World Centres meeting

Our theme this term is 'World Guiding' and we'll be working on two badges - Achieve-a-Challenge World Guiding and Create-a-Challenge Other People. 

Last week our meeting was focused on the five World Centres.

Program for meeting:

Icelandic egg game (source unknown)

Equipment: a large, soft ball

Stand in a circle, feet apart and touching the feet of the people either side. The gap between your legs is a goal, and you protect it using your hands, both hands clasped together. Roll a ball back and forth, each person trying to get the ball through someone else's legs. If it goes through your legs, you put one hand behind your back, the second time, you turn round in your place, so you have your back to the circle, and the third time you are out. 

World Centres game

This game is an old favourite, although we rarely play it. Rules found here.

World Centres Quiz

The game and information for this quiz came from fellow Leader's on the Guiders forum. I put the quiz together using the facts shared in the forum as well as the WAGGGS website.

The activity was simple. I would read out a fact and the Brownies had to run to the picture of the World Centre that they believed matched that fact. The pictures were laminated cards of the World Centres, that were placed in the four corners of the Guide Hall.

World Centres mini book

This mini book was inspired by Owl and Toadstool's awesome World Centre's mini book. In fact, I planned on using her book, until an hour before our meeting I realised that I had forgotten to email her for the PDF! I decided that it would be faster for the girls create their own book, than me getting stressed over typing my own version.

Each girl folded and cut a sheet of white A4 paper to make their own mini book (instructions here). Then they cut and glued pictures of the four World Centres into the book - one image on every second page. (This book has no front cover, it just keeps turning). The country where the World Centre is located was written underneath.

Using their knowledge from our early discussion and quiz, the Brownies then wrote fun facts about each World Centre onto the opposite page. The World Centre cats were clear favourites in the fact department.

While not as aesthetically pleasing as Jen's book, I think the girl's did a great job. We'll be finishing the books off at our next meeting.

This page was written by our youngest Brownie.

We had a great night focusing on the World Centres. At our next meeting, we will be learning about WAGGGS. A rather dry topic (especially with the challenges necessary for the badge criteria), but luckily Guidey Laurie has been really helpful with activities to use! I'm excited to try them out!


Downloads:

World Centre quiz - download as a PDF

World Centre images for mini book - download as a PDF

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What is your favourite World Centre activity?

MasterChef Challenge

Last year, we held a MasterChef challenge night that was full of fun and complete chaos. The signs of a great night!

The Brownie Guides had been wanting a MasterChef themed night for quite a while, as the Guide unit (10-14 year olds) holds a cooking challenge night a couple of times a year. The Guides are quite independent in the kitchen and bake cakes, cook pasta and create three course meals by themselves. The Brownies being a group of twenty, 7-10 year olds (with one Leader) were clearly not going to be able to have their night run in quite the same way. It look quite a while for me to find a night that I was comfortable running, that would also satisfy the Brownies taste for creation.

It was the most amazing thing when I stumbled across 162nd Edinburgh Brownies blog post about their MasterChef night. It would allow the Brownies to have the freedom to create their own meal, while involving fairly simple ingredients. Our MasterChef night is 99% based on their plan, I just tweaked a few things to suit my unit. Please go visit their site where you can download their MasterChef program.

On the night, the Brownies were divided into their four Patrols, with each Patrol given $15 in Brownie bucks (laminated money, Scout bucks from Making Friends) and their instructions. 

The pictures below are laminated posters that I hung on the wall to give the Brownies some examples of creations they could make. All I did was add text to existing pictures I found through Google. I've added the sources of the original photographs below. Make sure to click on links 1, 2 or 4 - they all have great ideas!

Photo credit: Match Made on Hudson

Photo credit: Finger Prickin' Good

Photo credit: Dreamstime

Photo credit: Gather and Dine

Photo credit: Red Mango

The mystery box item which is mentioned in the instructions was fresh strawberries. I stuck a sign that said 'Mystery Box' onto a cardboard box, so that the strawberries were hidden until I was ready to unveil them.

Once the girls had read through their instructions and selected what foods they wanted to use, they came to the front of the room where all the food and crockery was displayed. They handed in their shopping list and were given the produce, plates etc. they had chosen. All the fruit was given to them whole, except the watermelon which was cut into large slices.

Back at their Patrol tables each group had a few chopping boards, sharp knives and basic cutlery. I had more parent helpers than usual to assist, one with each Patrol to supervise. The girls set to work cutting their fruit and creating unique fruit displays.

