20/09/18
This meeting we did the Brownie Traditions badge from the old programme, as this is what our girls had requested last term. We also noticed that a few of these fell into two of the UMAs, the Century Time Travel one from the Know Myself theme and the Strike a Light one from the Have Adventures theme.
We started off by discussing if girls knew what a tradition was and if they could think of any traditions we have at Brownies. I was quite surprised at the two girls who, between them, managed to perfectly define a tradition. The girls als managed to name the uniform, badges, and name as some traditions that we still have now. We also bought in a short chat about how those three have changed over the years (Rosebuds used to wear blue).
We then played a game from the UMA called "Brownie/Broomstick". We went round the circle and named each girl "Brownie" or "Broomstick". We then got the Broomsticks to stand up and got the girls to look round and remember who was who. We then spread them out in the hall and shouted "Brownies" and the Brownies had to chase the Broomsticks until Brown Owl shouted "Broomsticks" when they had to swap and chase the Brownies. After a few swaps, we stopped and asked the girls what they thought. A lot of them asked what they were supposed to do if they had been caught and Brown Owl told them that the instructions didn't say so we asked the girls what they thought the rule should be. One girl immediately said "anyone who is caught swaps sides" and another just said "drop and gimme 20!". We voted on which rule we should add (unanimous decision to swap sides!) and then played again with these new rules for a bit.
We then stopped and played The Card Game, which I introduced to the unit a while back, from one of the many Facebook groups I am part of. Our girls love playing, especially as this week we had to add in Brown Owl because we had 20 girls and it doesn't work with a multiple of 4. They enjoyed playing this so much that we had to play until every girl had got back to her chair.
We then moved onto the clauses from the Traditions Badge. We set up 3 tables and split the girls into 3 groups. On the tables, we set up candle lighting, penny cleaning and knot tying. I ran the penny shining - each girl was given a dirty 2p coin and some brasso to polish it with. We explained that girls used to pay their subs with a penny but it couldn't be any penny, it had to be a nice shiny one. We had one really black penny which some of the girls decided they wanted to have a go at cleaning (but then gave up quickly as it was almost impossible to make a difference. Brown Owl ran the candle lighting station - each girl was given the opportunity to strike a match and light a candle and then blow out the candle to complete the Strike a Light UMA. She also talked to them about fire safety, such as not playing with matches without an adult, and not putting your hands/clothes near flames. The final table was run by our Young Leader and was knots - reef knots, shoelaces, and plaits. At one point they had several pairs of shoes up on the table so I think it was a success!
We then explained to the girls that we were going to vote for our first Skills Builder. We had selected 4 Stage 2s for them to choose from - Innovate from the Express Myself theme, First Aid from the Be Well theme, and Live Smart and Lead from the Skills for My Future theme. We explained roughly what each Skills Builder consisted of and then we gave each girl a lolly stick with their name written on and put 4 labelled pots around the room. The girls had to put their stick in the one they wanted to do. We then took the sticks out of the two least favourite and said that those girls had to choose one of the 2 favourite ones to do. We will then run these two badges side by side. The girls chose Lead and Innovate, and we only had 4 who had to move their stick, which was quite impressive.
After all that, it was time to go home. We sang Brownie Bells and let the girls go. Brown Owl stood by the door saying goodbye to the girls and making sure they didn't go outside alone. We eventually were left with 3 girls, two older ones and brand new one (it was her first night). We packed away our stuff and moved into the foyer while talking to the girls about who was supposed to be picking them up. The two older girls said they thought one of their Mums was picking them both up and we were getting ready to ring them when she appeared in a fluster saying her car hadn't started so she had to get the other children dressed and walk round! They left and we just had our one brand new Brownie left. We thought it was a bit odd as she is the 4th sister we have had through us although her Mum had emailed before she started asking us what time we started and where we met! We tried the mobile number we had for her with no luck so we started asking the Brownie if she knew any of the girls. She said there were a couple who were friends with her sister so we rang them but they also didn't answer. At this point, we had been waiting for 25 minutes so I ran our Young Leader home while Brown Owl waited in the hall. When I got back there was still no sign of either parent so we decided to drive the girl to her house. We told the Scouts that if a panicked parent arrived, to send her home where we would be waiting! We got her to her house (there were two of us in the car with her and the law states girls under the height limit can ride without a booster seat in an emergency for short distances) and no one was there either! We had a phone call from one of our other leaders (who wasn't at the meeting tonight) sating that the mum had phoned her in a panic because Dad had failed in his instruction to drop one daughter at gym and then pick up the Brownie (he'd done half a job!). Mum showed up a minute after we got to her house and apologised profusely! We just said that it will give the girl something to talk about when she gets older - the day that she got forgotten at her first Brownie meeting! It was certainly an eventful end to a busy meeting!
