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

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!

More wreath designs

One last wreath post, which will hopefully catch me up on the last few years of absent photos.
All these wreaths were made by the Brownie and Guide units (with some adult assistance!).

You can view all our past handmade wreaths by searching through the Anzac Day and Remembrance tags.

Please let me know if any of our projects inspire you - we'd love to see photographs!

Making a Wreath of Remembrance (with kids!)

I found some photos, taken a few years ago when we added purple flowers to our wreath to commemorate the animals in war.

I cannot see that I have posted these before, so I thought it would be fun to show the basic process in how we create our Anzac Day wreath each year.

The ring shape is created from tracing a large plate onto cardboard - which becomes the size of the inner circle. For the outer circle, I just eyeball the correct distance, and sketch it out with pencil. Cut out using a sharp craft knife. I always do this step myself with the size of the wreath determined by how large my Guide unit is at the time. (The flower making takes quite a while, so don't make your wreath too big if you don't have many members - I've made this mistake too many times!)

The Brownie Guides do the remainder of the wreath themselves, with supervision.

Wrap the cardboard in crepe paper and glue the ends down.

Create your flowers. These were all made using felt.

Add a ribbon across the wreath and hot glue the ends onto the back, so they are not seen. Test your pens before you write across the ribbon, as many will bleed. 

Hot glue the flowers down.

Add a bow. I usually find a Youtube video for one of my oldest members to watch and follow. Example: Ribbon bow (we don't sew, instead just use hot glue). 

Hot glue the bow onto the wreath. Add a glue dot to each of the loops and tails of the bow, so that it holds its shape.

Your wreath is complete!

This is the basic design that we use almost every year. For the most part, the only thing that changes are the plates I measure the wreath shape and the flowers the Brownies make.

Here are some photos of the flowers on our 2018 wreath, to show how the look can change completely, even when the base design is identical.

This was such a fun design - even though it was definitely the busiest wreath we've ever created!

I Can See A Rainbow

ANZAC Day always brings another handmade wreath.

And this one has been a long time coming.

It was many years ago that we were first inspired by a rainbow wreath lain at the Sydney cenotaph. The Brownies admired it, I took a photo for future inspiration and then years went by. Each year we discussed creating a rainbow effect and time after time the wreathes morphed into something else.

This year wasn't looking any different, with pink being the dominant flower colour created, despite a discussion and vote that the unit wanted to create a rainbow! During our second wreath-making meeting, I decided to add more structure than I usually give during crafts, in one last attempt to create the rainbow before scrapping the idea for good.

We grouped the flowers already completed into colours. As each Brownie was ready to create the next flower, we looked over the groups as a whole to identify which colours were missing or lacking in numbers. Finally a rainbow started to form and with it, the excitement to contribute the various coloured flowers that were needed.

The actual creating of flowers is never a problem. We are lucky to have cupboard of miscellaneous supplies to draw from, and the creativity of the Brownies always astounds me. This year was especially lovely as I watched members teach each other new skills and challenge themselves to try something new.

I'm glad that we finally conquered the rainbow.

Back to the drawing board next year.

Beautiful People

After we completed session three (part two) of Free Being Me, we had some extra time, so we were able to work on the extra activity I had prepared.

Girlguiding UK has a great badge program called Go For Its! This activity was found in the Life Wise activity pack and is listed under the Wellbeing activities (pages 2-11), which align really well with the Free Being Me program.

The activity for Beautiful People is listed on page 2 and is activity number four.  The template is available on page 3. I adapted the activity slightly, as I had the girl's represent themselves, rather than an imaginary person.

Activity:
Create the beautiful person you are using images from magazines to represent your personality.  You can use any images except for those with people in them.

Here are some of the pictures that the girl's created. I think if I did this with older Guides they may be more concerned about staying within the lines, but the Brownies didn't mind. They really enjoyed this activity and had really great discussion about their personality traits!

Note: I ripped pages out of magazines ahead of time with images of nature, bright colors, animals etc. I knew the girl's would be distracted by adverts, celebrities etc. I'm glad I did, because they stayed on topic the entire time.

I definitely recommend this activity if you have the time! 

Secret messages to make someone's day!

Remember those great 'treasure inside of me' boxes that the girl's made for the initial Free Being Me meeting? As we have completed the FBM program, it's probably time to show you what was inside!

Read the original post about the boxes here.

Here are some excerpts, to give you an idea of the lovely messages that were written.

I hope these messages give the girl's a pick-me-up when they need it and remind them of their amazing lifelong 'sisters'!

Indian traditions: rangoli

The first of the Indian traditions we focused on during the Other People create-a-challenge badge was the art form of rangoli.

We began with a discussion using a photo-heavy Powerpoint presentation I had created. The Brownie Guides learnt what rangoli is, the variety of materials used and the various occasions for which rangoli designs are created.

This Youtube video gave a great demonstration on how a design can be created. The girl's were enthralled the whole time, so I recommend watching! We don't have internet at our Guide Hall, so I just downloaded the video from Youtube.

Video: Diwali special rangoli design - Multicoloured flower rangoli.

From here, it was time to create our own rangoli art. I purchased these kits from CleverPatch ages ago, so it was great to finally get to use them! Each girl created a beautiful unique design, despite the fact they were all using the same base pattern.

Source: CleverPatch

These photos were taken as the girl's were still working on their designs. I forgot to take photos of the final products.

We ran out of time to complete the final activity I had planned. Using the video below, I was going to have the Brownie Guides learn to create a rangoli design on grid paper. The video shows a seemingly difficult design which is actually quite simple!

Youtube video title: Rangoli Design with dots easy to draw and beutiful for beginners By Meartist.in

Useful links:

• The tradition of rangoli
• Rangoli patterns
• Craft ideas from Activity Village

Related meeting ideas:

• World Guiding meeting #1: World Centres
• World Guiding meeting #2: WAGGGS regions
• World Guiding meeting #3: WAGGGS and the Links of Unity
• Other People #1: Sangam World Centre

The treasure inside of me

Rather than diving straight into Session One of Free Being Me, we began with one of the extra recommended activities, found on page 3 of the 7-10 year old Activity Book.

The cardboard boxes were purchased from Riot craft store for $3 each with the dimensions of the bases being approximately 15x15x15cm. I had considered using smaller boxes, but these were on sale, and have turned out to be much more suitable with the size of the notes being added.

During our first meeting of the term, each girl was given a box to decorate with coloured tissue paper and glue. Some girl's chose to cover every inch, while others didn't mind the brown cardboard showing through.

The layered tissue paper looks great and the girl's loved the range of colors available to create interesting patterns.

As this meeting was a couple of weeks ago, messages have already been added into many of the boxes. However, I won't be sharing them here until the end of term. It wouldn't be fair to post them before the girl's have a chance to read them!

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Have you made Treasure-Inside-Me boxes for Free Being Me? 
Did you do something else instead?