Healthy Heart Badge

18/10/18

This week we finished off the parts of the Healthy Heart badge that we didn't get a chance to do while we were on pack holiday. We started off by asking the girls how they would take their pulse. One girls suggested the following

    Girl: "with that armband that blows up"
    Brown Owl: "no that's your blood pressure"
    Girl: "oh, yeah, it's that clippy thing for your finger isn't it"
    Brown Owl: "well, yes, but I meant how would you do it now, with no other equipment"

We then explained that you can take your pulse in your wrist or in your neck, and it is different for each person how easy it is. All the girls then had a go at finding their own pulse and leaders moved around the circle helping those that couldn't. Once the majority of them had managed it, we said to the once who hadn't that it was OK, there would be more opportunities through the meeting to find it.

We then said that we were going to do activities based on the 3 sixes we had on pack holiday. We started with the swimming six - all the girls had to 'swim' 3 lengths of the hall any stroke they wanted (except backstroke!) and then Brown Owl would start a stopwatch for a minute and they had to count how many heart beats they could feel in that time. It was a very abrupt change from 24 girls frantically running up and down, arms flailing, to 24 girls stood almost sliently, muttering numbers under their breath! We gave each sixer a piece of paper to write down her sixes results.

We then did gymnastics - the girls had to hop one length of the hall and then take their pulse again and write it on their sheet. Finally, we did horse riding - the girls had to pretend to ride their horse for 5 laps of the hall and take their pulse again. We then asked them which activites got their heart beating faster (horse riding, almost unanimously).

We then did a different clause - each six had to make up a game for the rest of the unit to play. We gave them a while to come up with their game and test them out with their six and then we picked one group that had finished to test theirs out with the whole unit. The game they had come up with was actually pretty good - it was a simple variation on Fishes:

• Split the girls into 4 evenly sized groups and put one in each corner of the room
• You will also need 2/3 chasers (depending on size of hall and number of girls)
• Each corner gives themselves a name
• A Leader calls out one of the names and that corner has to run in a circle around the hall (inside the other groups)
• The chasers and the rest of the unit count loudly to 5 
• The chasers have to stand still until they reach 5 and then they can try and tag as many of the girls left running as possible
• Girls are safe if they reach their corner without being tagged and they sit out at the side if they got tagged
• The winner is the last group with people in its corner 

The girls actually really enjoyed playing this game and we could probably have let them carry on for the rest of the meeting but we decided to let a different six have a go. This game seemed far more complicated, and I'm not 100% of the rules but they involved girls stood in a line and going under each others legs or jumping over someone curled up on the floor! I'm not sure anyone understood completely what was going on...

We then had run out of time so we told the other sixes that they could test their games after half term, if they remind us, and we finished the meeting by giving out a few more left over crafts and booklets from pack holiday and then let the girls go home.

It has been a chaotic term, but the girls have enjoyed all the meetings, as far as I can gather. It's going to be nice to have a week off as a leader though! Next weeks blog will be an update on how far I have got with my Queen's Guide Award.

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.