Brownies started back last week - a week later than many packs, but I had a meeting at work and it was decided to wait until I was around to start the new term. We've begun explaining to the girls all about the new programme, although I think it's doubtful how much some of them understand. We also gave out the letters for the forthcoming Brownie pack holiday. I shall go up on the Saturday, but feel I have done my share of staying - I'll also be home contact for the period when I'm not on site so will have a role to play.
There remain a number of issues with the hall we are currently using, so we may be moving again - Doodles is going to look at the possible alternative on Saturday morning. I think it would be better if we could move back to using council owned property designed for the community, rather than a school hall in a new school where there isn't the tradition of the building being available for use by the local community, as is the case with many older village schools.
This week we did some more preparation for the new programme, and the Brownies chose the theme they wanted to follow. This is one of those peculiarities - they are supposed to choose the theme, but we need to cover all six themes over the two-three years a girl is in Brownies, which means at some point the leaders will need to make the decisions. After which they created mimed postcards in small groups - ie they acted out where they were visiting without using words. This worked as well as might be expected, some groups doing better than others - I particularly liked the two who were swimming in the sea, then spotted a kangaroo and stopped to take pictures of it.
Next week is Brownies Got Talent. Because Glitter Owl (leader-in-training) was away this week - emergency dental treatment - I took the opportunity of talking to Doodles about being aware of how not all the girls wanted to be performing, and also mentioned the problems during the Christmas party. She understood what I was saying, and admits because she's very outgoing it doesn't occur to her. So she suggested I take the group of girls who weren't keen on individual participation and we do something all together while she checked with the others that they were happy.
I'm glad she accepted what I had to say and after the meeting she said we work well as a team. We each have our own strengths, I'm very happy to let her get on with the leading, and between us we can encourage all the girls to achieve things.
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