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!
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!)
Apologies for the lack of posts over the last 2 months... Things just got busier and I couldn't find time to write. Here is what we did for the last few weeks of term and the first two weeks of this term will follow in the next day or so.
28/11/13
This week we made 3D foam Christmas trees.
We bought kits which contained all that the girls needed; the tree, a
star, baubles, snowflakes and candy canes. Each kit came with enough for
4 trees so we had to cut up the sheets of baubles so the girls could
have 4 of each colour bauble which left me with a lot to do at the
beginning of the meeting because we'd forgotten to do it before the
meeting. The girls seemed to enjoy themselves and there were quite a few
really detailed trees.
Once they had finished they could chose a colourful sheet of paper and make paper chains. We had loads of really long chains by the end of the evening and it was definitely a big hit with the girls!
5/12/13
This week we did some more Christmas crafts - baubles and cutlery holders. The baubles were made from clear plastic balls and the girls made a snowman from polystyrene balls. They had cardboard hats and scarves and beads on needles for eyes and noses! Each bauble also had a small amount of fake snow at the bottom. It was quite a tricky craft so we had one table making them with Brown Owl (who invented the craft!) while all the other girls did Snowy's craft; cutlery holders.
Each girl had a piece of red card from which they cut out the main shape using a template Snowy had made. They then folded it up and stapled the edge together. They had to cut out a square of white card and then cut out two slits in it for the belt buckle and then they had to thread sticky black felt through the buckle before sticking it round the main body. This was extremely tricky for the majority of girls and, if we did it again, I would use regular felt and glue instead.They also had the option of putting a parcel label on it with a name on (for use on their table at Christmas). Snowy had provided enough material for each girl to make 4 but they started to get bored after one so I think she needed to have chosen something else too. Luckily we still had paper from last week so the girls made even more paper chains!
12/12/13
This week we had gingerbread cookies to decorate so 5 girls at a time went
into the kitchen with our 2 other adult helpers and decorated stars with
icing and sprinkles. Surprisingly, the girls didn't go excessively
overboard with this as they usually do - some of the cookies leaving at
the end of the meeting were actually really good quality!
Unfortunately, I can't remember what we did this week other than the cookies... I really need to keep on top of this...
19/12/13
This week was party week! Two girls who were leaving this week organised the evening for the other girls. It was a Christmas colours or onsie theme so naturally most girls showed up in their onsies - I mean, who's going to turn down the opportunity to go out in their pyjamas at that age!? They started off by playing coaches (instructions here) and then fishes (instructions also here) while the other Young Leader and I set up the food on the tables ready for when they were done. We then had to stand by the tables making sure they didn't run into it though..!
Once they were done playing, we let them loose with the food. Before a party, we send home a slip of paper with each girl telling them what food to bring. That way we can have some say over the amount of savoury and sweet items we have (and that we don't end up with 24 lots of the same food!). We let the girls sit on the floor or chairs with their friends so naturally we have a few drinks spillages but it's generally a good atmosphere.
At the end of the meeting we gave each girl a Christmas card and the two girls who were leaving got their certificates and teddy bear keyring before the girls all went home.
It's been a good term with lots going on. I feel I've deserved this rest though! Bring on next term... :D
21/11/13
This week we gave the girls a choice of two crafts they could do in preparation for the church's Christmas Fayre which is this Saturday. One of the leaders is attending and a few of the girls will go and help her run a stall, open to the local community. Some years we make cards or tree ornaments and other years we have some games for people to play. This year we decided to run two games, 'Fish for Stockings' and 'Where Has Santa Been?' which are two that we've done previously relatively successfully.
The girls were given the choice of colouring in cardboard stockings or cardboard houses. With the stockings we then put a paper clip on the top of each with a folded up piece of paper saying either 'win' or 'lose'. People then use a magnetic fishing rod (left over from a game I had when I was younger) to pull one out of a box and will get a sweet if their paper says 'win' on it. The houses started off flat although some of the girls asked for theirs to be stuck together to make it easier for them to see what part of the house was what. They coloured them in and then each one would have a piece of paper under it saying either 'yes' or 'no' and a prize would be given for all the 'yes's. Some of them didn't really seem to enjoy it though as we had a few houses which had to be sent back to have windows and doors added! A couple of the girls though got very engrossed in it and drew chairs and tables inside the house. One girl even drew a full set of rooms, including upstairs and downstairs, in hers which looked really nice when it was done!
Unfortunately, we had under anticipated how many girls would want to colour in stockings and therefore didn't have enough which caused a bit of friction from the girls who had been last to chose but they were then told they could make the posters advertising what the games were instead which solved the problem. One of the older girls was also given the privilege of drawing a road map for all the houses to stand on to look like they were in a village which she seemed quite proud of.
We finished off by playing a quick game of fishes (instructions here) and then all the girls went home.
It was quite a relaxed evening although I didn't get to sit and talk to the girls because I spent most of the time sticking houses together!
14/11/13
This week a lady from the RSPCA came to talk to the girls and to collect the money we raised in June by holding a sale (which the girls organised and ran themselves). RSPCA stands for the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and is a charity here in the UK which cares for animals which people abandon and also raises awareness of all animal illnesses and care requirements. In June we held a sale where the girls ran stalls in small groups, ranging from cake stalls and raffles to jumble sales and nail painting, and we raised over £180! We always invite someone to come and collect their money and talk to the girls because it means they get the chance to find out exactly how they're helping.
