Catching up!

Whoops, poor little neglected blog!

So, a quick update on the last two weeks of term:

Our little ones did campfire cooking, doing bananas with chocolate – and very successfully I might add! One fire per patrol, and one adult per patrol, made for a smooth experience. Their work over the term in developing confidence with matches, and the fact that many of them had attended our Juniors sleepover a few weeks ago where they also had to build fires, meant that they’d actually developed and consolidated their skills and were quite competent to set and light and maintain the fires. Go littlies!

Meanwhile, I and NewestCo-Leader (we have a crew now… I need to do some re-blog-naming of my excellent leaders!) led the older girls in ’emergency out of the box’ – we provided a bunch of *stuff* (tarps, ropes, blankets, first aid equipment, clothes, chairs, tables, gadget wood, wool….) in a pile and in patrols they had to respond to various scenarios pulled ‘out of the hat’. Scenarios were things like “there’s been a car crash out the front of the building” “there’s a fire in the kitchen” “you’ve got home and realised you’ve lost your keys and no-one is due home for two hours…”

I’d kind of envisaged they’d pretty much use the bits and pieces to create a vignette of how they’d respond, but it seems we have quite a few dramatic little souls in the group, and so somehow we ended up with these elaborate mini-plays, complete with characters and backstories and HIGH DRAMA! We finished on a silly scenario (“oh my god, the party is in an hour and I have NOTHING to wear!!”) which was a bit of fun 🙂

Our final week of term was a bit ‘bitsy’ – the Seniors did a version of the mini-meal done by the Juniors a few weeks ago (cooking a tiny 3 course dinner over candles), but with the added complication of working with only torchlight – they seemed to enjoy it, but interesting “haaaaate soup” (noted for future camps etc), and got through the task faster than expected. Luckily we were able to fill the time with a bit of “so, what do you want to do next term?”

Meanwhile, the Juniors had a games night, with a bit of leadership worked in – each of the girls had the chance to take the lead in running a game for the group, and it worked really well. We didn’t have a set list of games or of kids, but made it clear initially that we wanted each of them to have a try running things, even if it was only for a round or two of a well known game. They all really stepped up and embraced the task, and it was lovely to see, not to mention, fabulously run by YoungCoLeader, who really does enjoy working with our youngest girls.

Finally finally we had another session of our limping along Rangers group, pulling out our Upper Seniors for the night – they were doing “mini gadgets” (hmm quite a mini theme for the evening, didn’t realise at the time!), using tiny twigs and twine to make doll-house sized camp gadgets. It was… hmm… of mixed success. Still, they enjoyed the time as a separate older group, and have begged for extra sessions next term, so that’s a good sign 🙂

Speaking of next term, our leadership team got together last week for planning term three, and it should be a bunch of fun – we’ll be working on the ‘Girls’ and ‘Other People’ badges for Juniors and Seniors respectively, and I think it should be a lovely relaxed sort of term… at this stage it doesn’t look like we’re attempting to crazily over-program, but I’m sure as each week approaches we’ll somehow find ways to add absurd flourishes to the proceedings!

Cool, calm, and creative (oh and some knots!)

A lovely calm evening at Guides this week!

We split the girls into their three sections (Juniors, Seniors, Upper Seniors), and had different activities for each.

As part of their Fire badge, the Juniors made candle holders, decorating small glasses with tiny pieces of cut up tissue paper, which gave a gorgeous mosaic or stained glass window type effect.

To reduce the potential level of chaos, we had the three patrols on separate trestle tables (our hall is blessed with an excellent supply of tables!), and the various supplies on a fourth table for supervised distribution by the leaders – time has shown that Things Work Better if you don’t have overly enthusiastic six year olds being in charge of sharing out tissue paper and glue!!

The girls each did two candle holders, and those that finished a little early (or in the case of one or two, just got frustrated!) were then able to use some of the cut up tissue to do some simple collage type art. Wish I’d taken a photo of the floor under the tables- it was covered in what looked like bright oversized confetti!

Meanwhile, the Seniors were being Proper Guides, developing their square lashing skills – even using their handbooks for instructions on the knotting!

They were aiming to construct a lantern (basically a cube with a cross-hatch on the base to put a tealight), although due to time limits, none of them *quite* got there. That said, two girls were up to the final section, and several others were not far behind, so the timing/complexity wasn’t too far off correct, and most of the girls decided that they would take the extra bits and pieces needed home to finish it off properly, so I think we’ll call that a win.

Its always interesting with activities like these to see which girls do well and which struggle – the girls who were overly particular about their lashing struggled to get very far as they focused too much on perfection, and not enough on speed and getting through the task. But equally, the girls that were too unfussed about quality found that their lashing had no structural integrity, and the pieces kept falling apart! Perhaps a lesson there for all of us 🙂

I’m not a huge fan of the knotting/gadgets side of guiding, but they can be useful skills to know, and I think a small scale crafty activity like this was quite a good way of introducing the skills and applying them, without going the full build-a-camp-kitchen!