After the meals were completed they were put into the fridge and the Patrol's began working on designing their menu. They ran out of time to make fancy menus like I had envisioned, but still named their creation and listed the ingredients.

By this time, we were running overtime and so we had a very quick judging and then let the Brownies dig into their meals. I had bought chocolate chips to give the winning Patrol a treat to add to their creation, but the girls were so thrilled already that I decided that the 'prize' wasn't necessary. The Brownies had so much fun and it was great seeing them get so excited about their creations which were such a healthy snack!

We were so busy that I forgot to take photos over the night, but here is one of the fruit plates, which has a little bit of everything going on!

We ran almost 30 minutes overtime, but the parents were happen to help clean up and chat while snacking on the various creations. It was nice for them to get involved and also be so excited about one of our meetings.

It was a wonderful night that I will definitely repeat in the future, once the current Brownies have moved up to the Guide unit. Thanks to the 162nd Brownie Leaders for sharing such a great program!


Downloads:

Masterchef Australia sign - download as a PDF

Challenge instructions - download as a PDF

Posters with suggested presentation ideas:

• Fruit shapes - download as a PDF
• Fruit sticks - download as a PDF
• Fruit skewers - download as a PDF
• Decorated bowl of fruit - download as a PDF
• Lots of Layers - download as a PDF

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Does your unit play with food?

Laying the wreaths

There's been awful weather throughout the state all week, but fortunately the rain held off for the ANZAC Day services and marches. As usual, the Brownies and Guides lay down their wreaths at our local dawn service and afterwards we headed into the city for the 9am march. 

Photo credit: Girl Guides QLD shop

A puzzled penguin SWAP

I love SWAPS, but trading them isn't really an Australian Girl Guide tradition - at least not in our area! Instead we make them as a camp memory. The girl's wear their craft on their hat and can always remember back to the camp when they made it!

Our Madagascar themed camp a couple of years ago, was based around the story of the four penguins from the movies and their adventures. During the wide game, the Brownies had to complete challenges given to them by Skipper (the head penguin) so that they could follow him to Antarctica. Making the hat craft was the final challenge in the wide game, and their way of "finding" Skipper.

Each Skipper looked completely unique.

At each station of the wide game, the girl's collected one of the components needed for the craft. The supplies were in ziplock bags labelled with their Patrol name. Each bag had enough materials for their whole Patrol. The girls knew that they were collecting craft supplies but had no idea of the end result, so they were really excited when they realised they were making their own Skipper!

I found this craft at Danielle's Place, so go to her website for instructions to make this adorable craft!


Materials needed:

• puzzle - painted completely white
• black permanent marker
• goggly eyes
• orange paper or texta
• hot glue gun

The five materials below were the items in ziplock bags at each station. Everything else (markers, glue etc) was set up at station number six.

White puzzle pieces - body

I purchased a puzzle from Vinnie's (our local thrift store) for $1.00 and painted the entire thing white. Since the penguin needs to have a head, arms and legs you can only use pieces from the edge of the puzzle (and only every second piece). This is important to remember - other some penguins may be missing their limbs!

Strips of orange paper - feet and beak

Using this paper was optional. The younger girls had difficulty cutting the details of the beak and feet, so they drew them on with marker instead.

Googly eyes - penguin's eyes

Black felt - to attach safety pin

Rather than hot gluing the safety pin straight onto the puzzle piece, we attached a small piece of black felt and then threaded the pin through the space in the middle (see photos below).

Safety pins - to attach craft to hat

The wide game had a happy ending with all the penguins reunited with Skipper.

Other Madagascar camp links:

• Madagascar camp activity booklet

Christmas challenges

I'm a little late (or early!) to be posting about Christmas, but this is one of the games we enjoyed at our district Christmas party last year.

We played a festive version of Pass-the-Parcel swaps, with new Christmas themed challenges mixed into the usual challenges. Here are the rules and challenges for the original game that we play.

Christmas variations:

~ Dramatically melt like a snowman.
~ Say "Merry Christmas" to everybody in the circle, one at a time.
~ Prance like a reindeer.
~ Name three Christmas movies.
~ Limbo under a candy cane.
~ Choose a partner and together recite two lines of a Christmas carol.
~ Name five of Santa's reindeer.
~ Twist like a candy cane
~ Pictionary challenge: a fireplace.
~ Run like a gingerbread person.
~ Say this tongue-twister, three times fast! "Pretty packages perfectly packed in paper."
~ Pictionary challenge: Santa on a surfboard.
~ Play telephone. Can you send a Christmas message around the circle?
~ Roll like an ornament.
~ List the gifts given on the 12 days of Christmas eg. A partridge in a pear tree.

