Fun with friends

Back in July, we had a friendship themed night after I was inspired by Guidey Laurie's blog post on floating paper flowers. My current unit of Brownies are a really lovely girls, but they have their little groups they always tend to fall into. The goal of the night was shaking that up a bit and having them mix with other peers they didn't know too well.

The night involved zero planning as I just grabbed pre-made activities from the cupboard or had the girls take charge! It was fun playing games and doing activities that we haven't done in such a long time. I need to remember to hold low-key nights like this more often, it does wonders for my stress levels!

The night began with a few rounds of 'Animal Sounds' led by Miss 9-year-old-Brownie. It was her first time leading a game for the unit and she did a wonderful job keeping the fun controlled, especially in such a chaotic game.

This was followed with the puzzle game, 'breakfast scramble'. The puzzles are made from cereal boxes and were originally created for our Minute-to-Win-it night. We didn't use a timer, the girls just worked with a partner to complete the puzzle. They then swapped puzzles with another group.

Floating friendship flowers were our main activity of the night. Flowers are cut from paper and then the petals are folded in, over the centre of the flower. Once placed gently to float on water the petals will open up. The girls decorated their flowers and then wrote messages on each others petals. My favourite has to be, "She is amazing, in a good way". If there was ever a time for a LOL, this would be it.

The flowers were a huge hit, although the Brownies were sad when the colours smudged in the water. Luckily I had plenty of spare templates in the cupboard as the last time I used these flowers was about 10 years ago at a Guides Own. This meant that everybody was able to take a blank flower home to demonstrate to their families. 

The final game we played was the Name Game (aka Drop the Sheet). The girls played this for 30 minutes which seems a little ridiculous looking back, but I just didn't have the heart to stop them when they were having so much fun! Again, it's been about 2 years since I pulled this game from my bag of tricks! 

A great night with lots of laughter and i'm happy to say that the girls did an amazing job of mingling with each other! Success!!

I've written up some brief instructions below on the games and activities so that you can try them out yourselves. Enjoy!

Animal Sounds

Equipment: blindfolds

The Leader chooses four different animals. We generally use farm animals as they make fairly distinctive sounds eg. sheep, cow, duck, pig. At random, secretly assign each girl one of these animals. Everybody finds their own space in the room and puts on their blindfold. On 'go', all girls begin to make their animal noise and slowly make their way around the room. The goal is to find the rest of their herd. When they find an animal the same as them they link arms. When it looks like everybody has found their group, I have everybody sit on the ground and remove their blindfolds. The girls then like to make their animal sound altogether as a group (as loudly as possible)!

Note #1: This game can be a fun way to form teams for another activity.
Note #2: Yes, girls occasionally walk into walls. Make sure to keep an eye on everybody! :)

Breakfast Scramble

Equipment: cut up the front of cereal boxes into 20 equal pieces (1 per team)

In teams of two, the girls had to recreate the front of the cereal box. Once they completed this, they chose a new puzzle to work on. 

Youtube: Breakfast scramble blueprint video

Friendship Flowers 

Click here for information on friendship flowers and also a template you can download to make your own!

Name Game (aka Drop the Sheet)

Equipment: large sheet or blanket

Break into two groups.  Two girls hold up a sheet, separating the two groups so that they cannot see each other. One person from each group sits forward, directly in front of the sheet - the rest of her group must stay back. On the count of three the sheet is dropped. When the sheet drops, the girls that are sitting forward must call out the name of the girl in front of them. The first person to correctly call out the name wins that round.

My girls get so involved in this and yet never keep score. it is amazing how many times girls say the wrong name or blank completely, even when it is their best friend sitting in front of them!