Easter Bookmarks and Promises

14/03/19

One of our older Brownies has been asking for a while if she can run an activity so she can tick off the last part of her More Adventures badge before she turns 11 in May. This week we finally had time to slot that in and she chose to make Easter Chicken Bookmarks.

The Brownie showed everyone how to fold the main shape (you can also find the instructions online) and then the girls went and did that bit while the Brownie handed out all the extra bits that she had pre-cut for them to stick on. Once they had finished their chicken bookmark, she had also bought some patterned paper so they could make fortune tellers.

Tonight we also had 4 new girls making their promises, so about 30 minutes before the end, any members of their family who wanted to watch showed up - there were loads of them this time! Some girls just bring one parent, tonight we had grandparents, siblings, and lots of parents! We always ask the parents to come a bit earlier than they need to so they can watch us doing an activity - this time we chose to play 2 games of Pirates, at request of the girls. We did have to remove Starboard as that is where all the parents were sat, and we banned hiding under the tables with tea and coffee on too!

We then proceeded to enrol all 4 new girls and then sang two songs to finish (for once we finished early!) - we sang Hole at the Bottom of the Sea, and Cecil is My Caterpillar.

This was a great evening - the girl who ran it is very mature for her age and was very good at explaining the steps to the girls and going round helping them all.

St. David's Day

28/02/19

Given it is St. David's Day tomorrow, we thought we would do some activities to celebrate this week. We started with the limited edition UMA, 'Make Your Snake' which we modified to be a dragon instead. The first comment that our girls had was 'Cecil can't be a dragon, Cecil is a caterpillar...'! We split them into the sixes and gave them a bag with 6 different coloured tokens in (we didn't want to faff around finding them hidden around the room!). The girl pulled a token out of their bag and came up to a leader to get post-it notes in that colour. A leader then read them the question and made sure they understood it before leaving them to write their answer on their post-it note and stick it in the right area of Cecil. I helped a few of the younger ones with their spelling and understanding of the question. My favourite conversation was with one of our newest girls:

Me: The yellow question is "what would you miss if you weren't a Brownie?"
Her: You!
Me: Awww, that's very sweet, thank you
Her: No, actually, Brown Owl
Me: Oh, so you wouldn't miss me then?
Her: OK, both of you! What's your name? *struggles to spell my name*
Me: What about <other leader>?
Her: Who's she?
Me: *points at other leader*
Her: Oh yeah, how do I spell her name?

Once all the sixes had done all 6 questions, we all sat around Cecil and discussed the remaining question - how would you encourage Cecil's sister, Cecilia, to join Brownies. We first asked the girls why Cecilia might think she can't be a Brownie and one of the girls, completely deadpan, just said "because she's a dragon"!! We then discussed why Cecilia might want to join Brownies (if she wasn't a dragon!). My favourite comment we had for this question was "to give your parents a break!". Here is our whole dragon (his head is the pale pink end!)

We then spent the remaining 30 minutes making daffodils. You cut some daffodil petals out of yellow craft foam ad cut a hole in the centre - Brown Owl had drawn them out already so the hole was the right size. You then took a strip of slightly darker yellow foam and cut some wiggles out of one long edge. You take a pipe cleaner and roll the long piece around the end of it, with most of the pipe cleaner sticking out the flat edge of the foam. Push this through the hole in the other piece of foam. Make some leaves from green foam and twist them into the bottom of the pipe cleaner. They end up looking like these ones, from Baker Ross.

The girls all enjoyed the UMA more than we thought they would, and we got lots of interesting comments from them - from the sounds of it, a cake/pudding night would go down very well! They also liked making the daffodils, although a few of them struggled rolling the centre tight enough to fit through the hole. This meeting flew by really quickly!

There may not be a blog next week as I have to go on a work trip and am not sure if I'll be back in time, although we are also going on our Thinking Day trip on Saturday so I might get that typed up in time instead.

Paint It Yourself Pottery

06/12/18

This week we went to our local pottery painting place and all the girls got to paint a bauble. We spent the first 30 minutes drawing a rough design on paper first, and then we transferred the design onto the bauble using a felt tip pen. When the bauble is glazed and put in the kiln, the felt tip pen burns off so it is perfect for planning out a design before painting. We were then given a plate with a few colours on and lots of paintbrushes of different sizes. They recommended that the girls paint all the large areas with the paintbrushes and then they would come round with paint pens to help do outlines and fiddly bits. A few of the girls struggled to come up with ideas so the Leaders offered up a few simple suggestions (reindeer, santa, presents etc.) and then they were all happy getting on with it with limited assistance.

