the count of three would be the winner. The two girls (let's call them A and B) then got ready to go with all the other girls lined up either side. They then started cheering except it was clear that all the girls were cheering for A and not B so B got upset. Brown Owl told them all to stop yelling and counted down. A got to the chair marginally before B so B got more upset and walked off crying in a strop. Brown Owl had a quick word with both girls and then the pack in general. She picked up on the group of girls who'd started the cheering and made them all apologise to B for being mean and luckily that was the end of the matter.
We ended the meeting by saying goodbye to one of our girls and then they all went home.
This meeting was a mix, parts of it were really good and the girls were really nice, if a little hyper, and other parts are just best forgotten.
We have also scheduled a meeting for the Leaders so we can finalise the programme for pack holiday and sort out the menu before I go off to University (I am coming home for pack holiday weekend - I wouldn't miss it for the World!).
Showing posts with label brownie adventure badge. Show all posts
Showing posts with label brownie adventure badge. Show all posts
Monday, 15 September 2014
Monday, 19 May 2014
Promise activity, games and songs
15/05/14
This week we started by doing an activity from the new adventure badges. We split the girls up into the three badges (based on which badge they were on previously) and gave them a different activity to complete. The younger group were doing a page from the handbook on keeping the promise and doing good turns and the two other groups were doing a quiz on how they would act in different situations to find out how well they keep their promise. I was helping the middle group which basically just consisted of explaining a few things and then discussing with the afterwards their answers to some of the questions. The vast majority of the girls had put mostly 'b's (which was the 'keeps promise well' section) and there were one or two 'a's and 'c's. The most common 'c' was the one which said "you watched too much TV last night and didn't do your homework, what do you do?" and almost all the girls selected 'c': "get my friend to help me with it quickly in the morning"! I found that quite amusing.
We then thought we would let them run off some steam and, as it's been really nice weather, we decided to make use of the grass outside the hall. The girls played stuck in the mud for quite a while, with a few stops to change over who was 'it' (including, at one point, our Guide running in yelling "I'm 'it' too now" and tagging several girls in quick succession!).
Finally we came back inside and sang two songs, "Cecil is my Caterpillar" and "Oh, You'll Never Get To Heaven" (lyrics here) before sending the girls home.
It was a nice relaxed evening tonight, as quite a few evenings have been recently.
This week we started by doing an activity from the new adventure badges. We split the girls up into the three badges (based on which badge they were on previously) and gave them a different activity to complete. The younger group were doing a page from the handbook on keeping the promise and doing good turns and the two other groups were doing a quiz on how they would act in different situations to find out how well they keep their promise. I was helping the middle group which basically just consisted of explaining a few things and then discussing with the afterwards their answers to some of the questions. The vast majority of the girls had put mostly 'b's (which was the 'keeps promise well' section) and there were one or two 'a's and 'c's. The most common 'c' was the one which said "you watched too much TV last night and didn't do your homework, what do you do?" and almost all the girls selected 'c': "get my friend to help me with it quickly in the morning"! I found that quite amusing.
We then thought we would let them run off some steam and, as it's been really nice weather, we decided to make use of the grass outside the hall. The girls played stuck in the mud for quite a while, with a few stops to change over who was 'it' (including, at one point, our Guide running in yelling "I'm 'it' too now" and tagging several girls in quick succession!).
Finally we came back inside and sang two songs, "Cecil is my Caterpillar" and "Oh, You'll Never Get To Heaven" (lyrics here) before sending the girls home.
It was a nice relaxed evening tonight, as quite a few evenings have been recently.
Monday, 10 March 2014
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!
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!
Monday, 3 March 2014
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.
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.
Tuesday, 29 October 2013
Challenge evening
10/10/13
This evening we ran a challenge evening which can go towards their Adventure/Adventure On badge. They were all split into their sixes and rotated through 5 different activities. Each leader was given an activity to run and the girls had 5 minutes to complete them, after which the leader would write down their score to be added up later.
Before we started, the girls were read a 'shopping list' which they were told to remember for the end of the meeting, as a six. Some of the girls all tried to remember all the items whereas some sixes had each girl remembering one or two items from the list, which seemed to make sense to me.
1. Cities
I was on this activity. I was given a map of Britain with 10 dots on it and an envelope of 10 city names. The girls were given the challenge of matching up the names to where they are. They ranged from places they should know (such as London and the local town), others they should have been able to guess (Aberystwyth - the only dot in Wales!) and a few which even I struggled with (Penzance for example). Most of them got the 'easy' ones although we had a few interesting placements of our own town, including in Scotland! One of the sixes resorted to asking me "Is this number 1? Is it number 2? Is it number 3?..." until they got it right..! Others tried to guess but were generally unsuccessful. I don't understand how they can not know anything about our country; even I could make educated guesses for the few I didn't know straight off and, when I was their age, I had a greater knowledge of our country than they appear to...
2. Paperclip chains
The six was given a box of around 100 paperclips and told to make the longest chain they could. Obviously, the best way to go about this would be for each girl to take a few and start making a short chain and then join them together at the end but some sixes didn't seem to get this idea and were all trying to add to the same chain. Unsurprisingly, the sixes that made the longest chain (using all the paperclips) were the ones who made several chains and joined them together!
3. Don't Say That
In this activity one girl was chosen and she had to stand facing all the others. She was then given a card with a word at the top to describe and a list of 4 words underneath that couldn't be used in describing the top word. The rest of her six had to guess what word she was describing.
4. Sugar Cube Tower
In this activity the girls were given a box of sugar cubes and they had to make the tallest tower they could with them. If a tower reached 6 blocks and fell over, 6 was recorded as the highest and then they started again to see if they could beat that height. I think the highest they got to was around 15/16. This has always been a favourite amongst our girls although they always ask if they can eat the sugar even though it's been all over the floor!
5. Balloon keepy-uppy
The girls were given a balloon and were instructed to not let it touch the floor in the 5 minute period (although they weren't allowed to hold it.) It was quite interesting watching different sixes doing this activity - some had a system in which everyone was given an order and the balloon was passed around everyone and in others it was a free-for-all which resulted in tears from some of the younger (and therefore shorter) girls because the taller ones could reach the balloon first.
After all the girls had done all the activities they were given a piece of paper in their six and told to write down the shopping list form the beginning of the evening. Unsurprisingly, the groups who had shared out the items to remember did better than the groups who had all tried to remember it all. Finally, we added up the points and announced the winner before the girls all went home.
This evening was interesting as I got to see how each six worked as a group and which sixers had good ideas. It was very intriguing to find out which girls were naturally good at working in a group and which ones weren't.
This evening we ran a challenge evening which can go towards their Adventure/Adventure On badge. They were all split into their sixes and rotated through 5 different activities. Each leader was given an activity to run and the girls had 5 minutes to complete them, after which the leader would write down their score to be added up later.
Before we started, the girls were read a 'shopping list' which they were told to remember for the end of the meeting, as a six. Some of the girls all tried to remember all the items whereas some sixes had each girl remembering one or two items from the list, which seemed to make sense to me.
1. Cities
I was on this activity. I was given a map of Britain with 10 dots on it and an envelope of 10 city names. The girls were given the challenge of matching up the names to where they are. They ranged from places they should know (such as London and the local town), others they should have been able to guess (Aberystwyth - the only dot in Wales!) and a few which even I struggled with (Penzance for example). Most of them got the 'easy' ones although we had a few interesting placements of our own town, including in Scotland! One of the sixes resorted to asking me "Is this number 1? Is it number 2? Is it number 3?..." until they got it right..! Others tried to guess but were generally unsuccessful. I don't understand how they can not know anything about our country; even I could make educated guesses for the few I didn't know straight off and, when I was their age, I had a greater knowledge of our country than they appear to...
2. Paperclip chains
The six was given a box of around 100 paperclips and told to make the longest chain they could. Obviously, the best way to go about this would be for each girl to take a few and start making a short chain and then join them together at the end but some sixes didn't seem to get this idea and were all trying to add to the same chain. Unsurprisingly, the sixes that made the longest chain (using all the paperclips) were the ones who made several chains and joined them together!
3. Don't Say That
In this activity one girl was chosen and she had to stand facing all the others. She was then given a card with a word at the top to describe and a list of 4 words underneath that couldn't be used in describing the top word. The rest of her six had to guess what word she was describing.
4. Sugar Cube Tower
In this activity the girls were given a box of sugar cubes and they had to make the tallest tower they could with them. If a tower reached 6 blocks and fell over, 6 was recorded as the highest and then they started again to see if they could beat that height. I think the highest they got to was around 15/16. This has always been a favourite amongst our girls although they always ask if they can eat the sugar even though it's been all over the floor!
5. Balloon keepy-uppy
The girls were given a balloon and were instructed to not let it touch the floor in the 5 minute period (although they weren't allowed to hold it.) It was quite interesting watching different sixes doing this activity - some had a system in which everyone was given an order and the balloon was passed around everyone and in others it was a free-for-all which resulted in tears from some of the younger (and therefore shorter) girls because the taller ones could reach the balloon first.
After all the girls had done all the activities they were given a piece of paper in their six and told to write down the shopping list form the beginning of the evening. Unsurprisingly, the groups who had shared out the items to remember did better than the groups who had all tried to remember it all. Finally, we added up the points and announced the winner before the girls all went home.
This evening was interesting as I got to see how each six worked as a group and which sixers had good ideas. It was very intriguing to find out which girls were naturally good at working in a group and which ones weren't.
