Girl Guides have fun!

We attended a fun activity day this weekend with Guides from near and far. The Brownies and Guides had an awesome time and tried a range of activities - some new and some old favourites.

Inflatable jumping castle twister:

Crate stacking:

Decorated pet rocks:

Creating bubble pictures:

Rock climbing:

Gumnut creatures:

Making delicious lamingtons:

Wrestling in sumo suits:

Pond dipping:

Walking on wooden stilts:

Getting stuck to the inflatable velcro wall:

All in all, a wonderful day - and I even went home without my usual post-Guide event headache!! Thanks girls for a great day!

Communication games

Continuing with our theme of communication the girls played a few games this week.

Is it me?

Guides stand in a circle with one girl on the outside. The Guide outside the circle walks around slowly, describing one of the other girls, eg, “She is wearing white socks, she has brown hair, she has green shoelaces”.

When a Guide thinks she recognises herself, she asks, “Is it me?”. If the answer is “no”, the description continues until another Guide asks “is it me?” If the answer is “yes”, the Guide who has been described chases the describer around the circle, trying to catch her before she can get to the vacant place (just like duck-duck-goose). The game continues with another girl outside the circle giving a description.

Outcome:
The Brownies really enjoyed this, but after about 6 rounds I could see they were starting to get silly, so we ended on a high note. Silliness was mostly everybody calling out all at the same time, "IS IT MEEEEEE?"

We also had one girl not in uniform this week, so we had to put a stop to the Brownies first description being "she is wearing Guide uniform". The poor girl was just deflating after being obviously not chosen each turn. 


No Talking
Start by holding up the sign below. Continue to do so until the girls are silent.

Next hold up a challenge card, such as either of the examples below. 

During the activity, remind the girls to be silent by holding up the "no talking" sign.

Once the activity is complete (or appears to be too difficult to finish), hold up this sign. It actually works. Not a word was spoken until I brought this sign out and the girls didn't even know the sign existed! They were quite hilarious letting out gasping breathes as if they'd been forced to hold their breath the entire game. Quite the drama queens.

Hold a discussion with the Guides asking them to think about: 
How they communicated with each other without talking. 
What strategies were successful, which were not? 
How can you get somebody's attention if you want to tell them something without talking?

Outcome:

I was pleasantly surprised at how well this game was received. I had all the girls sit on the floor and then held up the no talking sign. The giggles began instantly, although noone spoke, I think that I shocked them into silence! But as soon as I held up the second sign they grew serious and set to work. I admit I was completely shocked as they were in fairly silly moods all night long.

The girls worked well together, standing beside one another to figure out who was taller and then lined themselves along the back wall of the hall. All but one girl was in correct height order. They were so nervous when I went along the line measuring their heights!

During the discussion I asked who had the idea to line them up against the back of the hall (I had been expecting a line down the centre of the hall, just like in Captain's Coming!). The girls couldn't seem figure out who had instigated that decision.

The  birthday challenge proved to be much more difficult, but the girls still did a great job with almost everybody in the correct place.

Methods of communicating included:

- Mouthing the words with no sound
- Using fingers to represent numbers
- Mime
- One of the girls, Miss 8 years, explained to me that she would show people 5 fingers representing the 5th, immediately followed by 3 fingers representing March. That led to a discussion that it was a great way to communicate IF others realised what you were saying! 

The younger girls (7 years) struggled with the second challenge not really understanding how to communicate until they saw the older girls counting on their fingers. Then they quickly caught on. It was great to see!

Human Knot

Form a circle. Hold hands with two different people in the circle, but not the girl on either side of you. Now try to get untangled from the knot to form a circle. 

Outcome:

I have not done this activity with the Brownies in a few years so only a couple were familiar with it. The girls worked well as a team (we hand two circles with 9 brownies each). The group of younger girls had quite a bit of difficultly but perservered until they were untangled. They immediately wanted to do it again!

I cannot locate the original sources for the first two games but I think that they might be from the Guiders.uk website. Thank you!

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What communication games do you play?

The lost art of letter writing

Is writing letters truly a lost art? One of the parents used these words when I explained to her what we were doing this week. She was thrilled with the idea that the girls would be writing letters in a world of email and other forms of social media.

However, our focus was not really how to write a letter, but rather to explore it as a form of communication and learn how to correctly address an envelope. However, after observing the girls struggle with content ideas and letter structure, it may be something we need to return to!

