Showing posts with label posters. Show all posts
Showing posts with label posters. Show all posts

Monday, 26 November 2018

Finishing Brownie Traditions and Promise Ceremony

22/11/18

Tonight we finished off the last few clauses for the Brownie Traditions badge. We started by telling the girls how Brownies came to be (a cut down version of this story) and then they had 10 minutes in their six to come up with a short play to explain to someone who didn't know about Brownies where they had come from. There was a lot of confusion to start with and we spent a while as Leaders restating parts of the story to various girlswho had forgotten parts. We were very impressed when they performed them though - a lot of the girls had most of the information in there and none of them were reading from notes.

Once they had finished performing them, we got out some tables and chairs. We read out a list of the girls who missed the previous meeting when we had done things towards the Traditions badge and they sat on one table. All the other girls spread themselves out around the rest of the tables. The girls who had missed the previous meeting had a chance to light a candle, shine a penny, and tie 2 knots. The other girls were designing a poster showing what they thought Brownies would be like in 10 years. There was some entertaining suggestions, including levitating toadstools, pack holidays on the moon, and a new uniform that was pink and purple!

While the girls were doing their posters, I took the two girls doing their Hostess badge into the kitchen to set up their decorations and turn on the kettle ready for the parents. The parents arrived shortly after and the girls asked them if they would like tea or coffee. Surprisingly this time, only one of the parents wanted a cup of tea so I helped the girls make it. We then tidied up the tables and did our promise ceremony - we were enrolling 3 girls this week. Two of them even managed to say the whole Promise without reading the wording from the certificate, which we haven;t seen in a long time.

Then all the girls who had finished their posters were given their Traditions badge, and those who hadn't finished were told that if they did it at home then they could have the badge next week.

This was a fairly relaxed meeting, the girls just got on with doing various things and didn't need too much leader input (except for the candle lighting, obviously!) so we could just wander round and chat to them.

Friday, 12 October 2018

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.

Monday, 17 September 2018

Story Making and Pack Holiday Posters

13/09/18

This evening we started with a vote. Every year we do a sale (see here for a previous year's) to raise money for a charity. The last sale they did (while I was at university), we raised money for WWF so we could sponsor an animal. We have sponsored several animals in the past and always get a cuddly toy to go with it which then goes home with a different girl each week. We currently have a dolphin, a gorilla, and an elephant but the dolphin is getting a bit old and so we wanted to retire him to join the dog (they now sit under the toadstool) and get a new animal. I had looked online at the choices and chosen 5 to vote on: lion, panda, penguin, polar bear, and rhino. We printed out the picture of the toy onto paper which we spread round the room. Each girl was given 3 token, a red, a yellow and a blue. They then had to put the red token on their favourite, the yellow on their second choice and the blue on their third. I then counted up the votes - red getting 3 points, yellow getting 2 and blue getting 1. While I was counting, the girls sang 'Who Stole the Cookie from the Cookie Jar'. I then announced that the winner, who got 56 points, was the polar bear. We now just need to send off the money to the WWF and wait for the toy to arrive.

We then decided we would do another of the new programme UMAs - we chose 'Catch a Story' from the Express Myself theme. We had a small soft ball which we passed across the circle and each girl had to add a word to the story (we specified no rude words first!). Brown Owl started by saying 'Once' so that the next 3 would have to say 'upon a time' so that the girls got the idea and then we let it continue, with occasional prompting from leaders about the best word. If we did it again, we would definitely write the story down as we went along as by the end we couldn't remember the whole thing. We might also consider adding a time limit to the length of time a girl had to think of a word as we frequently got stuck waiting. We did eventually get a sort of story about a dog called Max who didn't like puppies because they were weird! I was quite impressed with some girls choice of words, we had a few say 'because' and 'however', although I would say it is an activity more suited to older girls as the younger ones were having trouble keeping up with what had laready been said and making sensible suggestions of words (we went round in circles at one point saying things the dog hated).

Once we had done that for around 15 minutes we stopped and got out some tables. We handed out various A5 pictures relating to the Olympics, there were some simple ones such as the rings, and some more complex ones like a man with an Olympic torch. These will form the decorations on pack holiday, and are also a great way to keep the noise down a little bit while we hold the parents meeting for girls who haven't been on pack holiday before. I sat on a table with some of the newer girls and coloured in my own picture, and got to know them a bit more.

This was quite a nice relaxed evening and went very smoothly. I always enjoy meetings where I can just sit and talk to girls and get to know them a bit more, especially with so many girls who've joined since I went away for university. And we always end up having some entertaining conversations, such as tonight when I was asked how old I was so I said "22" and one girl said "I think you look more like you're 23"!

Monday, 19 October 2015

Posters

Apologies for these being a bit behind - life has really got in the way these last few weeks. Stay tuned over the next short while though as I will be getting up-to-date which will involve Pack Holiday and another exciting adventure!

01/10/15

This week the girls coloured in posters for pack holiday. It was a fairly relaxed evening as all I needed to do was to sit with some of the girls and colour in my own picture.

