Look Wider - Creativity

I completed my Creativity Octant back in May 2017. Below are the activites I took part in to get this Octant, hopefully this will help give you some ideas if you are a bit stuck. I managed to do this octant over several years, almost by accident, the only part I really had to plan in was the photo quiz.

Phase 1

• Learn a new dance
• I went on a SSAGO Rally in February 2016 and it is a tradition to have a Ceilidh on the Saturday evening
• A professional band came in and taught those who wanted to, how to do a few different dances
• Attend a pantomime
• Every year we take our Brownie unit to see the local pantomime
•  Photo Quiz
• I organised a photo quiz around the local area for my Brownie unit
• They had a series of photos and a map with dots on
• They had to go to each dot and work out which photo was taken there
• They then had a question to answer for extra points for each photo
• Points were also deducted for being late back to the hall (we had a Promise ceremony that night too!)

Phase 2

• Take an active part in a concert
• At university, I was in the orchestra and the choir
• We did 2 large concerts each year which I took part in
• I was on committee for one year so had a hand in managing the backstage parts of the concerts too

 Phase 3

• Clarinet Grade 7 
• I passed my clarinet grade 7 in March 2014

Easter Baskets and Guide Visit | University

22/03/18

This meeting, we had a parent come in to do a craft with the girls. I arrived and got all the material she had requested out of the cupboard and then we occupied the girls while she set up. While the girls were arriving, we played a game that they call ‘the chair game’ which they constantly request. Once all the girls had arrived, we also played a quick game of Chinese Whispers to keep the noise down while we had a quick chat as leaders. The games went well, although we did have uproar for one round of Chinese Whispers because a girl had said a rude word! It transpired that the rude word was ‘poo’ and the original message was about ‘guinea pigs’ so I’m not quite sure where that came from!

The girls then bought their chairs over to the tables and the parent ran through the craft. They were making Easter Bunny Baskets so she showed them the templates and all the decorations she had bought for them to use. We had a brief moment of panic as we realised one of the girls had somehow (accidentally or otherwise) cut a chunk of her hair off. The other girls said she had done the same thing at school so we tidied up and made a note to alert her Mum at the end of the meeting. The girls then started making their baskets – I spent most of my time helping one of the girls cut out her template and then holding together flaps as they all stuck them together. They then had free reign with pompoms, pipe cleaners, googly eyes, glue, and pens with which to decorate their baskets. We had some very interesting looking ones and even a chick made out of one of the remaining pompoms!

Once the girls had finished their baskets, we had a drink and biscuit and then sat them in a circle. Two Guides had come to visit to talk to the girls about Guides as part of one of the other Leaders ALQ so we left them to it (with a small amount of prompting) while we tidied up the bombshell that was the tables after the craft! The Guides then ran some games that they play at Guides while us Leaders chatted about plans for next term.

We ended up having to stop the games as we had run out of time. After we had ended the meeting, the girls collected their baskets, picked up a piece of tissue paper and then came up to a Leader who gave them a handful of Mini Eggs as an Easter gift. We spoke to the Mum of the girl who had cut her hair and she confirmed that she had done it at school too and she wasn’t cross with us as none of us were aware at the time but was furious with her daughter. We will be keeping a closer eye on her every time we have scissors out now!

This was a fairly nice and relaxed meeting, especially the second half, and the girls seemed to really enjoy decorating their baskets and definitely enjoyed the eggs at the end! This was our last meeting before Easter and, as we meet every other week, we now have quite a long break before the next meeting, although I am going home and hopefully visiting my old unit next week.

 

Mother's Day with the Mums | University

08/03/18

As Mother's Day was the Sunday after our meeting this fornight, we decided to invite the Mum's to come along and do some activites with their daughters. We asked the girls a previous week what their Mums liked doing and what they would like to do with them in this meeting. After having convinced the girls that even though their Mums did all the cleaning at home, they probably wouldn't want to do any more (!) we settled on gardening and hand scrubs.

The meeting place was nice and lively at the start of them meeting with twice as many people as normal and we decided to start off by playing Splat with the parents joining in too. A couple of the Mums got a bit competitive but then realised they were in the last few and backed off a bit so a Brownie could win!

We then got out lots of tables and handed out a plastic plant pot, wooden lollipop stick, and some pens to each person. They wrote their name on the wooden stick and decorated it while one of the leaders bought round compost to fill their pot and some sunflower seed to plant in it. The idea is that the girl and the Mum look after their own seeds and see whose grows the tallest.

