Board Games and Chocolate

17/09/15

This week there was a picnic to celebrate the 50 birthday of the local primary school, which most of our girls attend. As such, we only had 10 girls. We had asked the girls the previous week who was going to the picnic so we already knew it was going to be a depleted meeting.

We bought 2 board games for the girls to play in groups of 2 or 3. The first was a version of snakes and ladders, called worms and fleas. You jumped up the fleas and slid down the worms. There was also the added complication of pills (don't slide down the next worm you land on) and flea drops (move forwards to the next flea and jump up it). The other was a Paddington Bear game. Each girl had 2 slices of bread and a jar of marmalade (as tokens) which they placed on any square on the track. Each time they rolled the dice they had the choice of going forwards hat many, or backwards (not both). By the end of the track, they had to have collected 2 slices of bread and a jar of marmalade each (not necessarily the ones they had put on the board), so that Paddington could make himself a marmalade sandwich!

At the same time, we decorated chocolate disks. Our Young Leaders melted some chocolate, and spread it in thin disks on greaseproof paper. They let it set a bit and then the girls came in to decorate them with all the left-over decorations we had from various other cooking evenings. We had white chocolate buttons, smarties, and various shaped sprinkles. All the girls were really good at only taking a few, and not just loading it up with as much sugary stuff as possible (as we've had in the past). Can't quite say the same for us Leaders after the girls had gone though, and we were left with some bars of chocolate and a tube of smarties!

When they were all done we played a game of Chinese Charades. We found that it was a good game with fairly short lines of girls; we added in a few leaders and had 2 lines of 6 girls. The girls seemed to enjoy it too. We also sang a couple of songs: 'There Was an Old Man', and 'Cookie Jar'.

Finally we let the girls go home, which was far less complicated with a small number! Sometimes it is nice to have a meeting with a few girls as you get to spend some time with them more one-on-one, however I wouldn't want to do it every week - there are some things that are designed for more people.

Valentine's crafts

13/02/14

This week, as it was the day before Valentine's Day, we decided to do some Valentine's themed things. We bought some red card and then got out all the spare crafty things left over from other evenings (lots of stickers, sparkly things and coloured paper!) and let the girls loose with it all! They were told they could make a card for their boyfriend, if they had one, or a friend or family member if they didn't. They all got stuck in really quickly and there were some really good looking cards by the end of the evening. I sat at a table of older girls and I was surprised at the number of them who had boyfriends or had been asked out and turned them down. When I was their age (10 years ago - now I feel old!) I had no interest in boys and was never asked out so I was quite surprised there were so many of them... I did also have to convince one girl that making her card as a way of breaking up with her boyfriend on Valentine's Day wasn't a very nice thing to do!

The other activity we had was making giant white chocolate coins. Our Young Leader and Guide were in charge of this in the kitchen. They melted the white chocolate and put spoonfuls into the lids of Pringles tubes. They left them to cool down a little bit so they were soft but not runny and then the girls were given different kinds of sprinkles and Love Hearts to decorate theirs with. We had them one six at a time in the kitchen and, when I went in at the end, there were lots of really good ones - our girls are always really good at crafty type things and they come out with nice things on a regular basis!

The girls then played a game of 'get the keys' (instructions here) while the Young Leader, Guide and I 'tidied' the kitchen - which generally consisted of us licking out the bowl of melted chocolate and eating the spare sprinkles and Love Hearts while chatting! One of our girls was leaving so she was given her certificate and Brownie Bear keyring as a leaving present in the circle at the end.

It was quite a low-maintenance evening tonight; the girls just got on with things and I could sit and talk to them, which is one of my favourite things about Brownies. I still can't decide if I agree with doing things for Valentine's Day with 7-11 year olds because I've always thought it was something for couples in steady relationships and I don't think they understand true love at that age. However, they all seemed to enjoy the evening whether they were making cards for boyfriends or people they just wanted to show their appreciation for and that is what guiding is all about, in my opinion. 

Now we have a week off for half term although there will be another post about our Thinking Day celebrations at some point.