First meeting, third year!

03/09/15

Apologies that this was a bit late, completely forgot I needed to write it..!

This week was our first meeting back for the new school year. As always, the girls were slightly hyper so we didn't plan on doing anything particularly strenuous! We let them all have a turn for show-and-tell this week (usually we do one six a week) and told them they had to be quick or we'd miss them out.

We started off by playing a game to try and get rid of some of their energy (and to give the Adults and Young Leaders a chance to catch up themselves!). We played the game where you sit in a circle, with one girl in the middle and you call out something such as 'who has a brother' or 'who's wearing blue shoes' and anyone who fits that description has to swap chairs with someone else, and the girl in the middle has to sit down somewhere.

We then split the girls into those who are going on Pack Holiday in October, and those who aren't. The ones who aren't were given some wordsearches and puzzles to do together. We took the ones who are going and split them into sixes. We chose three girls who had been before to be the sixers and then spread out the other girls so they were with friends but we also had a fairly even mix of girls who had and hadn't in each six. They were then tasked with choosing a name for themselves, around our theme of superheroes. Once they had done that, we got them to sit in their sixes and asked the older ones to tell the younger ones what Pack Holiday is like and what things we do, as we have a lot of younger girls who've never been before. The girls got bored discussing that though, and started having their own conversations. I joined in one with a few of the newer girls, which resulted in two of them tying my shoe laces to prove that they could (it took me a while to undo them again later on!).

To end the meeting, we sang a few songs because we realised that we haven't done that in a while and we have a lot of new girls who don't know the songs that we will be singing on Pack Holiday around our campfire. We sang 'Cecil is my Caterpillar', 'Cookie Jar', and 'Three Little Angels' before letting the girls go home.

It was a chaotic meeting, as is usually the case with the first meeting back, but I enjoy those kind of meetings because the girls seem a lot chattier than at the end of a term which is the part I enjoy about Brownies.

Pack Holiday Sixes and Puzzles

11/09/14

This evening we started our planning for pack holiday. On last pack holiday, our Young Leader and Guide were looking through the scrapbook and came across a detective themed weekend. They decided they wanted ours to be a detective one this year so have been planning over the Summer. Our first task was to split the girls into their sixes. We split the girls into the ones who are coming and the ones who aren't. The ones who aren't coming started the evenings activity and the others organized their sixes. We asked them to get into pairs with a girls they wanted to be with. The three oldest girls were then given the position of sixer and the other pairs were put in their sixes. We try to have a girl who's been before in each six so that the other girls know what is expected of them. The sixes worked out quite nicely this year. The Young Leader and Guide then gave them options for six names, all names of detectives. One six immediately claimed Pink Panther and the other two both wanted James Bond so we said that neither could have it and they eventually settled on Johnny English and Sherlock.

All the girls then worked on this evenings activity; puzzles from their handbooks. There was a wordsearch and a 'fit-word' (a sort of crossword where you have to fit the given words into the right places) and the Leaders mingled helping them while discussing our own names for pack holiday. All the Leaders are going to be villains but there was quite a long list for us to decide from. I think we have settled on:

Brown Owl: The Queen of Hearts
Snowy: Feathers McGraw
Me: Elphaba (Wicked Witch of the West)
Cooks: Dastardly and Muttley
Young Leader: Moriarty
Guide Helper: Cruella De Vil
Leader's children: Darth Vader and The Joker

Once the girls had finished, we tidied away and played a quick game of Fruit Bowl. We started it off by just getting the girls to swap seats and then we started to remove chairs and get girls out. It was going fine, even if Brown Owl was slowly running out of things to choose from, until we got down to the last two girls. If it was me, I would have just said they were both the winner and left it at that but it was decided that the first to a third chair on the count of three would be the winner. The two girls (let's call them A and B) then got ready to go with all the other girls lined up either side. They then started cheering except it was clear that all the girls were cheering for A and not B so B got upset. Brown Owl told them all to stop yelling and counted down. A got to the chair marginally before B so B got more upset and walked off crying in a strop. Brown Owl had a quick word with both girls and then the pack in general. She picked up on the group of girls who'd started the cheering and made them all apologise to B for being mean and luckily that was the end of the matter.

We ended the meeting by saying goodbye to one of our girls and then they all went home.

This meeting was a mix, parts of it were really good and the girls were really nice, if a little hyper, and other parts are just best forgotten.

We have also scheduled a meeting for the Leaders so we can finalise the programme for pack holiday and sort out the menu before I go off to University (I am coming home for pack holiday weekend - I wouldn't miss it for the World!).