Final Skills Builder Evening

21/03/19

This evening we did the fifth and final part of the two Skills Builders we have been working on, Innovate and Lead Stage 2. The girls who were doing Lead did "Design Time" and the girls doing Innovate did "Made to Measure". I was with the Lead group. Our task was to create a zoo. The girls first had to think of 5 animals that they would like to put in their zoo, on their own. We provided lots of books on animals to give them some ideas and they could be as rare and unique as they wanted (we even had a few dragons!). I then paired the girls up by pulling names out of a hat. In their pairs they had to create their zoo but there was only space for 5 animals. They had to discuss which animals they would like and why. Finally, the pairs had to join up into 4s and do the same thing again so they were left wth 5 animals from the 20 each 4 would have started with. I had an odd number of pairs so I had one group with 3 pairs in who were allowed 7 animals in their zoo instead. Once they had narrowed down their choice, they could draw a picture of their zoo and give it a name. I was quite impressed with most of the girls - when narrowing down their animals, lots of them said they could each choose 2 and then the 5th one would be a joint decision, and the same happened when they got into bigger groups - they all chose 1 and the last one was a group decision. That was a suggestions written on the card but we stopped giving the girls the card as it just caused confusion so I was quite proud that they came up with that idea all by themselves!

The group doing Innovate were making sponge boats. We had bought lots of the scourer sponges (the yellow ones with a rough green side) and the girls could make a sail for their boat which was stuck on a cocktail stick in the sponge. They then had a straw and they blew their boat in a tub of water. We measured the distance that it travelled 3 times and they worked out the average (we provided calculators!). They could then look at the boats that went the furthest and redesign their sail based on the best ones.

Once we had finished the activities, we all sat in a Brownie circle and the Lead girls showed the pictures of their zoo and explained what animals they had in them. The girls who had been doing Innovate then voted on what they thought was the best zoo. We then handed out the badges to those girls who had been at all 5 meetings. We had 17 of our 26 girls get a badge. Of those who didn't get a badge, 5 were new starters who joined after we started and the other 4 have only missed 1 meeting each. We have told those girls that we are going to do a catch up session soon and that we haven't forgotten about them! This was quite a good evening, and I was very surprised that my group got along without arguments this week! Perhaps it's something to do with the fact that we muddled them up and they weren't working with their friends for once.

Easter Bookmarks and Promises

14/03/19

One of our older Brownies has been asking for a while if she can run an activity so she can tick off the last part of her More Adventures badge before she turns 11 in May. This week we finally had time to slot that in and she chose to make Easter Chicken Bookmarks.

The Brownie showed everyone how to fold the main shape (you can also find the instructions online) and then the girls went and did that bit while the Brownie handed out all the extra bits that she had pre-cut for them to stick on. Once they had finished their chicken bookmark, she had also bought some patterned paper so they could make fortune tellers.

Tonight we also had 4 new girls making their promises, so about 30 minutes before the end, any members of their family who wanted to watch showed up - there were loads of them this time! Some girls just bring one parent, tonight we had grandparents, siblings, and lots of parents! We always ask the parents to come a bit earlier than they need to so they can watch us doing an activity - this time we chose to play 2 games of Pirates, at request of the girls. We did have to remove Starboard as that is where all the parents were sat, and we banned hiding under the tables with tea and coffee on too!

We then proceeded to enrol all 4 new girls and then sang two songs to finish (for once we finished early!) - we sang Hole at the Bottom of the Sea, and Cecil is My Caterpillar.

This was a great evening - the girl who ran it is very mature for her age and was very good at explaining the steps to the girls and going round helping them all.

Thinking Day Trip

09/03/19

Today was our annual District Thinking Day trip which I organised as part of my Queen's Guide (full post on the process of organising this trip will come soon!). We took 3 coaches of Rainbows, Brownies, and Guides to Techniquest in Cardiff. We all met in a car park and each unit met all their girls and waited for the coaches. The coaches turned up perfectly on time and we loaded everyone up quickly as it was raining pretty heavily. We only had one unit who were missing one girl by the time we were all on the coach but they managed to contact her and found out she had misread the drop off time but was only across the road so arrived very quickly.