Monday, 23 September 2013
Badges and Brownie Adventure
19/9/13
We started off this evening by making the badges for pack holiday. The girls are split into sixes and choose what character they are going to be (we have Agnes, Lucy and Dave this year) and then the Leaders all choose their own characters for the weekend too. Each girl makes a badge to wear for the weekend so we know what six they are in as do the leaders. Our district owns a badge machine (an absolutely ancient one!) which is loaned out to units who want to make badges. Basically the girls colour in a design (which we had pre-printed from the internet) and then it is placed in the machine, you pull a handle and it creates the badge for you - it fascinates the girls every time! We collect in the badges once they've been made so that they don't get lost between this meeting and next weekend, when pack holiday is. Any girl who is not going on pack holiday can also make a badge, either using a spare design we had printed or colouring in a blank circle however they like, and they are allowed to take it home there and then. I quite enjoy sitting and colouring with the girls because you get to know some of them a bit better as they'll just start to talk about their life and school and stuff. It helps me keep in touch with them too which makes planning evenings a bit easier.
Once the girls had finished, we tidied away the tables and they did a challenge from their Brownie Adventure or Brownie Adventure On book. If you don't know what these are, they are books that the girls have for their first and second halves of being a Brownie respectively which contain stories and activities for them to complete. You can also get a badge for doing a variety of the activities from the book along with a few other things, including doing interest badges, attending extra events and doing various other meetings. The girls were split into two groups; the younger ones and the older ones. I was helping the group of younger girls, who were learning to sign their names, as I can sign the BSL alphabet. I helped a few of them to work out their name from the pictures in their book and then I challenged them to guess my middle name after I had signed it to them. Most of them were really good at it and it turned out that they had had a partially deaf boy in their class for a while so a lot of them had learnt some basic words and phrases. I was quite surprised at this because I never had the opportunity to learn that sort of thing at primary school - I picked it up with a friend for fun a few years back (although I'm looking into doing a course to learn more).
We finished off the evening by singing one of the girls' favourite songs-'Who Stole the Cookie from the Cookie Jar' (lyrics here).
This was a good evening because I got to sit and talk to the girls which is one of my favourite parts of helping at the unit. I also found out things about the girls that I didn't already know. It was a nice, relaxing evening - reminding me why I do this.
And finally, just a bit of housekeeping: we are going away on pack holiday on Friday so my next post won't be up next Monday (although you can console yourself with the fact that there will be a couple of posts in the week afterwards about pack holiday!)
We started off this evening by making the badges for pack holiday. The girls are split into sixes and choose what character they are going to be (we have Agnes, Lucy and Dave this year) and then the Leaders all choose their own characters for the weekend too. Each girl makes a badge to wear for the weekend so we know what six they are in as do the leaders. Our district owns a badge machine (an absolutely ancient one!) which is loaned out to units who want to make badges. Basically the girls colour in a design (which we had pre-printed from the internet) and then it is placed in the machine, you pull a handle and it creates the badge for you - it fascinates the girls every time! We collect in the badges once they've been made so that they don't get lost between this meeting and next weekend, when pack holiday is. Any girl who is not going on pack holiday can also make a badge, either using a spare design we had printed or colouring in a blank circle however they like, and they are allowed to take it home there and then. I quite enjoy sitting and colouring with the girls because you get to know some of them a bit better as they'll just start to talk about their life and school and stuff. It helps me keep in touch with them too which makes planning evenings a bit easier.
Once the girls had finished, we tidied away the tables and they did a challenge from their Brownie Adventure or Brownie Adventure On book. If you don't know what these are, they are books that the girls have for their first and second halves of being a Brownie respectively which contain stories and activities for them to complete. You can also get a badge for doing a variety of the activities from the book along with a few other things, including doing interest badges, attending extra events and doing various other meetings. The girls were split into two groups; the younger ones and the older ones. I was helping the group of younger girls, who were learning to sign their names, as I can sign the BSL alphabet. I helped a few of them to work out their name from the pictures in their book and then I challenged them to guess my middle name after I had signed it to them. Most of them were really good at it and it turned out that they had had a partially deaf boy in their class for a while so a lot of them had learnt some basic words and phrases. I was quite surprised at this because I never had the opportunity to learn that sort of thing at primary school - I picked it up with a friend for fun a few years back (although I'm looking into doing a course to learn more).
We finished off the evening by singing one of the girls' favourite songs-'Who Stole the Cookie from the Cookie Jar' (lyrics here).
This was a good evening because I got to sit and talk to the girls which is one of my favourite parts of helping at the unit. I also found out things about the girls that I didn't already know. It was a nice, relaxing evening - reminding me why I do this.
And finally, just a bit of housekeeping: we are going away on pack holiday on Friday so my next post won't be up next Monday (although you can console yourself with the fact that there will be a couple of posts in the week afterwards about pack holiday!)
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