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.

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.

Pack Holiday Badges, More Traditions, and Promise Ceremony

27/09/18

This evening was another pre-pack holiday meeting. All the girls coming on pack holiday have been split into 3 sixes, which they chose a few weeks ago. They now need to make a badge to wear so we know what six they are in. Any girl who is not coming on pack holiday is given the opportunity to make a badge of her choice but the girls coming on pack holiday have to make the badge of her six. We had printed out pictures of the three sixes (swimming, horse riding, and gymnastics) for the girls to colour in. We all sat around tables colouring and Brown Owl and our Young Leader operated the badge machine. When I had coloured mine in, I went over to the badge machine and they were having issues. It is an incredibly old machine and it's starting to show its age so some badges weren't quite getting made correctly tonight. I took over from the YL and managed to coax it through the rest of the evening!

Once all the girls had made their badge, we did another clause of the Traditions badge and the Century Time Travel UMA - knowing the parts of the Union Flag. We first held up a complete version and asked the girls what it was called. One said "a flag" and then another said "the Union Jack". Brown Owl said "that's sort of correct, it's got a different name too" and then one of our newer girls said "it's only the Union Jack on a boat, it's the Union Flag on land"! We were all very impressed that she knew that!! The girls were then given the 3 parts of the flag to cut up and stick together to make the Union Flag in their sixes.

As we started that activity, the parents of a girl who was making her promise arrived. We always invite them about half an hour before we finish so they can watch us do a bit of an activity before watching their daughter make her promise. I took the girl who was doing her Hostess over to them and got their drinks orders and then assisted her in making 2 cups of tea.

Once all the girls had done their flag, we put the tables away and got into a circle. We still had a bit of time to spare so we played the original version of the Iranian Smiling Game which is the last bit of the Century Time Travel UMA. We had to stop before all the girls were out though, as they were very good at it!

Finally, it was time for our promise ceremony, and then I helped the girl doing her Hostess badge wash up and then it was home time. There were no left-over Brownies tonight, and the Mum from last week came in with a bunch of flowers, very apologetically!

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.

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.

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!?

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.

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!

Promise activities and matchbox drawers

16/01/14

This week we had two girls making their promises so we decided to start the meeting off by teaching the girls about the new promise. For those of you who don't know, the promise recently changed so it better included girls from other religions and countries. Here is an explanation from Guiding UK and below are the old and new promises:

Old promise:

I promise that I will do my best,
To love my God,
To serve the Queen and my country,
To help other people,
And to keep the Brownie Guide Law

New promise:

I promise that I will do my best,
To be true to myself and develop my beliefs,
To serve the Queen and my community,
To help other people, 
And to keep the Brownie Guide Law

Brown Owl cut up 4 copies of the promise into 7 sections and gave them out to the girls, one piece each. The girls were then told to reassemble the four promises without any help from the leaders (although I'm not sure we'd have been that much help anyway because I still don't know it!). There was quite a lot of confusion and chaos for the next few minutes. The girls seemed to get the idea that they needed to get into 4 groups with one of each part and then rearrange them into the correct order but they couldn't seem to actually coordinate this. We had one girl almost in tears because none of the groups wanted her in their group and another group that told us they were done and they only had 6 parts of the promise! I was quite amused that none of the girls thought to ask the two girls who were making their promise tonight as they should know the new promise perfectly (and not the old one to confuse things)... After leaving them to their own devices for a bit, Brown Owl stopped them and told them the actual promise and they got themselves into the right groups. We then got them to swap pieces of paper with another girl and got the sixers and seconders to go to one side of the room and all the other girls to stand in the middle. The sixers and seconders then were tasked with collecting a full set of the promise and arranging them in the correct order. That went infinitely better as the girls then knew what the promise was supposed to be.

Then we got out all the tables and the girls made matchbox drawers which had been left over from pack holiday and we hadn't got round to doing it. We gave each girl 4 empty matchboxes, a piece of cereal box, a piece of shiny card and some patterned paper. They had to stick the four matchboxes together, two on the bottom and two on the top and the leaders went round with thick needles and split pins, making holes in the matchbox trays for the handles. They then covered the 4 matchboxes in the patterned paper (or they could use white paper and draw their own design), which was quite difficult for some girls for some reason. They they cut their piece of cereal box into the shape they wanted for the back of the dresser, covered it in their paper and stuck it on using sticky tape and not glue because otherwise the drawers won't come out! I did have to rescue one girl because she'd glued it without realising but I think I managed to save hers! Finally, they cut the shiny card out in whatever shape they wanted and stuck it to the cereal box as a mirror. They all seemed to really like this craft and it's a perfect one to do as part of the toymaker badge (which is the badge we did on pack holiday). 

Whenever we have girls making their promise, we also have a couple of girls doing their hostess badge. Every girl will get the chance to do their badge at some point during their Brownie life; we chose the girls based on their enrolment date. I was tasked with helping the girls who were doing their hostess badge tonight. They have to provide a table decoration and some cakes or biscuits so we first got out some tables and chairs so they could lay out their things. Once the parents of the girls making their promise had arrived they two hostesses asked if they would like tea or coffee and then we made it. Both parents wanted tea (which was good because I drink lots of tea and can make it easily but I don't drink coffee so I have to remember how to make it each time!) so I showed the girls how to fill the kettle and turn it on. We then got the tea bags ready (and I had to explain the function of the string on the ones Brown Owl had bought as they were planning on just dropping them straight in!) and then had to wait for the kettle to boil. Both girls kept complaining that it was taking too long to boil! Finally I poured it into the mugs for them and instructed them on how much milk and sugar they needed to put into each and they carried it into the hall to give it to the parents. I think it went quite well this time - some of the girls have no interest in doing it at all but these two were asking me fairly sensible questions and following instructions. 

Finally we could get going with our promise ceremony. We start off as we normally would at the beginning of the meeting - skipping round out toadstool and owl, singing the Brownie song. The girls then sing their six songs and move into a circle, in their sixes, with two of the oldest girls holding the pack's flag. I stand next to Brown Owl and hold the boxes with various badges and books in for the new girls. Each girl is bought up to Brown Owl by her sixer who says 'This is [name] and she would like to become a Brownie' and then returns to her space. Brown Owl then says something to the effect of 'Before you can make your Promise, you need to say the Brownie Guide Law because you are about to promise to keep the Law. Do you know the Law?' and the girl will then say her law (or the pack will say it with her if she is a little nervous). The Brown Owl then gets every girl who has already made her Promise to salute while the girl makes her Promise, occasionally with a little bit of prompting from Brown Owl. I then hand her the Promise badge which she pins onto the girl's top and then I give her the various other badges; six emblem, county silk, unit name badge and finally the box and book. The two girls who made their promise this week did very well, especially our Norwegian girl who sometime struggles with English a little. Once she'd got going, she was word perfect. 

After the meeting the two hostesses had to wash up - they get given their badge in the circle before everyone goes on the condition they complete it by washing up afterwards! They were less enthusiastic about this than they had been about the making of tea but they did a pretty decent job of things never-the-less. 

All in all, I think this was a very successful meeting and the girls thoroughly enjoyed themselves and learnt the new promise which hopefully will slowly become as natural for me to say as the one I've been saying for 11 years of my life! I will just add here that I, as an atheist, am completely supportive of the removal of God from the Promise but, at the moment, it doesn't roll off my tongue as nicely as the old one did!