Last night we had a night of fun. Not the most educational of evenings, but not everything needs to have a central purpose!
We had a series of stations set up around the room, which patrols could move through as they wished.
1 – Painting holding the paintbrushes in their toes – they seemed to enjoy this, but it certainly proved to be the ‘bottleneck’ activity that held everything up! If we did it again, I think I’d go for drawing with textas instead of painting, just to keep the flow.
2 – Foot print aliens – painted the bottom of a foot, had them step on a piece of paper, and then decorate from there – they added googly eyes, glitter, sequins, and drew additions. Seemed to work quite well!
3 – Jelly transfer – each patrol had a colour of jelly that they had to remove from a large container and transfer using a spoon to the small container… using their toes to hold the spoon! Co-leader then made a ceremony at the end of carefully weighing the different containers to find the winner!
4 – Biscuits – put out a tray of guide biscuits… which had to be eaten only using your toes to pick them up and get them to your mouth… made for some rather interesting yoga poses!
5 – Sensations test – had a little bit of the hall sectioned off so they couldn’t see in, and then blindfolded each girl before walking her in and sitting her down. We then placed a bucket in front of each girl, each with something different in. The buckets had – dried pasta twists, tinned spaghetti, dishwashing bubbles, dried lentils, and shaving foam. We then made them guess what they were feeling before they could take off their blindfolds!
6 – Oatmeal treasure – a large bucket of porridge was made up, with little plastic rings as prizes hiding at the bottom, for removing with the toes. Interestingly, this was the activity they said was the most “gross”! I would have guessed the spaghetti, or eating biscuits with your feet….
With four patrols, it worked quite well having six activities, as they didn’t get too “stuck” when the activities took different lengths of time. We ended up only filling about an hour or so with the activities proper, but this did have the advantage that we were able to get the kids to do some of the clean up, much to their disappointment!
To some extent, although it was mainly a ‘fun’ night, I do think there were some good ‘Guidey’ outcomes as well – working in patrols, and requiring each patrol to move around as a group is something we can always do more of. Its been particuarly interesting lately watching the changing dynamics of our older girls, as they start to get more comfortable with each other, and have started being less pairs of friends with one or two girls semi-excluded, and more friendly and open (and also more competitive and sometimes almost a little bit mean!) with each other.
In addition to the fun, there was lots of good news tonight, with two girls we’d thought had left returning (even coming in uniform!), and our parent helper coming back and being brilliant! She’s committed to helping fortnightly for the rest of the term, and is even happy to prepare items at home or whatever! Woohoo!
And finally, our keen newbie brought along completed membership forms and money! Yay!
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