08/05/14
This evening we finished the dragon boats the girls had started last week. Our first challenge was getting the boats back to Brownies as we couldn't store them there and there was only just enough room in the car for them as us! We managed it, with a little help from a parent at the other end to get them into the hall.
We did show-and-tell and then told the girls that they had until 7 (about 45 minutes at that point) to finish their boats before we raced them. They had just spread themselves around the hall in their sixes and were getting stuck in when the District Commissioner came in. She asked if she could have a few minutes of the units' time as she couldn't come at the end of the meeting so we got the girls into a circle. That took some time as they didn't want to stop so soon but they did all eventually get into the circle. She then presented me with my Adult Leader Qualification! I was quite surprised that it all went through so quickly, but I'm not complaining!
We then let the girls go back to their boats. It was absolute chaos with glitter, paper and pens absolutely everywhere but they seemed to be enjoying themselves. We floated around and helped by cutting sticky tape and settling minor disagreements but we left them to their own devices when it came to the actual making of the boats.
I had one girl come up and ask me what my badge actually meant. Our conversation went something along the liines of:
Her: Does your badge mean you can be Brown Owl if you want?
Me: Yes, it does.
Her: So you could be Brown Owl and Brown Owl could be your helper? (Brown Owl was within earshot and smiled at me)
Me: Yes but I don't want to just yet.
Her: Don't you want to be a Brown Owl?
Me: I do, but I want to get university out of the way first.
Her: Oh... *runs off again and Brown Owl laughs*
Around 5 past 7 we stopped them and did a quick sweep of the hall with a broom to get most of the mess out of the way. We lined the girls up at one end of the hall in their dragons (and did a fair amount of rapid repairs where they were falling apart!). We invited in a few parents who were waiting outside to watch and then we started the race. The race itself went well with no major problems but then we said they could run back to the other side of the hall. Most of them took this as the cue to run pell-mell back across, ripping the dragons to shreds as they went! It was all done in good humour and all the girls got involved so it was a good way of quickly breaking it down into pieces we could put in a bin bag and in the large bins outside. They all helped fish the pens and glue out of the piles of rubbish that had been swept to one side and then put all the rubbish into yet more bin bags.
All in all I was very impressed by our girls this week. They worked well together and there were no major disagreements (and only one or two minor ones about what colour it should be). There were no objections to being asked to tidy up either and everyone chipped in and made the job far easier and quicker. It's times like these when I really enjoy being involved in Brownies.
09/01/14
This week we started the Big Brownie Birthday Challenge badge. For those of you who don't know, here is an explanation but it's basically just a variety of challenges the girls can do based around Guiding through the ages and at the end of it they get a badge.
We decided to start with one of the compulsory tasks which was team work, something our girls struggle with sometimes! For the first game, we had the girls in their sixes and gave each six 3 sheets of newspaper. We then told them that there was a river in front of them which they had to cross using their newspaper pieces as stepping stones. The stepping stones could hold any number of girls as long as not so much as a toe touched the floor - at which point the offending girl had to return to the start! They were told that they would get 4 points for each girl who made it to the other side of the room and the first team across would get an extra 10 points. They were also told that, if a girl fell off, her six could chose to either leave her behind and carry on or they could all go back for her and start again. Having explained these rules to the girls, each leader was assigned a six and told to be quite ruthless in picking up on toes off the newspaper and the race was on! It was quite a close race between the sixes with a fair few girls being left behind by her sixes (and one sixer who told her six to go and leave her behind because they were winning). The girls then added up their points and there was some celebration because the six that got there first had the most points, despite having left 2 of their number behind. Brown Owl then told the girls that she'd forgotten to tell them one of the rules! This 'forgotten' rule was that, for every girl they'd left behind, they lost 10 points. This caused some dissent because the original winning team went down to last place because they'd left behind the most people and the team which originally was in last place ended up coming first because they hadn't left anyone behind! This was quite a good game to show girls that, by working together as a team, they could do better than when they were just thinking of themselves.
We then did another team activity to see if they could put what they'd just learnt into practice. Each sixer was given a whiteboard and pen and the sixes were told they had to think of a job and create a short mime for the other sixes to guess. We left them to it for this and just observed the different approaches. Three of our four sixes took the 'free for all' approach, where all the girls were talking at once and refusing to listen to each other or back down from their idea when no one else wanted to do it. The fourth six (incidentally, the one that won the previous game) had a much better approach where the sixer asked each girl in turn for her idea and then they chose their collective favourite. They had 5 minutes to practice their mime and then we went round the room watching each mime. The other three sixes had to come up with one guess from their six which they wrote on the whiteboard and then they all showed them simultaneously. For each six that guessed the job correctly, the performing six and the guessing six got one point, which they noted as a dot on their whiteboard. This bit went OK with only one disagreement within a six which was quickly resolved. Once all four sixes had finished the girls went back to their six corners. They were then told to add a point (dot) to their whiteboard for every suggestion that had been made and listened to and another point for each girl who took an active part in the mime (i.e. didn't just stand there, not helping). The girls then sat in a circle in their six, facing outwards. The board was passed round each girl and they had to add a dot if they thought their six worked well together and listened to each other and remove a dot if they didn't think they had worked well together. It took a while to coordinate all this point distribution but, once it was complete, it was quite interesting to see which sixes had the most points! The six who won the previous game came first by a long margin, having not lost any points and the other sixes were lagging behind quite significantly. I'm not sure quite how much they took from this meeting but it's nice to see that at least one of our sixers is capable of making her six work as a team.
We finished off the evening by singing 'Cookie Jar' (lyrics here) and then the girls went home. This was quite an interesting evening from the point of view of a Young Leader because I was able to see which girls are the 'problem girls' in each six, i.e. the ones who refuse to back down and just continually shout at their team or cry until they get their own way. It means that in future team activities we can avoid putting all these girls in the same team or can keep an eye on groups with them in try and resolve problems before they get too severe. Overall, a success and one step closer to our Big Brownie Birthday Adventure badge!
(Apologies for the long post this time - I haven't written in a while so I'm struggling to say things in a condensed manner at the moment!)