Once the girls had finished painting the large areas with the paintbrushes, they were allowed to use a paint pen to do outlines - basically a squeezy pot of paint with a needle thin point. A few girls had a lot of problems with using the pens as they couldn't squeeze them hard enough, or too much came out at once so they needed a lot more help then.

We left the baubles there to be kilned and glazed, we will pick them up in time to hand them out next week. I think the girls really enjoyed painting their baubles, even if some of the struggled a little bit, and they also enjoyed having some time to sit and chat with their friends.

Christmas Cards

29/11/18

A year or so ago, one of our Brownie's Grandmas was clearing out some craft items and donated a lot of card making stuff to us. A lot of it was Christmassy, so we were going to use it last year and then forgot so we saved it for this year. We laid out all the stickers and coloured card and other items on a table at the front of the hall, gave each girl a blank white card, and then let them come up, a table at a time, to pick 2 items from the table to start with. When everyone had been up once, they could all start making their cards, and they could come up to the front table at any point to swap what they currently had for something different.

It was a perfect evening from a leaders perspective because we literally had to do nothing, short of peeling off a few stickers and stopping minor disagreements over who was using the scissors or the sticker sheet next. Which was probably a good thing because 2 of our leaders couldn't make it and we had to have a parent helping instead!

The girls absolutely loved being given free reign to do whatever they wanted to do on their card and would happily have carried on for longer than we gave them. I was also pretty impressed with the speed at which most of them helped tidy up at the end too - our Young Leader went round with a broom, but the girls put all their rubbish in the bin; pens, glue, and scissors in the correct boxes; unused stickers back on the front table; and their cards with their coats with very little prompting! Definitely an evening we will be running again, not least because we still have reams of card making stuff left over, and not all of it is Christmas themed!

Remembrance Day Poppies

08/11/18

Tonight we did some activities for Remembrance Day. We made Poppy Bead Badges on safety pins, which we had seen another leader recommend on Facebook. Each girl was given 10 safety pins and we put patterns on the tables. We also put out pots of red and green beads for the girls to use. The girls then had to follow the pattern to put the beads on 9 of the safety pins, and then thread the beaded pins onto the 10th pin.

The finished badge here is slightly different to the design that our girls made - I forgot to take a photo of one that the girls had made!

We had 4 tables of girls, with about 6 girls on each table and each table had a Leader or Young Leader with them. The Leaders spent a lot of time opening and closing safety pins for the girls! Some of the younger ones had never used safety pins before and so couldn't open them to start with (so we taught them) but the pins are quite hard to close once they had beads on them so the Leaders ended up doing a lot of closing of pins. We had the occasional giggle when a girl failed at closing her pin and pinged all the beads off and all over the table. When it came to putting the pins on the final pin, we got the girls to slide them onto the opening side as it was far too hard to get them round to the other side of the pin. I was helping one girl put all her pins on in the right order and, as she put the last pin on, she turned to ask me to help her close it and managed to tip all of them off the pin onto the table! Another girl managed somehow to not only ping all the pins off, but one burst open and pinged beads everywhere too!

Once the girls had successfully made their pin badges, we had also printed copies of "In Flanders Fields" which the girls could copy onto card. Once they had finished, we had some red ink pads and they decorated their poem with thumb print poppies - put two red thumb prints side by side, add a black dot with a sharpie, and a green stem with a felt tip. The finished poems actually looked stunning - it's so simple but so effective.

This evening was a surprising success - we had been warned that the poppy pin badges could be very tricky for Brownies to make but our girls all got stuck in and were really focussed. One girl, who is usually a bit of live-wire and can't sit still, got so into it that she decided she was going to buy beads and pins so she could make other patterns. My table also surprised me by reciting "In Flanders Fields" off by heart - the older girls are doing it as part of their assembly so have all had to learn it. It was also a nice to take a break from the new programme, and going back to an evening for the sake of it, rather than aiming towards a badge.