When they were done, we played a quick game of 'Trains' and then sent them home - a nice easy meeting!

Monday, 29 June 2015

Fayre Planning, Banana Animals, and Promises

25/06/15

This week we had two activities for the girls to do. The first was to draw the posters for their stalls at our fayre next week. The other was to make banana penguins. Our two Young Leaders, and an Adult helped with that, by melting the chocolate in the microwave and allowing girls in a few at a time as we only have a small kitchen to do it in. I helped in the main hall by supervising the girls doing their posters.

We also had 2 more girls make their promises, and I helped the hostess again. This time we only had to make 2 black teas, which made my life slightly easier! Our only issue was that the girl doing her badge wasn't strong enough to lift the kettle so I had to pour the water for her. Other than that, she was one of the better ones I've helped, and was particularly thorough when it came to washing and drying up!

It was a fairly relaxed evening, the last of those we're going to have this term..!

In other news, I have been going through some more of my Look Wider Qualification and typing up parts I've done. I'm getting close to finishing a few more Octants, I think, and have plans for how to complete a few more Phases so keep an eye out for that! I have updated the Look Wider page so you can see how close I am to completing each Octant.

Monday, 22 September 2014

Badges and Posters

18/09/14

This meeting we started off by playing a game. We asked one of the oldest girls, who's leaving in a few weeks, what game she would like to play and she chose Fishes. The girls were playing really nicely this evening and we managed to play two games instead of the usual one with lots of arguing. For the first game we chose the first two girls who asked (nicely) to be the sharks but for the second game, to make it fair, we had all the girls who wanted to be sharks line up and then Brown Owl turned her back and picked two numbers. We counted along the line to find the girls. It worked really well because then we didn't end up with 2 friends working as a team which is usually the cause of most of the arguments as the girls think they are ganging up on certain people.

When the girls had finished playing, we got out tables and they started making their badges for pack holiday. I had found all the pictures and printed them out and then we borrowed the District badge machine to turn them into badges. The girls who are coming on pack holiday had to colour in the badge for their six and hand it in so it didn't get lost, and the girls who aren't coming could either colour in a spare or design their own badge that they could take home that night. When they had finished, they could colour in a badge for a leader if they wanted, and there were spare ones, or they could colour in a poster to go on the wall.

While they were doing this, Brown Owl held a parents meeting for any girls who haven't been on pack holiday before so they could ask any questions and find out how we run it. We asked the girls to be quiet, which they seemed to be doing but then we noticed that some of the girls were missing. They were located by the Young Leader in the toilet, making quite a bit of noise so we had to lay down the law and say that everyone has to ask before going as opposed to trusting them to go and come back sensibly (the toilet is only down the corridor).

Other than that, it was quite a relaxed meeting though. I sat at a table with some of the girls and chatted to them about random things while colouring my own badge in. It all ended sadly though as this was my last meeting with them before going off to uni. When Brown Owl told them, the whole unit shouted 'nooo' in unison! I was given a card, signed by all the girls, and a Brownie Me To You bear!


I have taken both to uni and they are on display in my room, so I don't forget them (I wouldn't even dream of it!). I am returning for pack holiday in a couple of weeks and I have gone through Join Us and the 'Girlguiding - Movers' Facebook page to try and find myself a unit to help at during term times but, as yet I haven't got in contact with anyone. I am going to try and focus on my Look Wider too, as one of the sections is all about Independent Living! Hopefully I will find a unit soon as I'm not sure I can cope with too much time away from girls...

Monday, 16 September 2013

Posters and Games

12/9/13

This week we started off the meeting with a game, to try and calm to girls down a bit before starting colouring posters for pack holiday while we had the parents meeting. It was decided that we should play Wigwams (instructions here) however we then had a job settling them down so we could play the game as they couldn't decide on their partners (and two of them desperately wanted to be the other Young Leader's partner!). We finally started playing but we only had time for 4 rounds before we had to stop to allow for the parents meeting to take place.

Before we go on pack holiday, we have a parents' meeting for any parents of girls who've never been on pack holiday before so they can find out what will happen. We have to have it in the corner of the hall so we always colour in posters for pack holiday during the meeting so the girls aren't too noisy. We gave them a choice of a variety of Despicable Me 2 pictures which they could choose from and pretty much left them to it. We ended up having a few arguments though because one table didn't want to share the new pens with the other girls and another table was hoarding yellows (which are kind of essential for colouring in minions...). After we had broken up the minor arguments though, we actually got a lot of surprisingly good pictures; some of the girls had definitely thought about what they were colouring in and hadn't rushed or messed about. The posters will be stuck onto card and put up around the house on camp and then returned to the girls afterwards. 

This evening, whilst being quite taxing on my voice from all the shouting to break up arguments, was actually quite enjoyable. I love sitting and talking to the girls and hearing about what they've been doing (especially as I went to the same primary school as most of them so I can find out about my old teachers!) and I hear some rather entertaining stories!