This is such a fun game when the girls let go of their inhibitions and just go for it! Twisting like a candy cane was one of the funniest things i've seen in a long time. And listing the gifts from the 12 days of Christmas confused everybody so much that the Leader's got out their phones to Google the exact verses!

This game lasted us close about an hour. There was no time limit if a girl tried to answer a question, she got as much time as she needed to answer. With so much to get through each meeting, sometimes we do need answers to be instant or we move onto another girl to try again. So it was nice to slow things down and give girls the time to think. Because of this, I don't think one single girl forfeited her challenge! 

Here are the drawings from the Pictionary challenges. The first is Santa riding a surfboard (Australian-style) and the second is a fireplace (you couldn't tell?!).

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Have you played Pass-the-Parcel forfeits? 

It is such a great game to adapt to any theme or situation - and prep time doesn't take too long. Themes that work really well would be knotting or first aid, where the girls have to answer questions (When do you use a reef knot? How do you treat a minor burn?) or complete practical challenges (Tie a clove hitch. Make a sling for a friend).

May we always remember

As promised, here are the felt poppy badges I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, when the Brownies were running activities for the night. Miss 9 years made them as one of her Service challenges for her Junior BP award. 

The challenge had a few parts for her to complete:

1. Create a poppy template. I had one of these poppies pre-made in our supplies, so Miss 9 needed to figure out how to make them and create a template to use. 
2. Make a selection of felt poppies. Miss 9 will be handing these out to the public on ANZAC Day.
3. Teach others to make poppies. Miss 9 spent two meetings helping other Brownies to make these poppies. The girls will wear their poppies in our local ANZAC Day parade.

Here are the templates Miss 9 created to make the flowers. The link below is for a PDF of the template so you can create your own!

Remembrance poppy: Download as a PDF

Egg carton wreath

This year's ANZAC Day wreath was inspired by this lovely egg carton wreath on Homemade Serenity. Just Google, "egg carton wreath" and you'll find many other great ideas!

The base is made from a thick cardboard box and is about 60cm in diameter. The leaves are also cut from a cardboard box, while each flower is created from the sections in an egg carton. 

The Brownie Guides designed all the flowers themselves and then painted them (using our lovely new paint!) Once painted, everything was hot glued together.

Now we just need to write 'Lest We Forget' across the ribbon and it will be complete and ready to lay down at our local memorial service on April 25th.

Individually the flowers may not be what some would consider to be 'perfect', but each girl completed her flower as she saw fit and working together, the unit created a beautiful wreath. I've included a few detail shots below so you can see the design of the individual flowers. I love their unique creations!

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Do you make your own wreaths?

Minute to Win It

A Minute to Win It themed night is a great way to include parents in the programming for a night. Admittedly, I don't use many actual Minute-to-Win-It games, but there are plenty to choose from so you definitely could spend a meeting playing only these games. The great thing about them is that they use household items that are readily accessible.

Each girl brings along an adult (Mum, Dad, older sibling) and then the games begin. I like to use a range of games that have the girls and their family member working as a pair, working together in a Patrol and even competing against each other!

Here are two meeting programs I have used on bring-a-family member nights:

Challenge Night Program #1
Animal Toothpicks
Breakfast Scramble
Stretcher race
Spaghet Me Knot
Defying Gravity
Balloon toss
Bucket toss
The War of Tug

Challenge Night Program #2
Hula hoop challenge
Breakfast Scramble
"Egg" and spoon race
Stretcher race
Tallest tower
Newspaper Hockey
Streets and Lanes

I have all the games typed onto index cards and clipped to a lanyard - one for each Leader - so that everybody knows the order of games, the rules, points and the equipment needed. It's much easier to stay on task this way. 

And now the games!

Animal Toothpicks
This game is a great icebreaker! The aim of the game is to be the Patrol that finds the most toothpicks. 

Before everybody arrives, hide MANY toothpicks all around the Guide hall - remember that adults will be playing, so conceal them at different heights and with varying levels of difficulty. 

