Senior Section Trip to London

03/10/15

As some of you may be aware, this year is the Senior Section Centenary. Across the country, lots of events aimed at the Senior Section are being organised. One of these was our region's recent trip to London for a wide game. We weren't given any details, except that it would involve being in a team of 4 and travelling across London completing a mission. As we have 4 Senior Section members helping at our unit, we decided to sign up for it.

A few days before we were due to go, we were given our mission - take photos with as many modes of transport as possible (along with at least one team member), over the course of 5 hours. There were also bonus points for various landmarks and guiding buildings.

We got to the train station at 8:45, ready to get on the train. We managed to get a table seat and pulled out or maps to get planning our route and making a list of all modes of transport we could think of. When we got to the next station, we bumped into several other Senior Section members heading to the same event, who had the same idea as us - plan the route on the way there.

We arrived at London Paddington and, when the clock hit 11am, we were given the signal - let the competition begin! Almost immediately we spotted a teen on a skateboard so we accosted him and took a photo - he seemed a bit confused... We ran around in the station for a while, getting as many obscure pictures as possible - including scissor lifts, piggy backs, and our own feet!

We then headed out into the streets of London. We took a fair few of the obvious photos - London cabs, buses, vans, and cars. A few of our photos took a little more work to get though - notably, the police van who asked the criminals in the back if they were OK with the photo, despite us not being able to see them; the people in the back of a cab who posed too; and the woman in the elephant onsie who was protesting about elephants not being used in circuses..!

We also went to the transport museum to see if we could get in. The answer was, yes, under 15s could go in for free, so the other 3 went to do some speed photos, while I waited in the shop and took a few photos of my own - a child's pram, a wheelbarrow (bizarrely full of plushie moles), and a ride-on suitcase! The others did the whole museum in 15 minutes flat - a pretty impressive feat!

We paused for lunch in a MacDonalds and then our quest continued. We focused on the landmarks more in the second half of the day - heading first for Trafalgar Square. There was a pretty large festival type thing going on so we stood on a wall to get proof we had been near, if not quite in, to it. We then rounded a corner and found an ambulance and proceeded to try and persuade the driver to let us through the barrier to take a photo with it. He said he couldn't do that but he was happy to pass a wheelchair through the barrier so we took a photo of that too!

We then headed down towards Downing Street to see if we could take a photo outside number 10. Unfortunately the answer was no as we hadn't pre-booked but we took a photo of the gate and a police officer and hoped that would count! We also went to Baden Powell House, Horse Guards Parade, Big Ben, and Buckingham Palace, before finally arriving at the Girlguiding HQ.

We sat down to work out how many point we had got (which took a long time) and came to 468! All the other teams were comparing obscure photos and looking round the shop before the winner was announced - it was us!

We were given a goodie bag which contained lots of sweets, a phone case and a Senior Section Spectacular badge for each of us. Everyone who attended was also given a LaSER London Challenge badge as we had completed it by taking part.

It was a great day out, and I would thoroughly recommend it to anyone who gets the chance to do something similar! There isn't much time to stop and see much, but you get a pretty good overview of London.

A selection of our photos:

Team evening in a park

09/07/15

[First off, apologies for this being late; what with visiting the boyfriend and starting a new job, I completely forgot I hadn't written last week's meeting up!]

This week was organised by our YL as part of her YLQ. We joined forces with another unit who meet in a different hall on the same night and did several team-building games in a local field.

First then girls stood in a circle. A ball was given to one girl who had to say a girl's name, throw the ball to that girl and sit down. This continued until all the girls were sat down. We didn't think it would work too well as none of our girls knew any of the other unit's girls but we did eventually get all of them sat down by getting them to ask a girl's name and then throw her the ball. They then all stood back up and were tasked with remembering who they threw the ball to last time and doing it again without having to ask the girl what her name was first. It went relatively well considering it was the first time any of them had met each other. If you are doing this in your unit where everyone knows everyone else, then you can give the ball to the last girl standing and task them with throwing it back to the girl who threw it to them.

The girls were then separated into 3 groups with an even mix of each unit for some other games. One of the games was a blindfolded obstacle course. The girls were split again into 2 teams, with an even number from each unit. One girl (usually a sixer) was in charge of navigation and the rest of her team took it in turn to be blindfolded and guided around the obstacle course (round some cones, stepping over some ropes, through a zigzag) while carrying a cupful of water. When all the girls had been down the course, the amount of water left in each team's cup was measured and a winner declared. The next was a game of charades in their two teams. The final game was a 'how well you know people' type quiz. Each girl had to write a given fact about her (something she likes, something she dislikes, an obscure fact etc.) on a piece of paper and put it in a hat. Each team then took it in turns to pull a piece of paper out the hat and guess which girl had out it in. If they got it right, they got a point for their team, otherwise it was passed over to the other team to have a guess.

Finally, the girls, in their 3 groups, played a game with a ball. All the girls stood in a line, with the one at the front holding the ball. It was then passed over her head to the girl behind, then between her legs to the next girl and so on until it reached the back. The last girl then ran to the front of the line and started again. The winner was the first team to cross a ''finish line' with their whole team. We found it quite hard to stop the girls drifting forwards while the ball was being passed down the line but they were having fun so we didn't mind too much!

Overall, this went relatively smoothly for it being the YLs first taste of planning and running a meeting by herself. We had to give her a few pointers when she'd forgotten something (like a rainy-day plan) but all-in-all she did a great job of organising it. And it was all the better for me as I didn't have to do much and could catch up with a friend who helps at the other unit who I haven't seen for almost a year!

Dragon Boats

01/05/14

Unfortunately I couldn't attend Brownies this week as we had an unexpected open evening at school (last one I ever have to go to though!), but here is what I have been told by Brown Owl.

This week they made dragon boats. I believe it was another part of the Big Brownie Birthday badge. From what I have been told, they got really into making their boats in small groups - so much so that they ran out of time to race them and Brown Owl had to take them home and store them for next week! They were making them in small groups and were given full use of all the spare craft items, including glitter, foam and coloured paper. They made more of a mess this week than they did last week with the cereals! Apparently though, they were very good when Brown Owl asked them to tidy up and the hall was spotless when they were finished.

In other news, I have applied for the Team Digital panel I mentioned a few weeks ago. Fingers crossed all goes well and I get onto it! I'll keep you updated anyway.

Chinese New Year celebrations

06/02/14

This week I ran the meeting. I made a comment last week to Brown Owl about whether she'd planned anything to celebrate Chinese New Year with the girls and she said no but, if I wanted to do something, I was more than welcome, so I did! I started out by Googling Chinese New Year traditions and games. One of the first things I picked up on was the giving of red envelopes and I thought it would be nice if each girl got an envelope with something in it. I then saw these dragon mobiles on Baker Ross and decided that we could do those. I thought it would be nice for the girls to try some Chinese food as well so that was next on my list. Originally I decided that they could try eating the food with chopsticks but I thought that could get a little difficult so I turned it into a game instead. Finally, I had a game and a song up my sleeve if needed and I was ready to start collecting everything I would need.

First I started planning the dragon mobiles. I decided that it would be cheaper for me to make my own mobiles instead of buying them from Baker Ross. I played around with a couple of different sizes before I settled on this, which is A5 size:

Mum took them to work and photocopied them onto card for me. I coloured one in to show the girls what it would look like in the end and also to give them some ideas for colours:

The next thing I planned was the red envelopes. The envelopes themselves were fairly easy to source and then I created a sheet to go in them on Word. I took the words from here (and simplified them a little bit for the girls) and added a photo of their animal to it. I also left a couple of boxes blank so I could write in their name, date of birth and draw their name in Chinese. Mum also photocopied those at work and then I wrote in the boxes. For the names, I used this website. I copied the names into a Word document, made sure they would fit in the box and then printed them. I then traced each one onto the sheet - it took me about 30-40 minutes to do them all but they looked quite impressive once I was done! This was the final product of an evenings work:

The hardest thing to source was cheap disposable chopsticks, surprisingly! It took a friend and me almost 2 hours of walking round numerous pound shops and other shops (and Costa because it was cold and raining..!) before we finally found some in Wilkinson's at 5 sets for 60p. I then bought some dried pasta and peas. The aim of this game was for the girls to move as many items from one plate to another in a minute, using the chopsticks. They were then given one point per piece of pasta and 5 points for every pea and their score was added to their sixes total.

Finally all that remained was to buy the food and head to Brownies. I settled on microwavable duck pancakes and prawn crackers with a mild chilli dipping sauce.

The first thing we did at Brownies was to give out the envelopes. They were a little upset that they didn't have any money in them (Chinese tradition) and, in retrospect, I should probably have put in some chocolate coins or something. Some of the younger ones didn't understand the paragraph about their animal so we had to spend a while explaining parts, although lots of them were comparing with their friends to see who was the same animal and whether they suited their animal. Only one girl asked me what the Chinese said but she seemed quite impressed that it was her name.

We then got the girls to get out tables and I told them about the craft. I was surprised at how many of them seemed to be thoroughly enjoying it because we've done quite a few crafts recently and they seemed to be getting a bit bored but this week we really struggled to get them to tidy up at the end! Most of them coloured it in really nicely, on both sides and some of them even copied mine exactly! Some of them had trouble cutting out the head as it was a little bit fiddley but most of them had a pretty good go at it and then the leaders helped with the final bits.

While they were doing the craft, our Young Leader and Guide took a six at a time into the kitchen to have a go and the 'chopstick challenge'. They decided to allow the girls to use the chopsticks in anyway they liked because not many of them could use the properly and there wasn't time to teach them all. There were a lot of girls who were holding one in each hand, which worked out to be quite effective in some cases! The only rule that was enforced was "you have to actually pick it up to move it, you can't just scoop it from one plate to the other!" I was surprised at the number of girls who managed to pick up a dried pea with the chopsticks as I struggled a little to begin with and I find using chopsticks fairly easy. In the end, the winning six got around 70 points!

Finally, we ate the food. Two of the leaders had microwaved the duck pancakes while the girls were doing their dragon mobiles and we allowed each girl to try one. They weren't forced to but we encouraged them to at least try a little bit even if they then threw the rest in the bin. Some of the older ones were messing around a bit and pretending to throw up in the toilet but lots of them tried one and all the spare ones were eaten pretty quickly by girls who wanted seconds! We had bought 4 packets of prawn crackers and they were all gone within 5 minutes of opening them! Some of the girls tried the chilli sauce but found it too spicy (we'd bought the mildest they had!) and went to get drinks pretty quickly.

Overall, I think the evening was a huge success even if we did run out of time to play the game and sing the song I had up my sleeve and there's always next week (and next year - when I'll be at uni and with a different unit) to try out new ideas and improve upon those from this year.

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! 

First meeting back - team building games

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!)