Pack Holiday 2018 - Saturday

06/10/18

The girls were up fairly early this morning - 6:30 by the other leaders' accounts! I popped out to wake up my other half in his tent while the girls got dressed and then we had breakfast - cereals followed by eggy bread, bacon, and toast. Once we were done eating, the girls all had duties to do - the Hostess six cleared everything off the table, the Cook six went and helped the leaders dry up the dishes, and the Health six wiped the tables, swept under the table and checked the toilets had loo roll and were clean. Once they had all finished, they had a short amount of time to tidy their beds and then it was inspection time. We introduced an extra sticker for the neatest bed (which we didn't tell them about) and surprised even ourselves with the girl we gave it to - she's usually a bit messy and scatty but she had really made an effort making her bed! We made her day by giving her the second sticker.

Once we were done with inspection, we started our first set of activities. One group made book folding hedgehogs (and decorated them with glitter glue and googly eyes), another made bookmarks and the third made posters to advertise the Brownie Olympics we are holding tomorrow. I sat with the girls making bookmarks and chatted with them. The girls started off in their sixes doing one of the three activities but could then move round once they had finished the one they were on (the only bottleneck was the number of seats to do the book folding).

Our original plan for the weekend was for the girls to make a packed lunch (a clause for the Healthy Heart badge) and then walk to the river to eat it but the weather was so miserable that we decided not to eat outside. The girls each made their packed lunch and then we had a picnic on the living room floor instead! Each lunch had a sandwich (cheese, ham, jam, or marmite), a packet of crisps, a selection of fruit/veg (cucumber sticks, grapes, baby tomatoes, bananas, and apples), and a small cake (mini choc chip muffin or chocolate mini roll). The girls really enjoyed being allowed to sit on the floor and eat, and it was interesting to see what groups they formed too.

We then decided that we would postpone our river walk until tomorrow as the weather was meant to get nicer so we set up the tuck shop. We had a selection of various things from Trading which we sold, along with some sweets (they could have 2 each) and some other small trinket like items. The girls enjoy choosing things to spend their £5 on, although this year the parents hadn't listened when we asked for small change and we had to write a few IOUs and pay them back at the end of the shop, when we had some change!

We then did a few more of the crafty things, which we had planned to do tomorrow. This time, we had one six at a time designing a mascot for their sixes sport from random craft things we found in the cupboard and wanted to get rid of! The other sixes could choose to either make a poster about healthy/unhealthy food (or halfy if you're a Brownie!!) using various foody magazines we had collected or colour in a pattern only uing 3 colours. Annoyingly, a pattern can always be coloured in using no more than 4 colours but the Artist badge syllabus specified 3 so I improvised by not colouring in some sections to make it work! The girls really enjoyed this activity, and spent ages deliberating over what colours to pick (we had some really nice combinations) and then working out what parts to colour in to make pretty patterns. Mine came out fairly well, I think.

We also had some entertaining choices for the healthy/unhealthy posters, including a bottle of whiskey on the healthy side and a phone on the unhealthy side (admitted correct but not a food!).

The girls doing their mascots also had a great time - they had been given free reign over all the craft things we could find, including some big pots of glitter. We had some interesting designs and a few disagreements over what it was they wanted to make. Our YL stepped in and persuaded them to all make a part of their mascot and then combine it at the end to make a whole thing.

When the girls had finished all their craft, they had to write a song about smoking to perform at the campfire, as one of the clauses for the Healthy Heart badge. We then had dinner - the roast we would have had tomorrow but everything is all topsy turvey now! The girls seemed to enjoy it, alhtough not as much as they have done in previous years - they thought the chicken was a bit dry this year.

While the girls were doing their duties, me, our YL and my other half went outside to sort out the campfire. Unfortunately, because it had rained all night, a lot of the wood was damp. We found a few pieces which were dry and then we dragged out the bag of cardboard that hadn't been used yesterday, and was still dry too. We set up a small fire and the girls all came out to watch it be lit and then we sang a couple of songs:

• Campfire's Burning
• Cecil is my Caterpillar
• Oh You'll Never Get to Heaven

The girls also performed their smoking songs - we had 3 very different styles of song and all were equally as impressive for a quickly thrown together song! We then bought out our surprise of the end of the campfire - magic dust that changes the colour of the flames! We had double checked that it was safe for an outside fire and the only thing we couldn't do was cook over them but we had forgotten the skewers for the marshmallows so that didn't matter. We were about to sing another song while the fire burned green and blue but a massive gust of wind came and blew sparks into the bushes and the girls all ran inside screaming! The three of us who were in charge stayed outside watching the pretty colours while looking for a torch that got dropped in the panic and then spread out the embers so they didn't catch again.

