Gems of Guiding

Despite my excitement for the Discover-a-Challenge gemstone badges when they were first released many years ago, I have never had a Guide complete a single one of these badges. Although, we could do some of the challenges at Guides, it's really designed as a badge to complete at home. I've always had trouble with my unit accepting any sort of "homework". It makes planning difficult when only half the unit completes a challenge, and then everybody is at different stages.

I stopped giving my new members Guide handbooks as well, since nobody was bothering to look at them. So no-one in my current unit had ever previously seen the gemstone badges.

With no face-to-face meetings, I decided to my unit a weekly email with activities and updates. I broke the Topaz gemstone into four parts and included one part in the newsletter over a month. The first week, I included it was mostly as a filler, but the response I received the next week was so wonderful that I kept doing.

In that time, almost everybody had started their Topaz gemstone, and four have completed it!!
The level of work has been really fantastic as well!

I think this badge has been the perfect thing to keep the girl's off their devices after long days doing home-schooling. It's not too overwhelming to complete and is something that most won't need any assistance with.

Here is part one that I put in our newsletter.

And here is some art from challenge number one.

Still so much to learn

Things I have learnt during our online meetings:

• Turn off the chat and share-screen features at the beginning of the meeting.

• Teach your unit to use the mute feature, and ask that they keep themselves on mute unless called upon.

• Have the girl's teach each other. With members using various phones, laptops and other devices, I don't always know the answers. When we were originally figuring out settings, I had them teaching each other how to find different functions such as giving a thumbs up or changing their backgrounds. It's been a great way for them to share their knowledge and also makes things easier on me!

• Things will go wrong, and that's okay.

• Programmed activities will take longer than usual (and honestly, this is no different than our regular meetings).

• Try to keep some of your regular unit traditions when possible. We all wear Guide uniform and are continuing to sing our opening and closing songs, even though our timing never matches up.

• Have some quick activities ready to go in case you need a filler or a change of activity, just like at a regular meeting. Things that have worked well for us are Pictionary and a Kim's game. 

• End every meeting with a reminder on properly turning closing down Zoom, not just walking away from the iPad or closing the laptop screen.

What advice do you have for online meetings?

Girls online

Somehow, almost 5 years have gone by since I initially ran the Free Being Me program. How is that possible? Some of my former Brownies who completed the badge are now my Junior Leaders!

As always, reusing a program is always an experience. Things this time around have definitely been.... different. We've had quite a few challenges and interruptions this term (even prior to isolation), which put us a little behind on the planned schedule for FBM.

Anyway, I was a little apprehensive about moving the program to our online meetings, but the meeting went so well! It has renewed my excitement for the program, and I'm looking forward to figuring out how we can best work through the other activities using our online meeting format.

We're halfway through session three, and I'm continuing to take things slowly to make sure the program gets completed properly with everybody participating. Not ideal, but it's better than no-one gaining anything from the experience.

Our first activity was airbrushing and it was run almost exactly how I originally ran it. The actual activity in FBM is only a 10 minute activity, but I rounded it out to about 30-40 minutes. I'm so glad I did this again, because we had some really great discussions.

Zoom (the program we are using to host our meetings), allows users to share images and video. This was fantastic as every member had the airbrushing images appear on their screens. We had some great discussion, first playing a "spot-the-difference" challenge with the images and then answering the "Talk About" questions in the FBM program (page 25 of booklet).

We finished the meeting with a craft activity. I had emailed everybody a template to print and they provide their own magazines and colouring-in supplies from home.

The activity was to fill the figure with images that describes your personality. Some examples included: mountains for love of adventure and a bow-tie for silliness. There were some really creative final results!

I'm still working on everybody sending me photos of their work after meetings, but at least I get to see it during the meeting.

- Brownie Guide Leader

A few activities for Anzac Day

During our pre-ANZAC Day meeting, we discussed our plans for the 25th, watched a short video, discussed the meaning of Anzac Day and did a Kim's Game.

Here is the video we watched: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rapkYgnXxWA

I stopped it right before the activity instructions at the 2min30sec mark.

These were the basic questions we discussed as a unit:

• What is ANZAC Day?
• What does it stand for?
• What do we do on ANZAC Day?
• What can YOU do on ANZAC Day?

The Kim's game was put together by Girl Guides Australia.