She gave a brief talk on what the RSPCA does and asked them a few questions on what they thought the '5 Freedoms for Animals' are (freedom from: hunger and thirst; discomfort; pain, injury and disease; fear and distress and freedom to behave normally). Then she gave the girls the opportunity to tell any stories they had about their pets and other animals they'd encountered. We ended up spending almost 45 minutes listening to various stories ranging from what animals the girls had been bitten by (mostly nibbles from small animals) to the various antics of all kinds of pets! The girls who didn't have any pets seemed to get bored quite quickly (which is understandable) and I think she could have cut it a bit shorter but the rest of the girls were very enthusiastic about sharing their stories. She did manage to fit in a few extra details, such as teaching them how to deal with a dog if it runs towards you (stand still and don't make eye contact) after one of the girls told a story about when she tried to outrun a dog at a park which I thought was quite a subtle way of teaching them things.
Brown Owl then presented her with the cheque and she gave the unit a certificate to say thank you. We then lined all the girls up so that we could take a photo of them all as a record of who raised the money (we keep a scrapbook of photos and certificates the unit has gained) and then she announced that she had RSPCA stickers and paw shaped badges for each girl which cheered up most of the ones who'd been looking a bit bored! There was then a long queue of girls all deciding what colour they wanted and then changing their mind and going back! Eventually they all settled on the colour they wanted and she left, just in time for the girls to go home.
It was a good evening, in my opinion, because I'm a huge supporter of what the RSPCA do and an animal lover on top of it but I don't think some of the girls really enjoyed the evening because they had nothing to input and weren't that interested in what was being said. I do, however, think she could have drawn the story session to a close faster than she did as even I was getting a bit fed up with the girls stories (and I'm usually pretty patient when it comes to hearing stories!).
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.
These are some of the songs we sang around our campfire on pack holiday last month. You may be able to find the tunes on the Internet but they can all work with any tune with the right number of beats in, do some experimenting! You can also see them all, along with other songs we sing regularly, here.
Campfire's Burning
This one is good as a starter (particularly if your campfire is taking a while to get going!). It can also be sung as a round with the second group coming in as the first group start the third line.
Campfire's burning,
Campfire's burning,
Draw nearer,
Draw nearer,
In the glowing,
In the glowing,
Come sing and be merry!
Cecil is my Caterpillar
One of our unit's favourites! It's generally spoken although you could make up a tune if you wanted to.
Cecil is my caterpillar,
Cecil is my friend,
The last time I saw Cecil he was this big (hold fingers a short distance apart)
I said 'Ooh, Cecil! What have you done?',
He said 'I've eaten all the leaves in [insert small local area such as the name of the town], that's what I've done!'
Repeat, increasing the size of 'Cecil' gradually along with the area of leaves he's eaten. In our unit it usually goes something along the lines of campsite -> town -> county -> UK -> Europe -> world -> universe.
Final verse:
Cecil is my caterpillar,
Cecil is my friend,
The last time I saw Cecil he was this big (hold fingers a short distance apart again)
I said 'Ooh, Cecil! What have you done?',
He said 'I've been sick!'
3 Little Angels
3 little angels, all dressed in white,
Tried to get to heaven on the end of a kite,
But the kite string was broken,
Down they all fell,
They couldn't get to heaven so they all went to
2 little angels, all dressed in white,
Tried to get to heaven on the end of a kite,
But the kite string was broken,
Down they all fell,
They couldn't get to heaven so they all went to
1 little angel, all dressed in white,
Tried to get to heaven on the end of a kite,
But the kite string was broken,
Down they all fell,
They couldn't get to heaven so they all went to
Don't be mistaken,
Don't be misled,
They couldn't get to heaven,
So they all went to bed!
Other verses include:
3 little devils (or Rainbows), all dressed in red, tried to get to heaven on the edge of a bed.
But the bed springs were broken, down they all fell, they couldn't get to heaven so they all went to...
3 little Brownies, all dressed in brown, tried to get to heaven, but their knickers fell down,
The elastic was broken, down they all fell, they couldn't get to heaven so they all went to...
3 little Girl Guides, all dressed in blue, tried to get to heaven on the edge of the loo,
But the loo seat was broken, down they all fell, they couldn't get to heaven so they all went to...
3 Blind Jellyfish
(sadly)
3 Blind Jellyfish,
3 Blind Jellyfish,
3 Blind Jellyfi-ish,
Sitting on a rock.
(spoken)
And one fell off. Oh no!
2 Blind Jellyfish,
2 Blind Jellyfish,
2 Blind Jellyfi-ish,
Sitting on a rock.
(spoken)
And one fell off. Oh no!
1 Blind Jellyfish,
1 Blind Jellyfish,
1 Blind Jellyfi-ish,
Sitting on a rock.
(spoken)
And he fell off. Oh no!
(very sadly)
No Blind Jellyfish,
No Blind Jellyfish,
No Blind Jellyfi-ish,
Sitting on a rock.
(spoken)
And then one jumped back on again. Yay!
(happier)
1 Blind Jellyfish,
1 Blind Jellyfish,
1 Blind Jellyfi-ish,
Sitting on a rock.
And another one jumped back on. Yay!
2 Blind Jellyfish,
2 Blind Jellyfish,
2 Blind Jellyfi-ish,
Sitting on a rock.
And the third jumped back out again. Yay!
(really happily)
3 Blind Jellyfish,
3 Blind Jellyfish,
3 Blind Jellyfi-ish,
Sitting on a rock.