It was also a really lovely activity in terms of providing the girls with enough interest to keep their hands and minds busy, but not so busy they couldn’t chat. I think after several weeks lately of working in patrols, the older girls also really enjoyed just having something they could focus on individually, rather than needing to cooperate with others… well, apart from negotiating about who got access to the scissors!

Our final activity had the Upper Seniors in the kitchen, cooking marshmallows from scratch! AwesomeCoLeader is very clever with all matters culinary, so she was in her element playing with candy thermometers and whatnot. Also nice for her to have a break from the tiny ones where she usually ends up!

We’re aiming to have a couple of activities each term where we differentiate the Upper Seniors, both as a way of keeping them engaged, and as a longer term retention strategy for our next cohort of girls. The transition to high school is traditionally a huge drop off point for our unit (and most units, I gather), so having certain activities and privileges only available to those who have stuck around gives the next lot of girls reason to stay 🙂

Overall, a really lovely and calm evening, which the girls and the leaders all really got into!

Next week: we’ll be bringing the whole group back together for a campfire… lets hope the weather holds out!!

 

Fire safety shenanigans

Simple evening at Guides, focusing on fire safety.

The younger girls brainstormed fire safety rules, then read through some statements about fire safety to decide which ones were correct, and then did fire safety ‘relay’ – with the hope that The Power Of Three would help at least *some* of it stick!

They then practiced lighting matches to light a tealight candle each, and toast a marshmallow over the top. My co-leaders report that as per usual, there were a few kids very apprehensive about lighting matches, but that with a lot of coaxing, they all got there – one of the littlies was so pleased and proud she had to show her mum once mum arrived 🙂

Meanwhile, the older girls did maps of their homes and found the logical escape routes in the event of a fire, and did a scavenger hunt of sorts around the hall and grounds to find the fire blanket, extinguisher, hydrant, maps of evacuation points, and external taps. They got surprisingly into it – anything with an element of inter-patrol competition seems to get them excited!

We then had a quick fire drill, and I discovered exactly how little the girls actually listen, and how much they follow the crowd – I’d given instructions firstly to the Seniors that we would shortly be having a drill, and the seniors would be going to the carpark evacuation point, and the juniors to the front lawn point. Then when all the kids were together, I told all the girls that they were to do as they’d been instructed, and if they were unsure, to follow their patrol leader.

Well, I waited in the carpark with (most of) one of the three seniors patrols, plus a stray from another patrol… but well under half. It took a further five minutes of them running back and forth trying to convince their fellow guides to come! It seems a) their short-term memory is pretty poor and is quickly over-ridden by ‘the crowd’ and b) that some of them can’t even remember who their patrol leader is, so *that* is interesting!!

Anyway, we closed out the night with a Promise ceremony for two teeny 6 year olds, and a renewal for one of our long standing guides moving up to Seniors. Lovely as always 🙂

Back again!

A somewhat frustrating evening this week as we returned for term two, and had an evening that just didn’t quite work in terms of programming and timing.

I think the issue is that the girls haven’t seen each other for a couple of weeks (not many of our group are out-of-guides-friends) so they are madly trying to catch up on everything, and don’t have the patience to engage in the program, particularly (for the Seniors at least) when it was mainly a discussion-ish based program. So, note to self: next term, week one – something that requires them to use their hands in pairs or threes, to keep them busy and the noise to a functional level!!

Over the holidays, the leadership team (now with an extra leader-in-training AND a new unit helper I AM SO EXCITED WOOHOO EXTRA PEOPLE!!) decided that we would have the Juniors working on the Fire Create-A-Challenge badge, and the Seniors/Uppers would work on the Emergency Achieve-A-Challenge badge. The Fire badge we’ve done previously, but long enough ago that the few girls still around from then are now safely into Seniors 🙂

So this week’s badge activities for the Juniors were based around myths of fire, getting them to learn a few myths (Prometheus and others) and then have them develop their own little skits based on fire. Meanwhile, the Seniors were learning about how and when to call for help in an emergency, and we had quite long chat about when and how to use 000, and how using that or 112 will basically override everything on mobile phones.

As calling Triple 0 for practice purposes is not exactly encouraged, I decided to go with a different approach – part of what we were aiming to learn was how to give and receive information on the phone. So patrols were allocated two organisations/companies each to call for information. The patrols had their questions pre-approved by me (things like opening hours, price of tickets, group discounts etc), and then one kid from each patrol was allowed to call and ask the questions, using my phone on speaker function so the whole group could hear. It actually worked really well, and the girls doing the calls were stressed but excited and proud that they’d done it, and it was really great how encouraging the other guides were of their efforts. And now I know that a group of guides would get the schools-rate discount at ice-skating… 🙂

I had intended that we’d also take a walk up the street to a local payphone and get them to try that out, but with all the gossiping and mucking about, we ran out of time!! Ah well. The guts of what we needed to do was achieved, and I think they generally had fun!

Next week: fire safety (merging the two badge requirements helpfully!) and a promise ceremony 🙂