The girls then had hot chocolate and got ready for bed. We told them they could read quietly for a bit and then left them to it. We then spent some time chatting in the living room and then decided to go to bed. We realised we hadn't heard a single peep from them and the lights had been turned off. There was absolute silence from in their room! Success!! We had a great nights sleep ready for tomorrow, with absolutely no interruptions - I guess that's one of the bonuses of taking a fairly young group of girls.

More Mathemagician Badge | University

26/04/18

This week we continued with the Mathemagician badge which we started two weeks ago. This week we played Airplanes from Clause 3.

We started the meeting with a game of Wink Murder while the leaders sorted out what we were going to do. It ended up being quite a noisy game, our girls like 'dying' in style!

Once they had finished that, we got some tables out and the girls sat round them, in their sixes. We told them that they would be making paper airplanes and that the best decorated one would win a prize. We gave them a piece of paper and a pencil, as well as $85 of the Brownie Bucks from the activity pack and told them they could start planning what they wanted it to look like while we made up a price list. We looked through the cupboard and pulled out various odds and ends which we wanted to use up and wrote out a price list which we gave to each six.

We then invited the girls up, one six at a time, to do their first big shop. A couple of girls got confused and thought that the piece of paper was for them to make into the plane, not to write on, so they had to go back and do some quick recalculations on what they could afford. Other girls were very meticulous and came up with a list of which colour pencils they wanted! The Leaders ran the shop and made sure the girls were doing any Maths required, such as "if you want 2 stickers, how much is that?" and "you've given me $10 and it cost $6, how much change do you need?". Some of the younger girls were especially proud of the fact that they had done it correctly! We also had one of our older girls who was just buying pipe cleaners for the hell of it, so we decided that prices were going up as stock was low. She came over asking for 3 more and we told her they were now $6 each. She ran off, came back with $20, and when asked how much change she needed said "none". We asked her if she was sure and she thought about it and then said yes. We then saw her talking to the Guide helper and then came back asking for her $2 back! We pointed out that you can't leave a shop and then come back and ask for your change so she want off with a face like thunder!

Time ran away with us a little bit tonight and we suddenly realised that we hadn't done a dry run of the promises we were doing tonight so we stopped the girls and got them in a circle to practice. This unit does quite a complex ceremony, involving the new girl and her sixer skipping round the circle, singing and the unit replying. They then also spin round in front of the mirror as the unit says "twist me and turn me and show me the elf, I looked in the water and there saw" and the new girl replies "myself". As the new girls have never seen this happen, we always have to do a quick practice beforehand.

Once we had done that, I organised the judging of the airplanes. I got each six to show me their plane and tell me a bit about it and then I lined them up and got them to throw them down the hall. We then had a winner for distance and a winner for best decorated. The girls were a bit put out that there weren't actually prizes though!

We had a few minutes spare so we played a quick game of Splat. I had to pull out my cross face at one point because one of our older girls refused to sit down when she was out because she hadn't been paying attention.

Finally, it was time for the promise ceremony. We enrolled 4 new girls, which surprisingly went quicker than expected. We handed out the Mathemagician badges to all the girls and then let them all go home.

This meeting was very good from a leaders point of view, we spent most of the meeting standing and chatting whilst handing out various crafty supplies. The girls also seemed to enjoy the chance to be able to roll play going shopping and choosing what to buy and being able to handle the money. I'm not sure many of the parents let them do that. In hindsight though, our prices were a bit low. We assumed that the girls would want to make more than one plane in their six, so we had set the prices low enough that they would be able to afford a few pieces of paper but they ended up making one per six and so none of them ran out of money at any point.

Easter Baskets and Guide Visit | University

22/03/18

This meeting, we had a parent come in to do a craft with the girls. I arrived and got all the material she had requested out of the cupboard and then we occupied the girls while she set up. While the girls were arriving, we played a game that they call ‘the chair game’ which they constantly request. Once all the girls had arrived, we also played a quick game of Chinese Whispers to keep the noise down while we had a quick chat as leaders. The games went well, although we did have uproar for one round of Chinese Whispers because a girl had said a rude word! It transpired that the rude word was ‘poo’ and the original message was about ‘guinea pigs’ so I’m not quite sure where that came from!