Once you are ready to play, divide into small Patrols - no more than four people per group. I had two Brownie Guides and two adults per Patrol. Each Patrol must select an animal. The sounds that this animal makes is now the only noise these players may use. eg. If the Patrol chooses a cow, they may only communicate by saying "moooooo". 

Elect a 'collector' for each Patrol. Only this person may touch the toothpicks. Everybody else in the Patrol is a hunter.

Once the game begins, only the hunters may search for toothpicks. When they find one they must make the noise of their animal so that the collector can come and pick up the toothpicks.

Continue play until all the toothpicks are collected. This game should run for 5-10 minutes.

Points: 2 for 1st place, 1 for second place.

Breakfast Scramble
This is actually a Minute-to-Win-It game and involves preparation before the day. I spent a good month collecting cereal boxes from the Brownies, family and friends. And then I had my family assist with cutting them all up! Any size cereal box will do but it needs to be cut up into 16 equal sized pieces. Cereals with cartoons such as Rice Bubbles are easier to piece together, so you can always use the back of the box as an extra challenge!

This game is played in pairs. The Brownie Guides with their Mum or Dad (or whoever they brought along). They have one minute to piece the puzzle back together. It's harder than you might think!

I had a big stop watch on my iPad for this game. 

Points: 2 for completing in one minute or less, 1 for completing the puzzle after the 1 minute

Stretcher Race

My girls are a huge fan of holding stretcher races, so I modified the usual race. Instead of carrying another person they carried a soft toy and instead of a blanket we used tea towels. it was hilarious to see the parents carefully carrying a doll on a mini stretcher. Definitely a hit!

No points awarded.

Spaghet Me Knot
I really don't recall if this is an official Minute-to-Win-It game or not... It was an individual challenge to tie a reef knot and/or double overhand in cold cooked pasta.
Preparation: cook pasta prior to meeting, fettuccine works best.

Defying Gravity
This was played in pairs with the girls and their family member.

Bucket Toss
Played in pairs. Team members must stand 2 metres apart. One holds a bucket on their head. The other must try to throw 3 ping-pong balls into the bucket. Unlimited turns for this as it was quite difficult for the girls. The parents quickly learnt to crouch down and move to try to assist with the catching.

Hula Hoop Challenge 
This is a group activity and we use it for teamwork nights. Everybody stands in a circle holding hands. A hula hoop must be passed around the entire circle.

"Egg" and spoon race
A relay race using ping-pong balls as the "eggs".

Tallest tower
A Patrol activity with Patrols being a mix of adults and Brownie Guides. Everybody is given the same equipment. Plastic cups, boxes, masking tape, straws etc. Just random supplies collected from around the Guide Hall. Give them a time limit to create the tallest tower.

The War of Tug
Just your regular tug of war game. The Brownies LOVED competing against all the adults! And the adults were incredibly competitive!

Minute-to-Win-It
As you can see from the games listed, my Minute-to-Win-It night very quickly turned into a general games night! However there are so many great MTWI games you can find online. Depending on the access you have to technology, you can even play the instruction videos which were used on the Minute-To-Win-It game show. They are all available to download from Youtube. 


Prizes:

I have run this night with and without rewards and either way works fine. In fact, I prefer it to be a night of fun rather than worrying about counting points. But if you are interested in a point system you can score each game and give out a prize to the overall winners at the end of the night or you could have lolly prizes after each game as explained below.

Each participant was given a plastic cup with a white sticker on the front to write their name (as pictured below). At the front of the room I created a lolly buffet, with bowls full of various types of lollies. After each game was played I awarded points, sometimes to those who won overall and sometimes to everybody that completed the activity successfully. As the points were awarded the players had to use them immediately at the lolly buffet by collecting the lollies in the cup with their name. The lollies were to be taken home to eat.

This is the point system I used:
M&Ms: 1 scoop = 1 point
Gummy sour worms: 1 worm = 1 point
Jelly beans: 1 scoop = 1 point
Candy hearts: 1 scoop = 1 point
Chewy candy: 1 lolly = 1 point
Lollipop: 1 lollipop = 2 points

I hope that this gives you some ideas to run your own Minute-to-Win-It games night! They are a lot of work depending which games you choose, but are always a huge hit with my families!

Minute to Win it resources:

• Ideas on Pinterest
• Game instructions
• Instructional videos on Youtube
• Minute-to-win-it party - this blog has many great themed party ideas

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With Mother's Day just around the corner, perhaps this is something you could do with your unit!