The unit had one minute to look at the images below, and then had to recreate the grid exactly - using images, words or a mix of both. After going over the answers, we asked them some questions too.

Examples of the questions:

• How many Anzac biscuits are pictured? (No-one got this correct!)
• What colour is the slouch hat?
• How many notes can a bugle play? (The answer is 5)
• What object is in the middle of the Australian Military Forces badge? (This was a tricky one too!)
• Which direction are the man and the horse facing?
• What animal is seen in the image of ANZAC Cove?

Credit: Girl Guides Australia

 Kim's Game image answers:

1.    There were horses in the war, so they are remembered too

2.    ANZAC biscuits

3.    Poppies grew in the fields in France and are a reminder of the fighting there.  They were among the first plants to spring up in the devastated battle fields.

4.    The Australian Army Badge, with the rising sun behind the crown for whom they were fighting.

5.    Painting of ANZAC Cove, Turkey

6.    Australian Slouch Hat

7.    Bugler playing the last post

8.    Flags of Turkey, NZ & Australia

9.    ANZAC Day March

Happy Guiding!

Online games

Even though we're on school holidays at the moment, the Brownies decided to continue with our meetings. I decided to keep things simple and hold a games night.

We started by playing bingo. Everybody drew a 5x5 grid on a piece of paper and then filled them with random numbers from 1-100. I pulled up a random number generator to chose our numbers, which I screen-shared with everyone. We played for one row and then a full board. It took forever to finish and I would definitely do it differently next time! (Luckily the girls still enjoyed the activity! I was ready to it finish it before we had even reached a bingo).

Things I would do differently next time:

• Not use a random number generator! It was fine at first, but then repeated numbers so many times it become really difficult to move on.
• Next time use an online bingo caller such as this one: https://letsplaybingo.io 
• I kept track of numbers as they came up, but next time I'd start with a list of all the numbers and cross them off as I went.

Some of the hand-drawn bingo boards:

 

Next up, we played Would You Rather? I asked the group random questions that I had found online, and they would raise their hand if they wanted to share their answer. They also had to share why they would choose one option over the other. It was a fun activity and it was a great hearing their responses.

The questions we used are below.

Would you rather:

• fly or be invisible?
• be a famous singer or a famous actor?
• be a fish or a bird?
• swim in a pool or jelly or a pool of custard?
• have a pet dinosaur or a pet robot?
• be a pilot or a pirate?
• read books or write stories?
• go to the moon or go to Disneyland?
• never shower again or never cut your nails again?

Our final activity was Pictionary. We used the whiteboard feature in Zoom, and the girls took turns to draw pictures with everyone else guessing. The only clue given was the topic. Our topics were: food, animals and movies.

Can you guess what these pictures are? 

A hamburger and a peacock!

A few regrets with my bingo choices, but other than than another fun-filled meeting! 

Edited to add:

What are the chances?! I was just reading about a virtual sleepover on The Guiding Life and they also played Pictionary and Bingo! This bingo caller is much more fun than the google number generator I used!

Wreath making meeting

Doing our best to keep to our program, we created Anzac Day wreaths during our final meeting of the term. This is one of my favourite activities of the year, as we don't usually make collaborative craft projects. Of course, this year we didn't create a wreath as a unit, but we did work simultaneously while making our own wreaths.

Most of the group made a cardboard base prior to the meeting, using cereal boxes. Then during the meeting, we looked at images of poppies, and I demonstrated methods to create your own leaves and flowers.

I just love the unique results!

Changes

During these difficult times, being able continue Guiding with my units has been a beacon of light. It's been a fun challenge and has kept me focused on something positive, for which I am so grateful.

I know that not everyone will feel this way, or have the time, means or even want to think about Guiding right now. But for me personally, this one act of normalcy each week helps and I can only hope that it is doing the same for at least some of my members.

We've been meeting online for about a month now and although it hasn't been easy, I've finished every meeting with renewed excitement.

I've kept it pretty simple and we're doing our best to keep working through our term programs, albeit with a completely different format.

During our first week, I held three different meetings for our units. Both the Brownies and the Guides had a lot of fun learning all the features of Zoom (the online platform we've been using), from changing backgrounds, taking control of the screen and sharing images. It was a fantastic and much needed lesson for me in learning how the security settings worked!

I hope that you and your families are safe and well.

Thinking Day scavenger hunt

One of the activities at our Thinking Day meeting was a scavenger hunt/quiz.

Each Patrol was given a series of questions. Some of the them were fairy easy to answer immediately (or with group discussion), while others required searching around the hall for possible answers.

The more difficult solutions were typed and printed on small bits of paper and then hidden around the Guide hall to find.

Our Junior Leader created the rule that nobody was allowed to start searching until their Patrol had answered at least three questions together. This was fantastic, as rather than everybody running around in chaos, it gave the Patrol time to read the questions together and actually work as a team (something we often struggle with!).

Some of the Guides were very surprised about some of the answers, mostly the celebrities that were once Girl Guides themselves. This was a great activity, and I'll definitely use the format again for more dense topics.

Questions & Answers:

1. When did Girl Guides start?
A: 1910
2. Who started Girl Guides?
A: Agnes Baden-Powell and Robert Baden-Powell
3. What were Brownie Guides originally called?
A: Rosebuds
4. What does WAGGGS stand for?
A: World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts.
5. How old is our Guide unit?
6. There are 5 World Centres. Where are they located?
A: UK, Switzerland, India, Mexico and various countries in Africa.
7. What are Brownie Guides called in India?
A: Bulbuls (type of bird)
8. How many years have our Junior Leaders been in Guiding?
9. What was your Leader's first Patrol in Brownie Guides?
10. What is the highest award you can earn as a Guide?
A: Queen's Guide Award (Australia).
11. What are three things that link Girl Guides and Girl Scouts around the world (links of unity)? A: Examples include the Guide Promise, salute, World song
12. How many Girl Guides and Scouts are there around the world?
A: Over 10 million
13. Name some famous Girl Guides and Girl Scouts.
A: Queen Elizabeth, Taylor Swift
14. Name three different Patrol badges.

How do you teach your unit about Guiding history?

Thinking Day 2020

Image credit: https://www.wagggs.org/en/resources/world-thinking-day-2020-communications-assets/

Happy World Thinking Day!

This year our meeting did not actually fall on the 22nd, so we celebrated earlier in the week. I originally had grand plans to use the activities from the Living Thread pack created by WAGGGS, but as my meeting plan kept getting longer and longer, I decided to save them for later in the term.

Our meeting:

• Girl-led games
• Skip into Brownie ring
• Discussion about Thinking Day, B-P etc. 
• World Centres game
• WTD Scavenger hunt
• Thinking Day (Captain's Coming)

Activity we didn't get to:
Crystal Rally relay race

Not using the Living Threads pack turned out to be a wise decision, as our concentration levels were quite low during the meeting and silliness factor at a high. Overall, a fairly basic introduction to Thinking Day, but with so many new members I'm fairly happy with how the program ran. Plus my Junior Leaders did a great job leading the activities and adding their own spin.

How did you celebrate World Thinking Day?

New Biscuits

I last posted about Guide Biscuits when the new range was introduced in 2016.

It's now four years later and we have a completely new range! For the first time ever, our biscuits are sold individually, with one biscuit costing $2.50.

At the moment my unit plans on ordering the biscuits to see how this new range goes with our customers who have always generously supported our fundraising. Hopefully, I'll remember to report back later in the year!

National biscuit website: https://www.girlguidebiscuits.com.au

ANZAC Biscuit

Gluten Free Lemon, Lime & Coconut Biscuit

Triple Choc Biscuit

Are you excited for the new biscuit range?

Wheels - women in transport

I recently discovered a new (to me) resource from Girl Guides Australia, which is designed to teach about women in transport and compliments the Wheels create-a-challenge badge perfectly!





From the website:

The National Program Team in partnership with Transport Women Australia Ltd have developed a Program resource, activities and a colouring book to encourage girls to explore a range of activities focusing on transport in Australia.

Women are a vital part of an industry that moves people, food and goods around the country and is a necessary part of both industry but also our daily life.

The program resource Helping to move Australia: Women in Transport provides a range of ideas for girls to pursue including careers, art, science and road safety and they may choose to work towards their Create a Challenge Wheels badge as part of the program.

Women from Transport Women Australia are also keen to visit units and share their experiences and join in activities with the girls as part of this program.

Girls working on the program can also receive a free Activities and colouring book available from the National Program Manager (program@girlguides.org.au)

Download the resource from Girl Guides Australia HERE.