The girls then bought their chairs over to the tables and the parent ran through the craft. They were making Easter Bunny Baskets so she showed them the templates and all the decorations she had bought for them to use. We had a brief moment of panic as we realised one of the girls had somehow (accidentally or otherwise) cut a chunk of her hair off. The other girls said she had done the same thing at school so we tidied up and made a note to alert her Mum at the end of the meeting. The girls then started making their baskets – I spent most of my time helping one of the girls cut out her template and then holding together flaps as they all stuck them together. They then had free reign with pompoms, pipe cleaners, googly eyes, glue, and pens with which to decorate their baskets. We had some very interesting looking ones and even a chick made out of one of the remaining pompoms!

Once the girls had finished their baskets, we had a drink and biscuit and then sat them in a circle. Two Guides had come to visit to talk to the girls about Guides as part of one of the other Leaders ALQ so we left them to it (with a small amount of prompting) while we tidied up the bombshell that was the tables after the craft! The Guides then ran some games that they play at Guides while us Leaders chatted about plans for next term.

We ended up having to stop the games as we had run out of time. After we had ended the meeting, the girls collected their baskets, picked up a piece of tissue paper and then came up to a Leader who gave them a handful of Mini Eggs as an Easter gift. We spoke to the Mum of the girl who had cut her hair and she confirmed that she had done it at school too and she wasn’t cross with us as none of us were aware at the time but was furious with her daughter. We will be keeping a closer eye on her every time we have scissors out now!

This was a fairly nice and relaxed meeting, especially the second half, and the girls seemed to really enjoy decorating their baskets and definitely enjoyed the eggs at the end! This was our last meeting before Easter and, as we meet every other week, we now have quite a long break before the next meeting, although I am going home and hopefully visiting my old unit next week.

 

Friendship Bookmarks

10/09/15

This week we did a craft which was suggested to us by Brown Owl's sister, who did it at a District event with her Brownies.

Each girl was given a printout of her name in bubble writing. They coloured in the letters and decorated round the outside. Then they cut it up so all the letters were separate. We then tasked them with finding people to swap all of their letters with, so they could still spell their own name but with letters that someone else had coloured it. Most of them managed it, we had a 'u', 'z', and 'j' left that we couldn't swap anywhere! We then gave them a piece of coloured card that they could stick their letters to, to make it into a bookmark.

When they were done, we tidied up (which took ages) and then we sang a few songs. We sang 'Oh You'll Never Get To Heaven' and 'Cecil is my Caterpillar'. The District Commissioner also made an appearance at the end of the meeting, to present one of our Young Leaders with her badge and certificate. She then told us about a trip for Senior Section members to London which the group of us who help out at Brownies are going to go on in October (so look out for that post!).

During the circle at the end, I was tasked with handing out receipts to the vast majority of the girls, which was a real test of my knowledge of their names (I only mixed up 2 in the end)!

Mosaic Coasters

18/06/15

This week we did the craft that we were supposed to do last week, mosaic coasters.

Each girl had been given the choice of blue or pink and then Brown Owl had attempted to order the right numbers of each (however they didn't have enough in stock for last week). We then gave the girls the one they had asked for, but told them they could swap with someone if they both wanted to. Each kit came with the board to put the tiles on, which had a piece of paper to peel off and reveal the sticky side. However, several of the girls managed to peel off the sticky and the backing too so we ended up going round and fixing a lot of them!

Finally, they settled down and started making them. Each pack comes with a suggested pattern to follow, and a few girls followed that, while others made up their own designs. We spent the whole meeting doing these because the girls didn't want to stop! For those who still hadn't finished when the meeting ended, we put the spare tiles back in the bag and covered over the remaining sticky so they could finish it off at home.

This was a nice quiet meeting, and I ended up sat at a table with a handful of girls, just talking to them which was nice.

Father's Day and Promise Ceremony

11/06/15

This week, although Father's Day isn't until June 21st, we did our Father's Day crafts as the craft for this week didn't arrive in time (we're doing it next week instead).

The girls coloured glass jars and made cards. We bought some pens that would draw on glass and some small jars and then the girls were given free rein on what they wanted to draw on them. Here is mine:

The girls then filled them with mint imperials, and took them home to give to their Dads (or any other man in their life).

