But before that, last week we did our final part of the Senior Section badge. The instructions said, 'let the girls choose a decade and found out about the music, clothing etc and share what they've found'. We agreed this would be of little interest to most of our girls, too much like school and with too little active participation. So instead we built on an activity we'd used a couple of years ago when celebrating 100 years of Brownies Bombings, Birthdays and Being Safe. Only one of our girls had been with us then, but she remembered the day we pretended to evacuate them. This time we looked at what the older guides and rangers did - welcoming evacuees, 'make do and mend', first aid and sending messages.
They worked in their sixes, with the sixer and seconder welcoming all the younger ones. They were each given a dress for a larger child/small adult, which, with the aid of safety pins (we were not sewing), they had to adjust to fit their smallest girl. With help they put the arm of one of the other Brownies in a sling. And finally they had to use semaphore to spell out the word H - E - L - P, with each girl spelling one letter. E is spelled with one arm, so logically the Brownie with her arm in the sling would spell that letter; it turned out this was not as obvious as we thought and two of the sixes tried to spell H with one arm. Sigh.
We finished the evening with a modified game of Fishes. So air raid wardens, first aiders and fire fighters instead of cod, haddock and plaice, road's blocked (tide's turning) and siren sounding (all fishes). Despite the odd (very odd) hiccup the evening went well and the Brownies enjoyed themselves.
This week, with Sparkly Owl on holiday, Brown Owl organised friendship cards. Nice and easy - cut a piece of coloured paper, stick it on the card, pass card on to the next person. The card circulates until it's completely covered. One girl has two cards to do at once, another has none. Get glue over table. Drop bits of paper all over floor. Take twice as long as expected. However in the end all the cards were finished, so we collected them up, shuffled them and then gave them out again so everyone had a friendship card to take home.
By the time they had finished the craft we didn't have long for a game. Certainly not long enough to go into the bigger hall, organise themselves into a circle, play game and come back. It's amazing how long moving 22 Brownies can take. So we settled for a quick game of Screech Owl says and then into the horseshoe, hand out badges and that's another half term over.
They worked in their sixes, with the sixer and seconder welcoming all the younger ones. They were each given a dress for a larger child/small adult, which, with the aid of safety pins (we were not sewing), they had to adjust to fit their smallest girl. With help they put the arm of one of the other Brownies in a sling. And finally they had to use semaphore to spell out the word H - E - L - P, with each girl spelling one letter. E is spelled with one arm, so logically the Brownie with her arm in the sling would spell that letter; it turned out this was not as obvious as we thought and two of the sixes tried to spell H with one arm. Sigh.
We finished the evening with a modified game of Fishes. So air raid wardens, first aiders and fire fighters instead of cod, haddock and plaice, road's blocked (tide's turning) and siren sounding (all fishes). Despite the odd (very odd) hiccup the evening went well and the Brownies enjoyed themselves.
This week, with Sparkly Owl on holiday, Brown Owl organised friendship cards. Nice and easy - cut a piece of coloured paper, stick it on the card, pass card on to the next person. The card circulates until it's completely covered. One girl has two cards to do at once, another has none. Get glue over table. Drop bits of paper all over floor. Take twice as long as expected. However in the end all the cards were finished, so we collected them up, shuffled them and then gave them out again so everyone had a friendship card to take home.
By the time they had finished the craft we didn't have long for a game. Certainly not long enough to go into the bigger hall, organise themselves into a circle, play game and come back. It's amazing how long moving 22 Brownies can take. So we settled for a quick game of Screech Owl says and then into the horseshoe, hand out badges and that's another half term over.