The girls are doing this as the first of a long series of challenges towards their communication badge. This badge does not exist within the Australian badge syllabus so we are using the ear create-a-challenge badge instead. Expect to see our challenges towards this badge a lot over the next two terms.

Below is a sheet of directions I made for each Patrol to assist them to correctly address their envelopes. All pictures and information are directly from the Australia Post website. Be sure to check out their great resources for writing various types of letters and the history of communication. 

How the activity worked:

• Each girl drew a name from a hat - only using the names of girls that were present at the meeting. This was the girl they would be writing their letter to.

• The girls split into Patrols to write their letters and address their envelopes.

• Before handing out the stamps, the written envelopes had to be shown to an adult. This step is really important! About one quarter of the unit has to rewrite their envelopes due to mistakes, the most common being forgetting to leave room to correctly place the stamp in the top right hand corner!

The Brownies had a lot of fun and i'm sure will be excited to be receiving their letters in the mail over the coming week!

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Share your thoughts! Letter writing: lost art or thing of the past?

Science Night

Hands-on science activities are always a huge hit with the girls, so once or twice a year we hold a science themed night which we use as a challenge towards the Science and Technology Explore-a-Challenge badge.

Credit: Girl Guides Australia

For this meeting, I organised a round robin of science activities and the girls worked as a Patrol moving from station to station. Each station included an information card with challenge instructions, discussion questions and an explanation of the science they were encountering.


Station One: Build a Tower

Station One: Build a Tower information card

 Structures in progress:

Outcome: A huge success, after all, who doesn't like playing with their food?!

The girls each had different approaches to building and it was amazing to watch and listen as they discussed and created their models. One of the patrols chose to work in pairs creating structures and then join their final products together. I was very impressed with their designs and teamwork. We will definitely doing this activity again!


Station Two: Dry Ice

Dry ice is -78 degrees celcius and a few seconds of contact can cause serious frostbite, so it is important that Leader's be vigilant when working with this substance. Dry ice is frozen carbon dioxide and turns from the gas to a solid through a process called sublimation.

Tip: Dry ice can be difficult to find. BOC Gas sells it for $10/kg but call ahead first because not every store has it on hand. Remember to take an esky or styrofoam box to carry it in. Beware though, my esky did get bent out of shape after having the ice inside it all day.

Dry ice activities (click the links, there are some great videos that are much more interesting to watch than reading my play-by-play!):

• Discussion: safety and what is dry ice.
• Make fog from dry ice - great intro, lots of "Ooooohs" and "Aaaaahs" from the Brownies.
• Inflating balloon - hot water not necessary, we used cold. Will eventually blow up balloon but takes a while.
• Crystal ball - Each girl had their own glass or mug, so that everybody could participate and create their own crystal ball.

Crystall ball from dry ice and bubble solution

Outcome: The girls did a great job of discussing the processes they saw occurring, making predictions and coming to conclusions. It was great to see their minds hard at work!

They were all in awe of the crystal ball, and although many were fearful at first (they took the safety discussion VERY seriously!) they each had a go creating their own crystal ball and then didn't want to stop!


Station Three: Cooking Popcorn over a Tea Light

Station Three: Cooking Popcorn information card

Outcome: This activity requires a LOT of patience. The popcorn doesn't begin popping until about the 7 minute mark.


Station Four: Bubbles

Station Four: Giant Bubbles information card

Note: The information for creating the giant bubbles and the bubble wand is courtesy of Happy Hooligans fantastic blog. The recipe worked perfectly and it's true that the more you use the mixture the stronger it becomes! For the dishwashing detergent I used the 99c home brand option which worked successfully! Much more affordable than the brand names for the quantities I was making.

Station Four: Cube Bubbles information card

Note: The information and tutorial for the creating cube bubble is directly from Steve Spangler's website, which is filled with wonderful experiments to get kids interested in science. Take some time to check out the great videos.

Due to time constraints, I had created multiple bubble makers for the girls to experiment. They were made from: 1) pipe cleaners 2) hot glue and q-tips 3) pipe cleaners and straws. The third option seemed to hold its shape best after multiple uses.

  

A cube bubble in action

Outcome: I was pleasantly surprised that the girls persevered when creating the cube bubbles. They aren't the easiest thing to make successfully, but they did it!

I definitely think we need to make the giant bubbles again, in a giant field or park. The photos of Guides running with huge bubbles trailing behind them would be awesome.

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So overall, another successful science themed night! 
Now to start planning for the next one. Any suggestions??