We then set off, in convoy. The girls were remarkably well behaved on the coach, although we did have a near constant chorus of 'are we nearly there yet'..! The drive isn't too bad, about 90 minutes, so we were there pretty quickly. Once we arrived, we got all the girls off the coach and lined them up against the wall while we paid and figured out where they needed to go. Each coach had been assigned a different lunchslot and they put their lunchboxes in big bins so they didn't have to carry them around all day. We then went into the centre - all the leaders were responsible for their own girls during the day, some units just let their girls loose and wandered round keeping an eye on them (there are 2 floors and only one way out) and other units assigned girls to a leader and they had to stay together. Our unit took the latter approach, to a certain extent, in that each leader was responsible for 3/4 girls but we generally let them roam around as long as they were always within eyesight.

The girls had great fun there, with one girl even commenting that is 'wasn't very sciency' so it was great! Each coach was called over the tannoy to go and have their lunch - we had a half hour slot in a cabin round the back of the centre. I also had a list of 15 minute slots that the leaders could go to the gift shop in, as the shop was way too small for us all to descend on it at the end of the visit! Our unit opted to go to the shop just before lunch so the girls could then leave their purchases in their bags. When our lunch slot was called, we all headed across to the cabin and walked in just as a Guide opened her water bottle of lemonade and it squirted straight up, hit the ceiling, and sprayed down over several girls nearby! All the other leaders were staring, gobsmacked at the situation, and then the Guide was stood on the table, wiping it off the ceiling with a paper towel! We sat and ate with our girls and then headed back into the centre.

Each unit also had the option of booking onto the show for the day, Fire vs Ice. There were several showings through the day and we chose the last one. There were two presenters who did a 30 minute show about Fire and Ice through various science experiements, including dropping a bouncy ball in liquid nitrogen to turn it into a 'marble' (it lost all elasticity so just thunked into the ground, instead of bouncing!) and setting alight liquid oxygen. The girls all really enjoyed that part.

Once it was over, we headed to the cabin one last time so we could remake our promises. We got that over and done with very quickly and then dismissed the units one coach at a time to go to the toilet and get on the coaches. Once a coach was full, it headed off. All the coaches then stopped at a services on the way home and the girls bought dinner there (or a second packed lunch in the case of girls with allergies). This is something that all the girls love to do so, even though it is a bit chaotic for the leaders, we tend to do it anyway. It worked quite nicely that we had staggered the coach departures from Techniquest though as it meant we were a bit more spread out at the services as there are not actually enough tables at the one we stopped at for all the girls to be sat down at once. The coaches then headed home once they had finished eating and the leaders handed their girls back to their parents.

The trip went incredibly smoothly and lots of the girls and leaders came up to congratulate me and say it had gone great. Now I just need to write it up and get my District Commissioner to sign me off for that part of my Queen's Guide and I'm one step closer!

St. David's Day

28/02/19

Given it is St. David's Day tomorrow, we thought we would do some activities to celebrate this week. We started with the limited edition UMA, 'Make Your Snake' which we modified to be a dragon instead. The first comment that our girls had was 'Cecil can't be a dragon, Cecil is a caterpillar...'! We split them into the sixes and gave them a bag with 6 different coloured tokens in (we didn't want to faff around finding them hidden around the room!). The girl pulled a token out of their bag and came up to a leader to get post-it notes in that colour. A leader then read them the question and made sure they understood it before leaving them to write their answer on their post-it note and stick it in the right area of Cecil. I helped a few of the younger ones with their spelling and understanding of the question. My favourite conversation was with one of our newest girls:

Me: The yellow question is "what would you miss if you weren't a Brownie?"
Her: You!
Me: Awww, that's very sweet, thank you
Her: No, actually, Brown Owl
Me: Oh, so you wouldn't miss me then?
Her: OK, both of you! What's your name? *struggles to spell my name*
Me: What about <other leader>?
Her: Who's she?
Me: *points at other leader*
Her: Oh yeah, how do I spell her name?