Showing posts with label voting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label voting. Show all posts
Monday, 24 September 2018
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"!
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"!
Wednesday, 13 November 2013
Games and Voting
7/11/13
This was our first meeting back after the holiday. Next year is the Big Brownie Birthday as Brownies are going to be 100 years old and there is a badge that all girls can complete to show they were a Brownie during the centenary year. You must do 9 things to get the badge, 1 compulsory and 2 chosen ones each from 3 different topics (You, World, and Community) so we decided to let the girls vote on what they wanted to do as the chosen activities. Knowing our girls as we do though, we knew that we couldn't just sit them down and do all the voting in one go; they would go crazy! We decided instead to intersperse it with playing various games, which we also let them choose.
We started off by playing fishes (instructions here) which is always requested by the majority of girls. It went well for once although we did have one girl in tears because she tripped over when she was caught out. When we were done we sat the girls down for the first of the votes.We handed out the choices for the 'You' section of the badge and then Brown Owl went down the list explaining to the girls exactly what each thing entailed. Each girl was told to mark each item with either a line through (don't like at all), one tick (would do without objection) or two ticks (really like) and there was no limit on the number of ticks they were allowed. It took a while to get through all the things (there were about 10 of them) because the girls were talking quite a bit but we eventually reached the bottom of the list and collected them all in.
Then we sang 'The Thousand Legged Worm' (lyrics here) which we used to sing when I was a Brownie but haven't done for a while so none of the current girls knew it. They seemed to quite like the song though, which is good because I really enjoy it too.
We did the second round of voting which was slightly quicker although I did notice that some girls (mainly the older ones) seemed a bit bored and were just ticking and crossing randomly without listening to what they actually meant.
The final game we played was wigwams (instructions here) which was also a request from the girls and then we did the final load of voting before the girls went home.
It was quite a relaxed evening because I didn't have to do too much beside talk to girls and hand out pens for the voting. When we got home though, I volunteered to count up all the votes which turned out to be more complicated than I first thought..! Most girls had voted in the way they had been instructed which made it fairly easy to add up their votes but a handful of girls either hadn't listened or didn't understand because some of them had put more than 2 ticks (which I counted as 2) and some of them had gone down and put 2 ticks next to every item on the list! A fair few girls had also crossed something out and then changed their mind and ticked it too which made their voting slips quite complicated. I eventually finished counting them up, after a lot longer than I had anticipated, and marked the two highest (or 3 in one case) which we will now do over the next few months so the girls can get their badge.
This was our first meeting back after the holiday. Next year is the Big Brownie Birthday as Brownies are going to be 100 years old and there is a badge that all girls can complete to show they were a Brownie during the centenary year. You must do 9 things to get the badge, 1 compulsory and 2 chosen ones each from 3 different topics (You, World, and Community) so we decided to let the girls vote on what they wanted to do as the chosen activities. Knowing our girls as we do though, we knew that we couldn't just sit them down and do all the voting in one go; they would go crazy! We decided instead to intersperse it with playing various games, which we also let them choose.
We started off by playing fishes (instructions here) which is always requested by the majority of girls. It went well for once although we did have one girl in tears because she tripped over when she was caught out. When we were done we sat the girls down for the first of the votes.We handed out the choices for the 'You' section of the badge and then Brown Owl went down the list explaining to the girls exactly what each thing entailed. Each girl was told to mark each item with either a line through (don't like at all), one tick (would do without objection) or two ticks (really like) and there was no limit on the number of ticks they were allowed. It took a while to get through all the things (there were about 10 of them) because the girls were talking quite a bit but we eventually reached the bottom of the list and collected them all in.
Then we sang 'The Thousand Legged Worm' (lyrics here) which we used to sing when I was a Brownie but haven't done for a while so none of the current girls knew it. They seemed to quite like the song though, which is good because I really enjoy it too.
We did the second round of voting which was slightly quicker although I did notice that some girls (mainly the older ones) seemed a bit bored and were just ticking and crossing randomly without listening to what they actually meant.
The final game we played was wigwams (instructions here) which was also a request from the girls and then we did the final load of voting before the girls went home.
It was quite a relaxed evening because I didn't have to do too much beside talk to girls and hand out pens for the voting. When we got home though, I volunteered to count up all the votes which turned out to be more complicated than I first thought..! Most girls had voted in the way they had been instructed which made it fairly easy to add up their votes but a handful of girls either hadn't listened or didn't understand because some of them had put more than 2 ticks (which I counted as 2) and some of them had gone down and put 2 ticks next to every item on the list! A fair few girls had also crossed something out and then changed their mind and ticked it too which made their voting slips quite complicated. I eventually finished counting them up, after a lot longer than I had anticipated, and marked the two highest (or 3 in one case) which we will now do over the next few months so the girls can get their badge.
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