Once everyone had finished, we called the girls over to another table and gave them the ingredients for a hand scrub. They had a small pot filled with sugar and they added a sqeeze of lemon juice and some squirts of coconut oil which they then mixed together. They then took the pot back to their Mum and gave her a hand massage. Once they were done, they could go and wash off the compost and the hand scrub, leaving them with clean smooth hands! The Mums really seemed to enjoy this part, even if some of them seemed a bit apprehensive to start with about putting the scrub on their hands.

While they were having their hands massaged, we took orders for tea and coffee and then bought it all out along with some cakes for the girls and Mums to enjoy.

Once the Mums had finished their drinks and cakes, I led a game of Honeypot while the other leaders cleaned up the mess on the tables. It was quite an intense game with some of the girls employing some interesting tactics including stomping around and shaking the keys violently to try and put the person in the middle off the scent!

All in all, I think this was a fairly successful evening and the Mums definitely appreciated having some time to spend with her daughter and also time to chat with the other Mums.

I'm back!

Apologies for suddenly going MIA! Life got in the way a bit and then I completely forgot about this blog... Sorry about that.

Since I last posted, I found a Rainbow and Brownie unit to help at while at university, joined the university SSAGO unit, have been on several nights away with SSAGO, completed 3 more octants of my Look Wider, gained my Going Away With License, and have done much more besides.

I plan on attempting to continue this blog again now, the first few posts will be updates on my Look Wider progress, interspersed with Brownie meetings (I stopped helping at Rainbows after my second year) and maybe a few SSAGO events too! My university Brownies meet every two weeks though so the posts won't be as frequent.

Pack Holiday 2015 - Day 1

09/10/15

Today was the first day of Pack Holiday! Our theme is Superheroes, and the sixes are called 'Bat Girl', 'Wonder Woman' and 'Hulk'. This year we took 17 girls and 11 leaders (5 Adults, 3 YLs, 2 Guides and an extra Leader's daughter), so we were full to capacity!

We arrived at about 4:30 to set up. We put up all the posters that the girls had made and sorted out all the food. A couple of us then did some school work before the girls arrived, to get some of it out of the way.

The girls arrived at 6pm. Unusually, most of the girls arrived just before then, as they had travelled in convoy as a large group of friends. We only had a couple who were later than that, and no-one got hopelessly lost, which is pretty easy to do since the house is in the middle of some woods!

We got the girls settled in their beds and then started hinting to the parents that now would be a good time to leave. We had one of our newer girls who, once her mum had walked out of the door, started crying. Her mum came back in to comfort her, which possibly wasn't the best idea in the world. It transpired that her torch didn't work and the one mum had offered her instead wasn't good enough for her. I went and got my torch, because I knew I was unlikely to need it, since I have one on my phone too. This made her happy and we could finally start the evening as planned.

We did the usual safety talk about wearing slippers indoors and not running etc, and then gave out the booklets to the girls with some activities that they could do if they were bored, including a colouring page, a wordsearch, a page for all the girls to sign, and a space to write a diary of the weekend, if they wish to do their Brownie Holiday badge, as this is the only part they won't cover just by staying for the whole weekend.

We had a dinner of hot dogs, and the girls made name labels to put on the table. We always make name labels and then, for each meal, we shuffle them up and put them out randomly so that girls are sat next to someone different each meal.

Finally, we let the girls get ready for bed and attempted to get them to go to sleep. They were all really excited though, as usual, so took a long time to settle down. We had a couple who came out of their room because they were feeling unwell (probably the amount of sweets they had eaten!) and the girl who has my torch got a little homesick at one point. When the majority of us leaders went to bed at about 10:30, the girls were still talking a bit, and Brown Owl had to go in and tell them that enough was enough and go to sleep. After that, they were significantly quieter, and went to sleep!

Button Sewing

08/10/15

This week we started doing things towards the Brownie Skills badge. We have decided that if we do something every now and again for a few weeks then the girls will be able to earn the badge without making them sit down and do it in one evening (which we tried once, to many complaints)!

This week, we did button sewing and knot tying. Most of the girls started off sewing on buttons. We gave them each a square of felt, a choice of buttons, a piece of thread, and a needle. We then had an adult sat on each table to assist the girls - my job mostly consisted of re-threading needles and tying knots in the end of the thread! A couple of the girls had no idea how to start but. once I had shown them with mine, they went off by themselves and were fine. Lots of them, once they had done one button, asked if they could do more which we were quite surprised by. One girl even came up to me at the next meeting and proudly showed me the badge that she had sewn onto her sash by herself, really neatly I must add!

We decided to leave the knots to a future week because they were enjoying themselves too much.

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: