Campfire cooking indoors

Bushfire season is not a great time to plan an outdoor fire, and with fires sweeping the state, we had to move our plans indoors.

I've never eaten an oven cooked damper, but it tastes really good! Of course, nothing can beat the charcoal taste when you slightly burn your damper-on-a-stick over an open fire.

Cuddly koalas (a very misleading song!)

It's not often that a meeting involves meeting a koala, but it definitely makes it memorable!

How much do my friends know about me?

As I mentioned in my post about the Junior BP Award, one of the girl's created a 'true and false' quiz, to use towards her Patrol System challenge.

In Aim High (badge book) the challenge is written as: 

Learn more about the members of your Patrol and present this information in a fun way.

How to play:

1. Every person in the Patrol is given a worksheet.
2. Complete each question, listing one correct answer and one misleading (false) answer.
3. The first boxes are blank, so that you can choose your own question to complete.
4. List the other participants in your Patrol at the top of the columns on the right side of the page.
5. Take turns with the other members of your Patrol guessing which of your answers is true and which is false. 
6. Reveal your answers, keeping score as your go.
7. Take time to discuss your answers as you play. Ask follow up questions! Share your own interests to learn more about your Patrol.
8. Don't forget to laugh and have fun!


Example worksheet:

The Patrol feedback was 100% positive when discussing and assessing whether the 
challenge had been completed correctly and to Miss-10-year's highest personal standard. The Patrol stayed entertained with this activity for at least 30 minutes and definitely came out of it with stronger bonds, knowing more about each others interests. A great success!

Full credit for this activity goes to Miss-10-years, who gave me permission to share her activity with other Leader's.

Challenge Yourself

This term has been focused on individual badge work, with the majority of the unit working towards the peak achievement award, the Junior BP Award. 

It has been a really strange term for me as a Leader, as I have had little to no preparation needed for each meeting. It's both lovely and unsettling at the same time. I just get to turn up and then circulate the room, helping where needed, while leaving a parent to stay at one base (usually the kitchen, if there is cooking).

Any Brownie Guide can present a challenge for their Junior BP Award or any other badge from Look Wide (badge book), as long as she has given me two weeks notice. 
Most challenges are being presented to a single Patrol so that four different girl's can be presenting their badge work simultaneously. Some girl's have now completed up to three challenges, others a single challenge and a few have been content to just turn up to the meeting and enjoy what has been planned for them.

I expected there to more discontent about participating in every activity, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised with how mature the unit has been. During one meeting, the activities that the four different Patrols were working on were: cooking fudge, drawing cartoons, sewing and a Patrol quiz and discussion. Each group stayed happily at their activity for up to an hour! It does help that everyone cooking has been making enough food to share with everybody at the end of the night. I don't know how we'll cope next term without our weekly snack! 


So far the activities have included:




Junior BP Award Challenges




Promise and Law




Challenge: Share your talent with your Patrol

•   Teaching Patrol to draw cartoons

•   Cooking wantons

•   Baking caramel fudge

•   Sewing bookmarks - with buttons and fabric scraps

Guiding Traditions

Challenge: Choose your own challenge

•   Organised a unit meeting with the theme Guiding traditions. This meeting was organised by three girls and included first aid, morse code, world centres and knotting - with some tasty treats at the end!

•   Plan a Promise ceremony and teach the original Brownie Story

World Guiding

Challenge: Learn a game from another country. Teach your unit.

•   Taught a game from Africa – the game involved locating hidden coins. I had been doing paperwork and missed the instructions, so ended up messing up the first round of the game when I found a coin and gave it to a Brownie sibling, not realising it was an integral part of the game!

Patrol System

Challenge: Learn more about the members of your Patrol and present this information in a fun way.

•   Patrol ‘truth and lie’ quiz – this was a really great and well-planned activity.

Challenge: Choose your own.

·    •   Teach Patrol to cook damper over a fire.

Camp cooking

Chicken stir-fry followed by dumplings for dessert. Yum!