Once all the sixes had done all 6 questions, we all sat around Cecil and discussed the remaining question - how would you encourage Cecil's sister, Cecilia, to join Brownies. We first asked the girls why Cecilia might think she can't be a Brownie and one of the girls, completely deadpan, just said "because she's a dragon"!! We then discussed why Cecilia might want to join Brownies (if she wasn't a dragon!). My favourite comment we had for this question was "to give your parents a break!". Here is our whole dragon (his head is the pale pink end!)

We then spent the remaining 30 minutes making daffodils. You cut some daffodil petals out of yellow craft foam ad cut a hole in the centre - Brown Owl had drawn them out already so the hole was the right size. You then took a strip of slightly darker yellow foam and cut some wiggles out of one long edge. You take a pipe cleaner and roll the long piece around the end of it, with most of the pipe cleaner sticking out the flat edge of the foam. Push this through the hole in the other piece of foam. Make some leaves from green foam and twist them into the bottom of the pipe cleaner. They end up looking like these ones, from Baker Ross.

The girls all enjoyed the UMA more than we thought they would, and we got lots of interesting comments from them - from the sounds of it, a cake/pudding night would go down very well! They also liked making the daffodils, although a few of them struggled rolling the centre tight enough to fit through the hole. This meeting flew by really quickly!

There may not be a blog next week as I have to go on a work trip and am not sure if I'll be back in time, although we are also going on our Thinking Day trip on Saturday so I might get that typed up in time instead.

Skills Builders Part 4

14/02/19

This week we continued with the 2 Skills Builders we have been working towards - we are now on activity 4 of 5. The girls doing Lead were teaching each other dance moves, and the girls doing Innovate were building towers from fruit and veg. I was assisting the girls doing Lead. They had to split into 4 teams (ours had 3/4 girls in each). They had to choose a song in their team and then each come up with 2 dance moves to it. They had to teach their dance moves to the rest of their team and then combine them all into a routine which they then performed. We had a wide range of songs, from A Million Dreams from The Greatest Showman, to Katy Perry's Firework - all of which were sung by the girls as they performed because we had no way to play a recording. The girls worked pretty well in their teams, although we had one that split into two because they couldn't decide on a song. They didn't fully grasp the concept of all choosing moves so one of the groups had the older girl teach the two younger ones a routine to a song she knew instead. As leaders, we had to observe the groups and award each team one of 4 awards:

• Leadership Star: for the team that gives the best directions to each other
• Teamwork Champions: for the team that works the best together
• Top Encouragers: for the team that's most encouraging towards each other
• Best Listeners: for the team that listened best to each other

This part worked out perfectly as each group slotted into one category very nicely! Once the girls had each performed their routine, we announced the awards, with a special mention to the girl who had been singing her song nice and loudly and carried on when the girls doing the Innovate task stopped talking and turned round to watch too!

The girls doing Innovate were first given slices of various fruits and veg and asked to try and build the tallest tower they could with them. When they started struggling a bit, they were then given large slices of apples and cocktail sticks - the foundations and support beams - and then they could try again. The aim was to try and show them why buildings don't fall over, although we found that the girls didn't really care about the specifics, they just wanted to build towers and then eat the food! We had some quite impressive structures by the end though:

Once we had finished, we then played 2 games of Pirates before doing the Brownie circle and sending the girls home. This meeting was fairly laid back as we did not have to plan too much. The girls also seemed to enjoy the activity they were doing, and we had very few girls ask if they could swap to the other one.

Next week is half term so I am taking week off from blogging (so I can focus on finalising things for our Thinking Day trip in a few weeks!).

