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!