We also bought some white card and some stickers of cars. Each girl was allowed 3 vehicle stickers and 2 wordy stickers which they could stick on the card and then draw/write anything else they wanted around it. I spent a lot of time sat on a table with some of the younger girls, peeling stickers off their backing as the stickers were quite hard to get off!

We had 6 girls making their promise tonight, and two girls doing their hostess badge so it was a little crazy for the second part of the meeting. While most of the pack were tidying up, a YL and I helped the hostesses set up their decorations and cakes on some tables. The rest of the pack then sang a few songs to entertain the parents while I supervised the hostesses to make tea and coffee for the parents. It went relatively smoothly and then the 6 girls made their promise.

To end the meeting, the District Commissioner also came to visit, to present me with my Independent Living badge and certificate! We had a chat afterwards about how much I've done for the other Octants and it's inspired me to knuckle down and type up some more sections I've done to see if I can get any more badges before I go back to uni.

All in all, this was a pretty successful meeting, if a little chaotic - but who wants a boring meeting!?

Pack Holiday 2014 - Saturday

11/10/14

This morning I woke up at 7:30 to the sounds of the girls next door moving around. I wrapped myself in my blanket and went to keep them quiet as none of the other Leaders were awake! They were all quite excitable and hungry but I had to tell them they had to stay in their room until some of the other adults woke up. I had quite an amusing conversation with one of the older girls about going in the river:
Girl: Will we be able to go in the river today?
Me: I don't know, it depends if it is too deep because of the rain this week.
Girl: Oh... If it's too deep, will you drink the water until it's not too deep?
Me: No! That's way too much for me to drink!
Girl: *short pause* Well, buy an elephant and it can drink it all!

I then poked my head into the Leaders' room to find that one of the cooks was awake. She said she would get up and make a cup of tea and see if that would wake the others up. I went back to our room and some of the Young Leaders were up too so we let the girls into the lounge, provided they weren't too loud. I then sat in the Leaders' room and drank my cup of tea while chatting to them. 

Breakfast was finally served at about 8:30. We sat all the girls down and then those who wanted could have cereals. I spent most of the time they were eating, serving drinks! Once they were done, the waitresses cleared the tables and then brought out eggy bread, toast and sausages. The cooks had taken orders from the girls earlier so the kitchen was a bit chaotic with the waitresses being told exactly who each meal was for so that everyone got something. I'd finally sat down to enjoy my own breakfast when the doorbell went. Our Young Leader and I both ran towards the door because we knew it would be our Guide, much to the amusement of the girls! We let her in and she was attacked by a few girls before Brown Owl told them to sit down and eat. She made herself some eggy bread so the cooks could stay sat down and then joined us for breakfast.

When we were done eating, we made sure all the girls had brushed their teeth and then sat them down in the lounge to explain the plan for the morning. We had 3 activities planned and they would rotate around them in their sixes. One six would paint owl tealight holders, one six would go outside and make rafts and the third six would start on their detective work. 

The owls were bought from Baker Ross. The girls painted them with acrylic paints and the could add details with pens once they were dry. Brown Owl discovered that it was quite hard to get a neat join between colours so a line in a contrasting colour helped disguise that. I didn't use the pens though and I think mine came out OK. We sent them home with an electric tealight in (also from Baker Ross) as we thought it was safer and we were told that the paint could peel off if you used a real candle. Here is mine, with and without the candle on:

The girls outside were collecting sticks for their raft. We didn't know if the river was going to be too deep for them to get in when we got there so we thought we should take a back up plan. The plan was that each six would have a raft to race down the river. We made them from sticks and string so, if we couldn't catch them after the race, they wouldn't cause too much damage to the environment as they would decompose pretty easily and quickly. The girls all struggled to actually make their rafts though so they collected lots of sticks and our Guide made them for them while they helped the Young Leaders to collect larger sticks for the camp fire tonight. As it had rained overnight, all the sticks were damp so we had all the radiators on in our room to try and dry them out enough that they could be lit!

The final group of girls were starting on the detective work covering the whole weekend. A full post on this is coming soon but these girls were working on the first two activities; biscuits and fingerprints. 

We had a break for elevenses and then the girls rotated so, by lunch time, they had completed all three activities. Lunch was a quick meal of sandwiches, crisps and fruit. The food was put on the table and the girls could help themselves. We encouraged, but didn't force, each girl to have some fruit and I was surprised by the number of girls who did take some, even if I did end up eating most of the bowl of apple slices from my end of the table! 