Charity Shop Game/Jigsaw Checking

07/02/19

Near to our meeting place is a charity shop, and Brown Owl knows some of the people who work there. They get lots of donations of items to sell, but can only sell those which are complete. Brown Owl helps them out by frequently collecting jigsaws and checking they have all the pieces. We decided once a few years ago to collect some kid-friendly jigsaws and games and have the Brownies check them instead. Tonight we did that again. We had 3 large bags of jigsaws and games and the girls were told to collect an item from the bag, check all the pieces were there for the games and do the jigsaws to make sure there weren't any missing pieces. If it had all the pieces, then we taped it shut and made a pile, and if there were pieces missing then we made a pile to be binned (as they cannot sell those). The girls all got stuck in with this really quickly and our pile of complete items grew rapidly. There were a couple of jigsaws which were missing a piece, and a game which needed batteries so we couldn't check it at the meeting but other than that it was quite a successful evening. I ended up helping a group of girls who had picked up a box of jigsaws. There were 9 jigsaws, with a variety of number of pieces, all split into bags but with no indication of which one was in which bag. Once you had made the jigsaws, they then joined together into three long thin jigsaws, which had silly little end pieces (which we gave up trying to put on and just counted!). The girls all enjoyed making the jigsaws, but it was quite painful watching some of them trying to put pieces in completely the wrong places (non-edge piece in an edge spot etc.)!

Once we had done all the charity shop items, we had some spare time so we played a game on Tomato (as suggested by a Brownie) - it is like Fish and Chips but instead of a girl saying "Fish and Chips", they say "Tomato" in a funny voice and the girl at the front has to guess who said it. We only had time for a couple of rounds as the girls took ages guessing!

The last thing we did this evening was to hand out the new anniversary badges. We are lucky in that we have a decent sized budget and so we could buy all the previous badges for our girls too. We had loads of them getting 1 year, quite a few getting 2, a handful getting 3 and one girl who had done 5 years (although she ticked over after Brown Owl bought the badges so she didn't get them all tonight)!

This meeting was a nice relaxed one as I just got the opportunity to sit and chat with the girls and do some jigsaws. They all seemed to like being given the responsibility of making sure all the pieces were in everything too, and seemed to grasp the fact that they would be sold to make money for children with disabilities to go on a holiday/trip somewhere. I will definitely be trying to bring this tradition to the unit I join when I move house.

Paper Plane Evening

31/01/19

This evening we started the meeting with a UMA - "Lend a Hand" from the Know Myself theme. We tweaked the card slightly by just writing the items on pieces of card instead of finding the physical items to bring in. We then shuffled them all and pulled one out randomly. The girls then had 30 seconds, in their sixes, to come up with a way they could lend a hand with that item. We then went round the sixes asking them for their idea and the winner (or two occasionally) got a token. Some of the girls seemed to understand the point of this, but others got a bit confused and started thinking of ways other people could help them with the item instead. My personal favourite ideas were the girls who were going to decorate a hammer and use it as a door stop when the door broke, and the girls who were going to use a duster to catch a spider when their friend was scared of it! By doing this activity, quite a few of the girls will now have completed an hour of the Know Myself UMAs and will get a sticker on our wall chart.

We then did our paper plane evening. We had found a book over Christmas which contained instructions for making paper planes, coloured paper to make them, and a variety of games to play once you had. We chose 2 designs for the girls to make - a simple one and a slightly more complex one and they could choose which to make. I ended up helping a group of girls with the more complex one as they were struggling to follow the written instructions. When they had finished, we set up some boxes in the four corners which they could try and throw their plane into in the fewest number of throws. We also set up two games from the book - there was a fold out hangar and a runway and they had to throw their plane along the runway into the hangar at the end. A couple of girls managed, although their planes were generally upsidedown! We also had a piece of card with three holes in it, one underneath the other, which they could try and throw their planes through. That one was quite difficult as the holes were not much bigger than the planes but we didn't have anything bigger to use instead. The girls just got closer until they were able to do it more often!

We finished up the meeting by handing out a few badges - an advanced swimmer, and 3 fire safety ones. The girls seem to have got a burst of energy to do interest badges, having been told that the old ones are stopping at the end of the year! It's almost like they enjoy doing those ones and want to get in as many as they can before they go..! We haven't had a single girl ask about the new badges yet, despite telling them about them on multiple occasions. The girls all seemed to really enjoy this evening too - it was nice to be able to do whatever we wanted, instead of having to follow the new programme and the girls don't seem to know the difference so no problems there!