After lunch, we did my wide game. I coloured in the clothes, cut them out and laminated them. I stapled some string to each one so it could easily be hung on trees and bushes, Each set had a coloured dot on the back that corresponded to the colour surrounding one of the people outlines so the girls had to find a specific colour. I took one of the YLs and we tied the clothes to trees and bushes along a path that goes round the house. We then got the girls in their sixes and gave them the outline of a person before sending them off with 2 Leaders. We told them that, if they saw something that didn't have their colour on the back that they were to leave it where they found it and they were all really good at doing so. Two groups found all their items by the end of the trail but my group were still missing one thing (I made a point of not helping them except for telling them which way to go and the junctions) so the whole unit walked back along the route looking for it. As I knew where things had been put, I knew where to look for it and I found it pretty quickly. We put the stuff back in the house and set off on our walk to the river.

Shortly after we had left, it started spitting with rain but, as we had made sure that every girl had a rain coat, we carried on. A couple of the girls complained when we came out of the woods into the open but the vast majority seemed to be enjoying themselves in the rain! I ended up at the back, as per usual, with 4 girls and 2 YLs. We were doing quite a good job of keeping up with the rest of the unit for a while but then the girls started slowing down. We tried quite a few tactics to speed them up, some of which worked briefly, but we were slowly being left behind. It didn't really matter as I know the way well but it was quite tiring for us to be continually encouraging the girls. Eventually 3 of them ran to catch up with a friend in the main group and we were left with one girl who, when told to speed up, would do so for a dozen steps or so and then slow down again! We did eventually make it to the river and most of the girls were already in as Brown Owl had decided it was safe for them to do so. They paddled around for a bit and then we got out the rafts and had a few races. We had one girls from each six stood on the bridge and then two YLs stood downstream. On the count of three, the girls all dropped their rafts into the river and the YLs caught them when they reached them so we could reuse them. We had a couple of issues with rafts getting caught under the bridge but, after quite a few races, we crowned the winner. We then got the girls out the river and walked back to the house again. 

When we got back, we had the usual fight with a few girls and their wellies as water creates quite a lot of suction. This year, however, we had a girl who wearing some wellies that were a little bit too small for her and it took 3 leaders and a lot of giggling to get them off her feet! We then had a lot of the girls wearing their pyjamas for the rest of the day because they had got soaked, including me as I'd just taken one pair of jeans because I knew I wouldn't go in the river forgetting that it could rain and soak them through... We put all the wet things over drying racks and radiators but we had to tell the girls to take their clothes off the radiators in their room because the dust on them set off the fire alarm briefly.

The girls then had rest hour. I spent the time sat in my room, attempting one of the worksheets I was set this week and the girls were in their room, being quiet. Two of the YLs set up and ran the tuck shop during that time. We sell a variety of small things the girls can take home with them to remember pack holiday, as well as (a limited number of) chocolates and sweets to supplement their midnight feasts (that, theoretically, we don't know about!). 

Once we were done, the girls then did some more of the detective work in their sixes and worked on their owls if they had more to do on them until dinner. Dinner was fish finger or chicken nuggets with chips and peas. 

After dinner, the YLs went outside and lit the camp fire. We decided though that, because most of the girls were in their pyjamas because their clothes were wet and the grass was also wet, that we would sit inside and sing songs while watching the fire outside. We sang, Who Stole the Cookie from the Cookie Jar?, Cecil Is My Caterpillar, Wishy Washy, Hole at the Bottom of the Sea, Have You Ever Seen a Penguin Come to Tea?, and My Ship Sailed From China (lyrics to follow in another post but I think most of them are here anyway!). We had to do Cookie Jar because of our theme and, ironically, the last person in the song was Snowy Owl; one of the suspects in the detective work the girls have been doing. When we got to the end, one of the girls yelled "so it was you Snowy!" to which she replied "ssshh, it's a secret!", which made a lot of them laugh. 

We then started getting the girls ready for bed. We had tears from a couple of them because they were missing their parents; in particular we had a few who's parents are split up and they would normally see their Dad over the weekend but they couldn't this weekend. We normally have some girls who get a little homesick when they get really tired but they all settle down when we tell them that they'll see their parents the next day anyway. 

Eventually, they all got into bed and were relatively quiet. The Leaders all sat in the living room for a while, chatting before we all went to bed too, at about 11.

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.

Trip to Hobbycraft

05/06/14

This week we went to the local Hobbycraft and did some crafts. For those of you who don't know, Hobbycraft is a craft shop here in the UK. We buy a lot of our craft material from here (or just wander round and get ideas for crafts!) and they are very interested in getting involved with the local community. They run sessions for groups, providing the materials for whatever you want to do and instructing the girls. It's only £1 per girl and the money raised goes to various charities. We went last year and the girls thoroughly enjoyed it so we did it again this year. 

This year we did decoupage boxes, clay pots and bracelets. The girls were split into three groups initially and started on one of the three activities and then could move onto a different one whenever they had finished. Each activity was run by a Hobbycraft employee so all us leaders had to do was make sure no one had any arguments and escort them to the toilets. I spent a lot of the evening going up and down the stairs as we were doing the activities on the ground floor and the toilets were on the first floor. As there were members of the public in the shop too we didn't want to send them upstairs on their own (and the doors were quite heavy) so a leader had to always be with them, and it ended up being me. I'm not really complaining though, it was quite a good workout amd it gave me some one on one time with a few of the girl too! 

I then spent the rest of the time keeping an eye on the few girls who'd finished first - they hadn't rushed, they're just quicker than the others. The first girl to finish was our newest member (so new she's not even made her Promise yet!) and the two of us walked around the shop looking for a bouncy ball as all girls were allowed to bring money and that was what she wanted to buy with hers. Unfortunately, after asking an employee, we found out they didn't sell any so I helped her look for something else. It was really nice to get to talk to her as her older sister has just left us but they're completely different. I like that you can get two siblings who are so different as it reminds me that, just because girls are related, doesn't mean they will be identical (and it reminds me of my sister and me!). A few other girls then joined us and I was keeping an eye on them while the other leaders helped the others finish and started helping to tidy up. It is quite hard to keep track of 25 girls in a shop the size of Hobbycraft as there are so many different aisles they could be down and it's really easy to lose track of them. Our main focus was just that they were not allowed to leave the shop; at least that way we knew they were inside somewhere and not too far away. At one point they found the princess aisle and we had a couple of them with crowns and hats on and two others having a mock sword fight with some foam swords! I didn't interrupt except to tell them to be careful with the swords or they'd have to pay for them (they weren't actually making contact but I just thought I should warn them) and it was quite entertaining to watch!

All in all it was a very enjoyable evening, as it was last year. The girls all seemed to be having fun and we didn't lose any of them! The only comment we had about it was that there wasn't much for the ones who'd finished to do - we would have given them something to colour or a wordsearch if we were in our meeting place - and it's quite hard for a single leader to keep track of lots of girls in the shop. 

I apologise if these posts are later than usual; I am in the middle of my A level exams so don't have as much time to sit down and write a post but I will try my best to keep them coming as regularly as possible over the next 3 weeks. 

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.

Mother's Day cards

27/03/14

This week I couldn't attend Brownies as I was in my school Leavers' Concert. The meeting was run by Snowy Owl and our parent helper as Brown Owl was at the concert too. I thought I would just quickly tell you what they had planned for the evening (although I don't yet know how it went).

First off, one of the leaders of the Beavers who meet in the smaller church hall decided that they were going to have a fire drill during the Cubs meeting because they had noticed that they don't ever take a register or even know how many kids they have! They thought a shock might be the quickest way to make them realise how important it is. They informed us last week so that we were aware it was going to happen. I'm not sure if the Brownies were told that there was no need for them to evacuate or if Snowy decided to use it as our fire drill but I'll be interested to know, firstly, how our girls reacted and, secondly, if it had the desired effect on the Cubs leaders...

The original planned activity for the meeting was Mother's Day cards which Brown Owl had cut out before and given them to Snowy, along with the key to the cupboard. The idea was that the girls could decorate the cards however they wanted to give to their mothers on Mother's Day. We're lucky that we don't have any girls who've lost a mother or anything like that as I can see it could cause all kinds of issues if we did.

I imagine they then played some games if they had time as the girls always ask if they can.

Anyway, things will be back to normal next week; when I'm actually at the meeting!

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!

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. 

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.